Saturday Stories. #14 Bears Again.

PLEASE NOTE: This is one of my adventures from years ago and is meant for entertainment purposes only.

Good morning and Happy Saturday! It is a beautiful, sunny morning here though a bit on the chilly side. The temperature was 23F (-5C) this morning with just a light bit of snow on the ground. Yesterday morning we had about an inch of snow but it all melted during the day but we kept having flurries all day.

This present snow should easily melt today as well. But, we will not be getting back to those nice warm temps we had before until probably May. Oh well, that is how spring works around here. But it does look so beautiful out there with the sun shining brightly again.

This is one of the brown bears, this one stayed to itself about 40 feet away.

Now, I should get started with another story from my past. I have written about this before I am quite sure, but some of you would have missed seeing that post, so I will write another one telling about one of my many encounters with bears. Years ago we used to have numerous small garbage disposal areas. All of them are closed now in favor of larger, more centralized ones.

Anyway, there was one such small garbage disposal area that I used to stop at frequently since there were usually bears at that one. I did have a camera back then, but it was not a good quality one and, of course, back then they were all film type cameras and that film had to be developed, a process that usually took about 2 weeks.

This is another picture of that one above.

That is a long time to wait in order to find out if your pictures actually turned out nicely or not. Anyway, one early morning I stopped in at this garbage disposal area and there were 4 bears present, two were regular black bears and 2 were brown colored black bears. The regular black bears were on the farther side of the disposal area, which was fine.

I wanted to get a picture of those brown bears if possible. I parked my car which put me about in the middle of this group of bears and since I do not really trust bears, I left my car door open in case I had to get back inside quickly. One black bear was quite big at about 400 pounds, the other one was smaller. The one ‘brown’ black bear that was closest to me was about 300 pounds and it kept walking back and forth on the parking area watching me.

This is the main one I wanted for pictures. This one kept pacing back and forth.

I think it wanted to come over to the garbage but it was not sure about me getting in its way. Now, my car door did not like to stay open and if it was on even a small slope the door would close. So, while standing there the door kept bumping into me and I kept pushing it open again. After a while this was starting to get a bit annoying since I am trying to get a picture so I finally decided to ignore the door and concentrate on getting a picture instead.

The door bumped against me again but this time I left it. Just as I was pressing the shutter button the door pushed against me again, almost knocking me over. The door was already sitting against me, so this was kind of odd. So, I gave it another harder push but the door did not move. That got me thinking so I turned around to see that bigger black bear sitting on the other side of the door.

He had been pushing one way while I had been pushing the other way! Perhaps he thought it was some kind of game and he was sitting there enjoying himself. I, on the other hand, did not think it was so enjoyable, and now the other black bear was at the front of my car. Even the brown bear was now getting braver and was coming closer.

Okay, that was too much for me so I quickly got back in the car and closed the door. That big black bear stood up leaning against the car and started to shake it. I honked the horn but it did not bother the bears at all. So I started the car and quickly backed up, then turned and out of there I went.

I did get a couple of pictures that were not too bad for a cheaper camera. I would sure like to get a picture of a brown black bear now that I have a decent camera, but finding one of them is not easy now. Oh well. It was a great time on a beautiful, sunny, summer morning.

I then went to my favorite restaurant and told Krissy about the bears. She stared at me. “I should slap you!” she said, “You do know bears are dangerous, right?” Hmm, it would seem that bears are not the only ones who are dangerous. Well, that is all for now, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2024 Steve McLeod