“You always smell a bear before you see him,” my father, an avid outdoorsman, once told me. “And if you run into one, make a lot of noise,” he advised.
I never expect to run into a bear in my daily suburban life and I would have been as stunned as the other shoppers when a bear once walked into a local Sears store. I also took particular notice a few summers ago when there was a spate of bear sightings in my area. On one day alone, various citizens had spotted a bear sniffing around someone’s porch, swimming in a popular lake and crossing a busy road, presumably heading toward the local creek, according to police.
It was the creek part of that news story that concerned me, as my husband, my dog and I frequently run on our favorite trails at a nearby park, which consists of beautiful woods, meadows and streams, bordered notably on the western side by the said creek.
A few days after the bear sightings, we were running on a trail, passing thick brush that led down a ravine to the creek below, when I suddenly smelled an unusual and nauseating stench.
“What’s that?” I asked my husband.
“Ugh,” he said. “It kind of smells like something rotten… or dead.”
I was excited. Maybe it was a bear?
The thing that my father didn’t need to tell me is that where there is a bear, there is bear scat. For the next week, I kept noticing large, dark piles of what looked to me like “processed” berries and seeds on the trails. Curious, I decided to search the Internet to learn more.
In this Age of Instant Google Gratification, it is a testament to the colossal power of cyberspace that when I typed in the words “bear poop,” I had so many “hits,” I could have spent the next seventy-two hours studying thousands of full color, close up photographs and detailed descriptions of exactly that. But after just a few minutes of research, I concluded that there was a decent chance the scattered piles I saw in the woods were potentially produced by a bear.
Wow. It made me wonder … what would I do if I ran into a bear? Should I play dead… back away… or just make a lot of noise like my father advocated?
I consulted the great Google oracle again and discovered that the Internet has a lot of confusing and conflicting information about bear encounters. From what I read, my reaction to meeting a bear would largely depend on whether it’s a grizzly, brown or black bear, how close the bear is in proximity to me, and whether the charging bear’s intention is to warn me or eat me – as if I would care.
Some people say you should stay calm and speak softly. Others, like my father, think you should yell and wave your arms to look bigger. Some experts say you should climb a tree. Others advise tree climbing only if you can climb thirty feet or higher quicker than a bear, which is not something I’ve ever been tested on.
Nobody agrees on the “play dead” option. Some people think that just makes you an easy meal, but others advise anyone attacked by a bear to fight back and punch the beast in the nose and eyes.
Boy, I hope I never get into a bear brawl. I’ve been told I hit like a girl.
There was one section of expert bear advice that caused me particular alarm. Everyone seems to agree that dogs make nervous bears more agitated because normal dog behaviors, like barking, tail-wagging and chasing, are highly aggressive in the mind of a bear.
I was thinking about this a few days later as I ran on the trail and came across another pile of potential bear poop. As I scanned the surrounding brush and listened carefully for any signs or sounds of a bear nearby, my dog rolled in the pile before I could stop him.
“Sparky! No!” I shouted. I yanked his leash up, but it was too late. He succeeded in smearing a streak of dark scat on his flank.
“Ugh,” I groaned as Sparky looked up at me with a happy, tongue-lolling, dog grin.
When we got home, I had to drag him to the bathtub to give him a dreaded bath.
“Sparky! You stink!” I yelled as I scrubbed him.
I decided my father is probably right about bears. Even though I didn’t actually run into one, I still ended up making a lot of noise.
* * *
Please visit my website at http://annkhowley.com/#about-ann