Lines of Timorous Bears, oh my!


We got a phone call from a neighbour this morning warning of a bear and two cubs wandering around in the ravine.
Aparrently someone was staying in a tent when they made the discovery; can't say I envy them more than just a teeny tiny bit. (I've seen bears while driving and from a distance while backpackign in the rockies, but never from closer than a hundred metres.) I have to admit that I'm tempted to take my camera (with telephoto lens, of course) out and do some "hunting" tomorrow...

No reports bear vandalism yet, thankfully. All the same, we'll be keeping the dogs inside as much as possible for a while... There's only one thing that'll get you into more trouble with a bear than careless handling of food, and that's careless handling of dogs.

My grandmother was out picking raspberries when the call came in, but she dismissed any notes of concern for her wellbeing. The raspberry patch has an eight-foot fence around it to keep the deer out, so she figures she was safe anyway, but if she were faced with a bear while on the way back she knows exactly what she'd do: "throw berries at them and git out of there!"
(This is comical if you know how slowly my grandmother moves on uneven ground, but doubly so when you consider how long a bear might have to stop in order to eat an entire pail of raspberries.)

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