It's getting into trash cans on the other side of the neighborhood

Which would be fine normally

Except that my bus stop is in the other side of the neighborhood, basically triangulated between three undeveloped fields where a bear would totally like to hang out at 6:45 AM in early January where it's not light until 7:30

;^;

It's unlikely that it will bother me, as long as I don't startle it. My dad told me to quietly sing a song or something on the way down to just kinda make myself known to any large foraging masses that might be hiding in the shadows

So I basically just muttered random character conversations to myself and continuously hoped out loud that there were no bears blocking the bus stop

Don't bears hibernate??? Why isn't this guy asleep??? This would be different if it weren't the middle of winter and it's dark out and humans have incredibly bad night vision!

Welcome to rural PA everyone, where they shoot guns instead of fireworks on New Years, have not enough breaks built into their school schedules so everyone is mentally exhausted, and it's a normal conversation for bears to be in the neighborhood (in my experience)