The trespasser was huge: a big, hairy, athletic brute who appeared on our neighbor’s hill and then, brazenly, in broad daylight, as if he owned the place, climbed through a hole in the fence and ambled into our yard.

He cased the joint with expert eyes, and, finding nothing to his liking — an added insult, on top of the trespassing! — calmly walked away, giving the mower shed an extra sniff before heading up to the cemetery on the ridge, and from there, out onto St. Peter’s Church Road.

I’ll admit to being a little overexcited. We’d narrowly avoided a confrontation! So I did what one does: I picked up the phone and dialed 9-1-1.

The officer was sympathetic. She listened as I described the perp, then asked if he’d destroyed any property.

The answer was no. He’d simply crossed our yard and moved along. But wasn’t there someone I should tell, something I was supposed to do?

“Well,” she said, “I could give you the number of the Game Commission. But they’re not likely to do anything unless the bear becomes a nuisance.”

For years we’d been hearing stories about bears in the neighborhood, but we’d never seen one ourselves. The stories had certain elements in common: barking dogs; overturned garbage cans; late-night stands, complete with bleary-eyed homeowners toting shotguns.

I was somewhat suspicious of these stories. People were fallible, right? And bears were…virtually mythical.

Of course, there’s nothing mythical about being attacked by one. We’d read about the home invasion in Oliver Township two years ago that resulted in some truly horrendous, but thankfully not lethal, injuries to the Moyer family.

Attacks were quite rare, but hunters were reporting annual kills in the double digits. So we knew there were bears in Perry County.

Then again, there’s a big difference between knowing a thing and seeing it emerge from your neighbor’s treeline at 10:30 on a Sunday morning, when you’re relaxing on the porch with a cup of coffee and chatting with your daughter’s friend, Sadie.

“Look,” she says calmly, as if the porch’s fiberglass screen affords plenty of protection from a three hundred pound carnivore, “isn’t that, like, a bear?”

As the adult in the situation, you demonstrate your maturity by rocketing out of your chair, catching your pocket on its arm and practically overturning it as you shout, “Bear! There’s a bear!” to your wife in the kitchen.

Soon the house is in an uproar as everyone scrambles to the porch. You dig frantically in your tote bag for the camera, all the while raving, “Pictures! Pictures or it didn’t happen!”

Meanwhile, the bear saunters behind the mud oven, padding across grass you mowed only yesterday. Its unmistakable air of authority, and the way it stops from time to time to sniff the clippings, suggests a PGA official inspecting the greens.

As it passes out of sight along the ridge, you hop in the car. Your intentions are good — “The neighbors must be warned!” — but you manage to spook the bear at the top of the driveway. The sound of the engine causes it to break into a breathtaking gallop.

“Is this real?” you wonder, following the magnificent beast down St. Peter’s Church Road. As it parts ways, cutting across an open field, you ask yourself, “Am I really chasing a bear?”

As a matter of fact, I did call the Game Commission a little while later, only to learn that this is the season of bear-sightings. June, July, and August are the peak mating months. Love-minded males strike out on a tour of their home grounds, foraging for berries and other goodies along the way, sleeping wherever they happen to lay their heads.

This struck me as collegiate in the extreme. “A road trip!” I said. Perhaps the analogy was a bit too colorful.

“More like a walkabout,” the man replied.

Unlike many other animals in rut, male bears (or “boars;” the females, for some reason, are called “sows”) aren’t particularly ornery, unless they happen to encounter another lusty male, at which point the usual sparks will fly.

In fact, as large and intimidating as these creatures may seem, they’re quite shy, and will go out of their way to avoid a confrontation. The major exception to this rule is a mother protecting her cubs, a situation that is likely to end in violence if the perceived threat persists.

Our encounter with Ursus Americanus, or the common black bear, was one of the greatest thrills we’ve had on St. Peter’s Church Road, the culmination of seven years of wildlife spotting.

But we might not have to wait another seven years. The bear population in the county — and in Pennsylvania generally — has been steadily rising, thanks to careful management of both the animals and their habitat.

It’s a delicate balance. People like the idea of bears — but generally not in their own back yard.

We’re stunned and grateful to have seen one from our porch. But from now on, we’ll be looking over our shoulders in berry-picking season.