It’s just after 6 a.m. on April 1. Jenny Lance begins another day. She walks into the kitchen, stands in front of the sink, perhaps to run some water for a pot of coffee, and then glances out the window into the morning twilight. “Honey, get out here now,” she yells to her husband, Chris, in the nearby bedroom. “The bear is back.”

Jenny’s husband is no match for the huge black bear that’s roamed the valleys and ridges in Sweden Coulee for the last four years. Chris stands 6-foot-2, and is able to handle his own in the outdoors. The bear, on the other hand, is at least three, maybe six inches taller when it stands on its hind legs.

I know. I watched a 30-minute video that Chris took earlier this month. Chris filmed the bruin from inside a glass patio door. The bear, estimated at more than 400 pounds, was less than four feet from the tip of the camera, sniffing what Jenny calls “a spinner,” or spinning ornament, that hangs just below the eaves over the patio in their backyard.

I measured how far the bottom of the spinner was from the concrete patio … at least 75 inches. The bear’s nose was well above the bottom of the spinner in the video.

“When that bear stood up on its hind legs, that was it for me,” Jenny said, laughing and pointing toward the spinner. “At that point, I was out of there.”

Jenny described the bear as a big back blob when she first saw it on April Fools’ Day. One day later, she watched her husband take video of the bear before she retreated to the bathroom.

“It was quite an April Fools’ Day, but when Chris started filming it the next day, that was too much,” Jenny said, laughing again.

This is no small bear by any stretch of the imagination. Ron Lichtie, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wildlife manager in La Crosse, said measurements of the tracks indicate this bear is somewhere in the 400- to 500-pound range.

“And from looking at the photos, this bear is definitely a big one, no doubt about it,” Lichtie said. “Generally, I’d say it’s 5 years old, if not older.”

The exact age of a bear is conducted by taking tooth samples. However, Lichtie, a veteran biologist and wildlife manager, said that gauging from the length of the snout, the size of the head and the distance between the ears, he believe he’s “in the ballpark” with his weight and age estimates.

“But that’s not exact science either,” he said.

The bear frequented the couple’s backyard for the next six days, raiding bird feeders and sprawling on the ground, basking in the warm, spring sunlight on a hillside less than 40 feet from the couple’s home.

Chris took down what was left of the feeders on April 6, according to Jenny. However, the bear showed up after dark the next night.

“It kept standing around the kennel and seemed to be bothering our two dogs,” Jenny said, pointing toward the kennel on Monday.

Despite the barking dogs, the bear stood its ground.

That’s when Chris decided enough was enough, loading up a gun and walking outside onto the patio.

“I fired a couple of shots into the air above the patio to scare it and it really took off,” Chris said. “I could hear it crashing through brush heading up the hill.”

That was the last time Chris and Jenny heard or saw the bear.

“It’s the same bear as the one that was here last October and knocked down our feeders,” Chris said.

Ken Hiles and his wife live off County Trunk C north of West Salem and just a few miles from Sweden Coulee. They saw what is believed to be the same bear on April 14.

“I put my bird feeders up 7½ feet high because I measured it,” the 6-foot-1 Hiles said on Wednesday. “It still pulled them down.”

Hiles said the bear has frequented their yard a few times since, raiding the feeders or rolling a burn barrel around on the ground. The bear also tore the handles off a garbage can.

“It’s a big one. I know that,” Hiles said. “I measured the tracks and they’re darn near six inches wide.”

The same bear was photographed about “three miles east, by the way the crow flies,” by Darrel Vanderzee at 3:30 p.m. on April 15. Lichtie confirmed it was the same bear by the size of the animal and a telltale white marking on one of its front legs.

Meanwhile, Chris and Jenny miss seeing the bear. They realize it may return, but probably not until fall.

“I know it’s scared of guns,” Chris said.

“My wife and I don’t mind him and we love to live in the country,” he said. “But it’s unnerving when you have small kids and they play outside.”

Chris and Jenny have two small children, 5-year-old Morgan and 3-year-old Brody.

“The kids were excited when they first saw the bear, but they were also scared when they saw it plain as day,” Chris said.

Chris plans to take Morgan hunting morel mushrooms on their land again this spring.

“Morgan and I like to pick morels and we know it’s not going to be around. We’re not going to worry about any bear,” Chris said. “After all, they were here before we were.”