Bear!

Sep 06, 2026

Our history with The American Black Bear in South Carolina is long and filled with drama.

Long before there was even an idea of a garden, there was already a bear around, inflicting pain on us.

The picture below is from March 2018. Little did we know that, in September 2026, we would still be struggling to find the ideal solution.

And man, how we struggled. At the beginning of this saga, we were completely clueless.

Our first attempt to get any protection was a “heavy duty garbage bin lock” from Amazon, not very heavy duty at all. It took the bear one minute to break it and it would take us three garbage bins and three different sets of straps to get to a better place.

Once we found the second set of straps that did not have any resemblance to the first, we had a season of calm, until the bear, in a bout of rage, simply broke the can lid leaving a huge hole and making it useless.

It was Sunday. The next day was a federal holiday, and, as Tuesday was collection day, the trash can was stuffed to the top with garbage. What should we do?

I went to the Home Depot website and bought a beautiful 64-gallon can for $104; the store delivered it the same day, we reused the same straps and were back in business before it got dark.

I was so proud of myself and my newfound American efficiency!

Two days later, I confidently put the trash can outside for the garbage collector, together with the broken one that belonged to them and needed to be discarded.

Problem solved.

A quiet week passed.

But our happiness was short-lived.

The next Monday night, I put the trash out as usual. On Tuesday morning, when I woke up and went outside to get the can back down the driveway, the beautiful $104 trash can had simply vanished.

I called the garbage company, they said they came as usual and there was no trash can to collect.

What? At this point we could well write a Netflix crime mystery special, “The Disappearance of the Sklars’ Trash Can”!

Later that afternoon our next-door neighbor came and told us he heard a loud noise during the night, like someone or something dragging a very heavy object, and deep down in the middle of the forest he could envision our beautiful, brand-new trash can tipped over. It was later swallowed by the ferocious Atlantic Forest, never to be seen again.

What could we do? I called the garbage company again, told them the whole megillah; and not very willingly they delivered a new trash can. Rewind, replay, we installed the old four straps and, this time, added to the “scheme” three dog tie-out stakes and a dog cable and also passed the cable around the shelf of a metal tool organizer as a fourth anchor point to deter the bear from knocking the can down. We also started to use a dog cable wrapped around the mailbox pole to stop the bear from dragging the can into the forest when it was out for the garbage collector.

A couple of weeks passed and we were filled with hope. Maybe this time we had finally figured out how to keep the bear at bay!

Not so fast. One beautiful day I woke up and the can was tipped over again. The lid was open with the rims broken at the corners, practically making it impossible to keep the can closed.

Mind you that we are now already in the summer of 2026, the scalding hot summer of 2026 (due to El Niño, not that other thing) — three trash cans, three different sets of straps, four anchors and three different lengths of cables later.

Eight entire years have passed in this war against the voracious black bear of South Carolina neighborhoods, but we are not the type of people who would give up, so I bought an extra pair of straps to secure the corners and installed a security camera pointed at the trash can to try and meet our opponent personally (and that’s the video you can watch above).

Now, I don’t know what’s wrong with this security camera that it records me and my husband every time we go outside to toss a bag or when I'm working in the garden, but last night, when Mr. Bear finally came again, nothing was recorded.

It must have been a big one this time, because he managed to unearth two anchors from the ground and left them hanging from the cable’s end like useless bags of dirt. The can was knocked down, but lo and behold, the bear could not open the straps this time and there was no mess to be cleaned.

Sklars 1 – Bear 0!

So today, I ordered a replacement anchor and a longer cable from Amazon so I can wrap it around the can more times. This bear has no idea of who he is dealing with.

Where there’s life, there’s hope. To be continued…

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