Bear Stuff

"The Black Bear": To play (MIDI), click here Black Bear

        Throughout most of a lifetime of camping and traveling in the western half of the northern hemisphere, I have encountered bear at fairly close quarters without ever feeling directly threatened.  In at least three instances, unarmed and unshielded, I found myself to be within six feet of an adult bear going about the business of making its living.  Yet in each case I had no feeling that I was any more important to the animal than a rock along the way.  I was no threat to it nor it to me.  Perhaps I was overconfident in that regard but such assurance generally seemed to be validated by my experience.

       One dark night near Portage, Alaska, that attitude changed in the course of the longest and shortest minute of my life.

       I had passed up two possible campgrounds for the night for fear there wouldn't be room for my rig: a GMC Suburban hauling a 35' travel trailer.  Even in summertime Alaska, eventually it gets dark at night toward the southwest and the time was approaching 10:00 PM.  Now it was twilight off a dead end road, near Glacier Lake, on a patch of blacktop for parked vehicles (there were ten or twelve).  Hikers must proceed only on foot along the 26 mile portage trail.

        There was space for the rig along the wood line on the south side of the lot, with the trailer doors facing the woods.  By the way, the trailer/motor home set calls that (the right, facing forward)  the "sidewalk" side of the "recvee" and the other, the "street" side, which sounds altogether too urban to me.  I wasn't too sure whether to stay the night or go on to try to find a campground with water and electric hookups.  One easy decision: to eat dinner.  There was some two-day-old salad and some bratwurst in the "reefer" and I pan-fried three or four of the albino sausages on the stove.  While cooking, I sampled the leftover greens to extinction.

        It was pretty cool at that time of year in the evening so the windows were shut, the blinds closed, exhaust fan off, and the warmth and aroma from the cooking were welcome newcomers inside my little home away from home.  But those confined newcomers still managed to invite a friend of theirs, which was making its way toward me even as I tossed the links into the now-empty bowl and sat down to eat.

       One-half of a link had actually made it into my greedy mouth, when I heard a noise coming from the "street" side that sounded like wood being rubbed and rattled against the trailer at the same time.  Or the balls being racked up on a pool table.  My first thought was that a bull moose was rubbing velvet off his new antlers, and using my country condo to do it.  My second thought was interrupted by glass cracking on the other side of those window blinds, one foot north of my left ear.  I was sitting in an easy chair, not at the table.  Well, I had been; then I was standing in the doorway to the front bedroom, sausage put aside and an empty shotgun in my left hand while my right one was fishing for shells in a drawer.

       Why did I have the shotgun?  Protection.

       Why was it unloaded?  I was in Chugach National Forest and that's the law, Chester.

       Why didn't I have any load more powerful than #4 bird shot?  Sheer stupidity, it seemed.

       Back to then.  I still didn't know what was breaking into my trailer and I figured wrongly that it couldn't hurt me until I did know.  So I tried to feed shells into the loading port of the shotgun, which was new.  One shell, then another quickly tried instead, seemed to stick on insertion and I was leery of jamming the mechanism.  I pulled back on the ejection and cocking handle instead, locking open the loading chamber, and shoved one shell into the breech with my right thumb, which was mercifully not in place by the time it snapped shut again.  The memory of an "M-1 thumb" is a lifetime one.

       I turned to confront my intruder but it couldn't wait quite that long.

       The trailer shook and resounded with crashing and glass-smashing noises as though I had been broadsided by a truck right where I had been sitting, next to the picture window.  Yet the venetian blinds, rattling and shaking though they were, still remained in place; a theater curtain closed while backstage disaster and catastrophe announced themselves to an apprehensive audience.  Then they settled down and hung still.  And disappeared in less than the blink of an eye.

       I ought to know; it was my eye that blinked.

       And while it did, a great big bear stuck its head in where the window used to be and inquired silently but reproachfully of me where its next meal was coming from.  Well, I did a couple of stupid things that night, besides packing bird- instead of buckshot, but then shock might account for them, or maybe not.

       The first stupid thing I did was to pick up the bowl with the bratwurst and toss it through the part of the window that the bear's head was not occupying.  Why was it stupid?

       I am the least gifted ball player, any kind of ball, of whom I know or have ever heard.  My odds of successfully tossing a less-than-aerodynamic bowl of bratwurst clear through a modest target frame were improbable, if not actually minimal.  Yet it went through, the bowl and all of the links.  Had any of the meat hit the trailer or the bear and landed back inside, the beast would have stuck its arm and paw inside and simply pulled out the trailer wall to get to it.

       But it did go through.  And the bear fell from its upright stance leaning against the trailer to all fours to follow the bowl and the sausage toward the center of the lot.  Apparently an overhead light had activated with full darkness, because I could see, through the empty window, both the bowl which no longer contained the links and the bear which did not have a hump below its neck.

       Damn!  This tale would certainly sound more dramatic if it had been a grizzly.  But what can I do?  Besides, there isn't all that much to choose from between brown and black bears in Alaska; at least insofar as which subspecies is more dangerous to humans.  That's more a characteristic of the individual animal than the breed.  Still!  After the fact, it would have been nice if it had been a grizzly.  During the fact, the humplessness was noticed but not really considered and, after all, the bear was leaving.

       It didn't leave.  The stupid animal might be able to smell bratwurst through a trailer wall but it couldn't even sniff out a bowl full of the stuff if it was no longer in the bowl.  Decisions, decisions.  It decided to come back and this time tried to climb in; head and now left arm inside waving around a little as it started to lever itself up and over.  Stupid animal!  I was a lot smarter and could see that it would never get in through the wall. There wouldn't be any wall.  Match up a 600 pound bear that thinks it's a cat burglar against 2X3s, 1/8" panelling, and aluminum siding.  No contest!

       All this time I had the shotgun lined up with Yogi's left eye and at that range, maybe three feet, a lot of the 41 shot in that one shell would have penetrated its brain; I think now anyway.  But there were undoubtedly a lot of tent-campers in those two nearby campgrounds, Black Bear (apt?) and Williwaw.  A wounded bear was not something I wanted to be responsible for; especially if I were to be the first casualty.  This was a pretty big bear for a black, well over six feet from head to toe, judging from the height of my trailer window.  It was certainly a male at that size.

       I almost felt the bear was reading my mind by this time.  He had stopped moving and was staring at me now, evaluating, judging me.  I was almost a blank slate, waiting.  One way or the other.  Suddenly my brain made two simultaneous observations; one predictable, one shocking.  First, I was so tense with fear that it seemed there was a cold wind blowing up my spine.  From bottom to top; I remember that distinctly.  And secondly, I was smiling.  I doubt if I have ever felt more alive or more joyous than I did for those few moments.  It felt like minutes but it must have been only ten or twenty seconds: that standoff; chilled and joyous and forever.

       It couldn't go on.  The bear was not tested next; I was, and found to be impatient and wanting again in the stupidity area.  I just had to break the tension.  

       So I growled at the invader, deeply and very loudly, with what I considered to be menace in my voice.  He didn't look at all impressed or threatened.  But nevertheless, the offending bruin carefully withdrew from the wrecked window and walked away without looking back.  The incident was over for him.  He still had a living to make.  To him the growl had probably sounded, not dangerous, but something like, "Now that you know the way, don't be such a stranger."

       But it wasn't quite over for me.  I'm not particularly proud of anything else I did that night, but the choice of staying in the illusionary safety of the trailer, cuddling a loaded and unlocked shotgun, or leaving that trailer to walk along the wood line and clamber into the driver's seat of the Suburban, did not paralyze me for as long as you or I might think.  I guess I am pleased about that.  I left rather quickly, if you must know.

       There was still one vehicle in the blacktopped lot.  The driver got out after the bear left, cranked a round into a bolt action rifle and asked me if he should shoot the bear if it returned.  I said no, not unless he thought it had the price of a window on it.  That was supposed to be a wise crack but I suppose that it sounded like shocked babble.

        There you have it: a fitting finale.  Coming out second-best in an exchange of half-wits.

Back

You are at the Essays/Bear Stuff Page