Clara came home in time to chase her empty trash can as it rode the wind across her front lawn. She wrangled it to the ground, found its lid trapped in the middle of a large bush, then clamped lid to can. Clara dragged the reassembled receptacle to its spot behind her house and was just about to head back to the front when she saw an odd shape on her deck.
It was bent and twisted and torn, but she recognized it as her screen door.
Clara grabbed her phone, typed in 9-1-1 but waited to hit send.
She stepped onto the deck to get a closer look. There she noticed the sliding glass door was open and askew, as though it were knocked off its track.
She moved in closer. Her hand gripped her phone tightly, her thumb hovering over the green telephone icon.
The table was nudged to the side, a chair was knocked over, and there was mud all along the floor.
Clara knew that she should leave. She knew that she should hit the green telephone icon. She stepped into the house.
She heard glass clinking from the next room. She moved towards it.
There in the kitchen, she saw a large dark shape in front of her open refrigerator. She blinked her eyes into focus. There, with its head stuck between fridge shelves, there, licking the side of a loosely covered cake, there, stood a black bear.
Clara’s phone beeped, and the bear turned.