Two Bear Stories, Only One Happy Ending
I have a sick fascination with bear stories.
I hate blood and gore and terror, but wrap it up with a bear and I’ll take it any way you give it to me. Just hearing the word bear makes the hair on my arms stand on end and my pulse quicken. As long as I’m not directly involved, of course.
I have no logical explanation for the why of it, other than that my first seven years were spent in Alaska and I probably heard my fair share of bear stories in that time, imprinting a beastly esteem on me.
When I came across this tweet on Twitter, it was like I’d just discovered a delicious desert.
The whole close call with a bear part was enough to capture my attention, but the hashtag, that thrilling little addendum, alluded to a wonderful, hair raising story. It did not disappoint! In fact, FearfulGirl has a whole section on her blog dedicated to close calls while traveling, and they are a pretty awesome read.
My family has also had a few personal encounters with bears.
My Aunt had gone to visit some friends deep in the Alaskan wilderness, and while she was there a man who lived in a cabin on the other side of the lake ran up screaming for help. A bear had broken into their house and he and his wife had escaped through a second-story window onto the roof. His wife distracted the bear so he could jump down and run for help.
My Aunt’s friends grabbed their guns and headed to the cabin, but by the time they got there, the bear had found a way onto the roof and mauled the woman to death.
The rangers told them that the bear had probably smelled that it was the woman’s time of the month
How’s THAT for a bear story? A good reminder not to live out in the middle of nowhere if you don’t like the possibility of getting eaten. Just sayin’.
When Gabi was two, we went to Alaska to visit my dad, step-mom and little sister. Gilberto was obsessed with seeing a bear, and luck was on his side a few nights in when we were woken up by a bear in the backyard going through the trash.
My dad stood to the side of the sliding glass doors with his gun as the bear climbed up the steps to the deck. We huddled in the living room, Gilberto excited beyond belief, me frozen in terror. A pane of glass will not stop a determined bear, and it was my time of the month. I just KNEW that bear was going to break into the house and eat me, just like what happened to that poor woman on the lake.
I obviously survived. Luckily the bear didn’t see, or, ahem, smell anything of interest, and moved on down the road.
So while I love talking about bears, and hearing about bears, I do not like putting myself in the paths of bears. No more camping for this girl. Not even in a camper. A bear would have no problem prying that thing open like a sardine tin and plucking us out one by one.
Do you have any exciting or scary animal encounters?
No scary stories, but just went camping a couple of weeks ago in bear country (at least that’s what the signs said). Its a little nerve wracking to think about sleeping in a tent when a bear might raid your campsite
No worries – we were careful about packing all our food up each night well away from the campsite, but that doesn’t mean that our neighboring campers are as smart.
Oh dang, that’s scary! This post reminded me of when our family used to take road trips for a week or so to Canada when I was little. We’d go to the garbage dumps at night and watch the bears. They are really fascinating. Until they decide you look better than a bag of trash.
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The only place I want to see a bear is at the zoo! The scariest animal story I have is about the time a frog jumped on my foot. Not exactly hair-raising!
We have a dead squirrel in front of our house, on the road, that Wyatt keeps telling people that I’ve killed… does that count?
I (thank goodness) haven’t encountered any bears as of yet
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That is scary!!!
My father has always kept bees and I remember one year we lost all of the hives to a black bear. The bear came a couple of nights in a row… The first night, my dad shot one of his guns at the bear, but it was more to scare the bear off than to kill it… He did run away, but he came back the next night… and we just decided to give up and let him eat.
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