Awful Smelling Something, Help?

[ms-woman]

Back in May, Hubby and I woke up to the nastiest smell that we've ever encountered. We had the bedroom windows open and it was coming from the front of the house. The dogs were going crazy! The smell was like a slaughter house mixed with grass, and something else not really sure. It was overpowering made us both cough and gag! The wind wasn't blowing and it was only coming through one window like whatever it was right outside the window. But that was on the front porch and nothing was out there. The dogs ran it? out of the yard and sounded like they had it cornered and were lungeing at it and retreating, but we didn't hear anything other than the dogs making any noise. What could it be? We're in northeast Ms, so there is not alot of bears, I checked on the net and there are bears here but much farther south. I talked to the Ext guy and he said there have been sightings of bears about 30-40 miles away. How far will a bear roam? We have not seen any tracks and I checked the yard the next morning but didn't see anything unusual, but it was very dry also. We have seen bobcats and cougars here but they don't smell like that do they? Anyone have any ideas?

[rAcErRicK]

Sasquatch ! :D

[ms-woman]

Could be, but I'm not betting on it ;D Seriously do bears smell like that? A friend of my husband's swears that he saw a momma bear and cub in his pasture, but we thought he had a little to much to drink ;) It definately wasn't a skunk or anything I'm familiar with. It hasn't come back and we've yet to see any tracks that we can't identify. I was just wondering since my kids like to roam the woods.

[WileyCoyote]

I just loooove the Wildlife folk. For 5 years my kids and I knew there was a panther in our woods, and they kept telling us - "No panthers live here". Well, my son even saw it one evening, and we tracked it several times. My neighbor saw it one morning crossing the road! The Wildlife people still say, "Nope, no panthers here."

There are bears everywhere I've lived, whether or not the wildlife people admit it. We saw one where they were building a Wal Mart on a major four lane highway, and we used to see them all the time at night on the ambulance. "Nope, no bears here, either."

Yeah, OH-kay. Don't doubt your senses. Most black bears won't bother you unless you come between them and their cubs or food. Teach your kids to always know where they are, to always be alert and aware, and to always to be ready to run or stand stock still whenever necessary... and to NEVER pick up a wild 'baby' anything, or carry food with them.

[ms-woman]

Hey WC, I didn't think it was a bigfoot and wasn't sure about the bears. Do they smell like what I described? I know we have cougars and such around here, our old neighbor looked out her bedroom window one night and saw one in the back yard (floodlight) it was longer than her picnic table. Another lady down the road had one run right in front of her car as she turned into her driveway late one night. Back in April one ran across the road in front of me late at night.

What sort of sounds do bears make? Hubby was out in the lower pasture the other night and the dogs took off after something, he said that he heard the weirdest noise and the dogs all went quiet and took off back home. Now he had our 3 of our Great Pyrenees with him and I've yet to see them back off from anything and they took off. He said he was positive it wasn't a cougar screaming said it didn't sound anything like that. More like a very short,loud grunt and cough with something else thrown in, we are just wondering what has moved into our woods? I haven't let the kids out by themselves this summer and he has started carrying his 12 gauge pump to the bottom. We haven't lost any livestock and haven't found any tracks or scrapings or anything, its just really weird ??? ??? :-[

[reyecat]

here's a link to a description of a bear smell

http://cloudline.org/1998/September/4/index.html

also bears can sound like grunts and snorts....

It seems like you have a bear that rolled in a carcass.