A Bear in the Paddock

The room was black and silent. The hum of the dishwasher downstairs had long since given way to the silent steam of the air venting, allowing the cold night air in and the hot, steamy air out. The gentle snoring and blankets shifting occasionally were the only sounds emanating in the silent Vermont night. 

The room lit up in hues of pink and violet, gentle at first, just enough to alert the sleeping professor enough to roll across the bed and search for the remotes. 

"Vadim. You left the TV on again." 

He didn't hear her. 

She continued her blind searching in the night for the remotes to turn off the lights as the pink and violet lights grew in intensity, dancing across the walls of her master suite like the lights of a dance club. 

"Sir," a female voice quietly but firmly called out over the speakers. 

She sighed and buried her face in the pillows. 

"Yes, Astrid." Her voice muffled by the pillows, knowing that the voice was addressing her. 

"There is a bear in the paddock." 

She rolled over and looked at her alarm clock. In big red letters, it looked back. 

2:35am. 

She sighed again. 

"Vadim." She crawled across the sprawling bed, moving cats and small dogs as she made her way towards her sleeping husband. She hit him gently in the chest as she said his name again. "VADIM."

"HUH," He awoke violently.

"There's a bear in the paddock." 

"Oh for fuck's sake. What time is it?" 

"2:35." 

He groaned heavily as he sat up. Still in his fog, he lumbered towards the bathroom and put on a heavy black bathrobe before shuffling towards a tall black gun case, placed his thumb on the keypad, opened the safe, and removed a rifle.

"Astrid, tell me about the bear," he said out loud, as he shuffled out of the bedroom door, putting on his slippers haphazardly as he left the bedroom. 

"Sir, it is a male black bear in his adolescence. He seems to be alone," the voice seemed to trail off with him, providing details about its height, weight, arrival time, and behavior.

The professor groaned and removed her heavy blankets, her body aching as she went to sit up, she took a sip of water from her bedside table and went to the table in front of the fireplace to open a small wooden box, from which she removed a pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and shuffled towards the bathroom herself. She carefully put on her robe, carefully climbed into her large tub one foot at a time, then onto the window seat behind the tub, and opened the window behind it, to watch the melee. With a quick and silent flick of the Bic lighter, she lit her cigarette and started watching. 

Below, she could see her husband, standing on their wide patio, gun in hand, aiming at a medium sized black bear, that was curiously inspecting their horse paddock. the horses had been locked up for the night, so she knew he wasn't going to kill the bear. The job was to fire a shot loud enough to scare the bear back into the woods. They'd set up targets all around the property to aim at for this specific reason. 

As her partner leaned against the patio table to take a sniper's aim at the stack of hay laid out next to the paddock, she heard one of the dogs let out a yelp from inside. They'd all heard it. Her husband looked up. The bear looked up. She looked inside and saw the cat in an aggressive posture on the bed and the small dog cowering nearby. But by then, everyone was paying attention to her in the window. 

Vadim re-focused on the bear, who, by then, had seen him, and was now paralyzed in fear. 

"I'm not gonna shoot you, little guy. I just need you to get away from my horses," he soothingly told the bear, looking down the scope of his rifle.

The bear looked petrified. He barely broke eye contact with the gun, except to plead with the professor in the window from time to time.

After a seemingly endless few seconds of watching the bear's terrified eyes dart from gun to window, Vadim sighed. He lowered the gun from the target and looked at the ground. Then he stood up, raised the gun's muzzle in the air, fired one shot directly into the sky, and watched as the bear tore off back into the woods. 

"Thanks, Tuvok," Vadim said, as he looked up at the professor smoking in the window, gun resting on his left shoulder. 

"Blame the cat," the professor hollered back with a smile on her face.  

"Fucking cat. Well at least the bear is gone," he said looking around.

"And the horses shall live another day! Huzzah!" she replied excitedly. 

"Just another glorious morning on Hidden Clover," he said, lumbering back into the house.