Friday, June 27, 2014

Bears, False Hysteria and Mountain Realities... Get a Grip...

Almost got in trouble last night...

Was nigh on to ten O'clock when a guy came stumbling up to the fire. His voice was approaching the pitch of a scared old woman's... as he told us...in a panicked rush; THEY SAW A BEAR! DON'T LEAVE ANY FOOD AT ALL ANYWHERE AT ALL OR THEY WILL BE IN YOUR CAMP!!!

Besides spooking the kids for no good reason... getting all cranked up about such things and wetting your jeans is a thing that just twists my shorts...

"Where did they see it?"

"Down on the other side of the lake coming across the damn..."  ... so... probably nigh on to a mile...

Then the camp host came around... knocking on doors to warn ever'body!!! seriously? Why not call out the friggin' National Guard?!

People!!! It was a black bear... in the woods... in Colorado! Wow! What a rare freakin' thing to see!!!

I'd just about bet both my kidneys and half my liver that right then and there... you could find six bears within' five miles of where these boys were wettin' themselves cuz somebody SAW one!!!

So... How'd I almost get into trouble? Cuz me bein' who I am... I was havin' difficulty checkin' my laughter at the town folk cowering behind their tent flaps cuz Yogi was gonna come rampaging through their camp... Sound carries in the night air of the mountains you know! ;)

Here's the deal... Keep a clean camp... exercise that grey stuff 'tween your ears... and you'll be just fine.

Put it into a reasonable perspective... How many campers actually, truly got fed to a bear in the last... oh... ten years? three? maybe four?... and how many got shipped to the mortuary by a lil blonde girl racing down the road texting to her girlfriends with her knees holding the steering wheel? ... in that same time period??? a thousand? Four thousand??? More? Get a Grip folks!

Your bowels don't get loose every time you climb in your car to run down to Safeway for some cole slaw do they? You're about a thousand times more likely to have something bad happen there... on the road... going where ever...than you are in the mountains... if you Keep A Clean Camp...

So... prior to the Yogi assault... that uh... Never happened ... what a let down ;) the kids played around in a lil feeder stream that flows down to the lake... and... they made another attempt to capture one of the elusive trout...

Which is frustrating lil' Jillian. She desperately wants to catch a fish... and most she's gotten is a good solid bobber dunking... while folks fifty feet away using the same bait drug in three... Explain THAT to a five year old. :)
 






*Belaire Lake*











Shhhh... we're waiting on the bears... are the doors locked?

Yeah... I know... I'm not a terribly sympathetic mountain cowboy...
Brian...


5 comments:

Spotted Dog Ranch: said...

Next time they come around, Brian, just yawn and tell them that's nuthin' cause you just saw a Bigfoot. That'll put the bear in perspective, right? :)

Unknown said...

Gee whiz Brian, you gotta empathize with your fellow campers... You should told that terrified excuse for a man that there were other campers about mile up the creek that he needed to warn too.

Adios!

Box Canyon Blog.com said...

And tell them that the Yellowstone wolves finally made it to Colorado, and that they are way more dangerous than bears :))
Nice postcards!!!
Box Canyon Mark

Judy said...

Bear Story!

I scared the living bejesuz out of myself at 11 thinking a big bush was a bear the first night of vacation camping north of Crested Butte. I wanted so bad to get out of the truck cab and run around to get in the camper with Mom-n-Dad but I knew that 'bear' would get me if I didn't lay very still until 'it' went away. Daylight was a long time coming!

Never did see a bear, deer, or elk, just cows. I could of stayed in Kansas for those!

Brian said...

Spotte Dog Ranch; I DID see Big Foot!!! He was walking his bear on a leash! :)

Mike; I tried but my words were unintelligible... cuz I was chewing too hard on my cheek trying to be polite!

Mark; You mean that "Yellowstone" radically non-native mostly Arctic wolf variety that was implanted to return the eco-system to its "natural" state and is currently extirpating the elk from Montana and Idaho? Because the reality of Arctic wolves hunting in packs of a dozen and more is so greatly different than the scavenger type (Prairie wolf) that WAS there, that hunted in singles and pairs... kind of similar to the Mexican grey...Oh Damn! You mean they actually HAD a similar variety they could have transplanted but chose to go with RADICALLY NON-NATIVE to "return to Natural" bwahahahaha... gotta love Walt Disney. (sorry... fell UP ON my soap box there for a minute) bwahahahahahahahaa

Judy; I love it! I won't tell you about the time I... oops... almost slipped... :-P