We have a place in the mountains of New Mexico about a hundred miles from El Paso. When berries and nuts and other foods are scarce because of drought or other reasons, bears come into town to visit the dumpsters.

This dome scene sits on a table by our living room window. For these photographs I removed the glass dome to prevent reflections.

 

The larger bear outside the dome was a lucky find - 35 cents at the local trash and treasure shop. He usually resides on the coffee table, but apparently became curious at the interloper.

The dumpster is made of cardboard; the lid is from a corrugated carton.

The bear in the dumpster had a rather wide resin base. (I don't know why his nose and eyes look so odd in this picture; they don't in real life.) I broke off most of the base and covered the remainder with garbage, most of which is real scale garbage (the sweepings off my work table). I added a miniature Pampers diaper wrap, Coors can, some rotten (Fimo) tomatoes, and scraps of trimmings from making Fimo foods.

Notice the white garbage bag under the tomatoes and other food scraps? Someone forgot to heed the warnings: people are advised not to put their garbage in bags because the bears just drag them off and scatter it. It took some doing to get used to just throwing the garbage straight into the dumpster, but it sure is better than seeing those bags torn open and garbage strewn everywhere.

 

Although it's not easy to see, there is a mountain jay on the tree limb. Real ones can be seen from our windows. Those are real miniature pine cones, found in drifts on the ground at certain times of year. Unfortunately, our neighbor had to cut down the big old pine tree that was in back of our house so he could move in a double-wide mobile home.

NOTE:
I had some correspondence with a man whose website dealt with the lighter side of dumpsters. At one time there was a link to my Cloudcroft Cafeteria on his website, but apparently he no longer collects odd and interesting photos of dumpsters because last time I checked out the link, it was all perfectly serious stuff.

If you're into bears, you might check out Bear With Me, my Bears and Honey Shop.

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