Saturday Stories. #19

Hello everyone! Well, it is another cloudy, rainy and very cool day. Reminds me of a time when I was out at my cabin in the woods. It was summer, but a cool and rainy morning. So, I decided to go out for breakfast. I looked around and there were no bears in sight anywhere. Because bears were around regularly I got into this practice of checking thoroughly before heading outside.

All was safe, so out I went. I locked the door and had not gone down the steps yet when a bear came walking around the corner of the cabin. That put him about 8 feet away from me. I was 30 feet away from my car, but right next to the door of my cabin. Which I had just locked. Either way I go, if that bear decided to move quickly, there is no way I could move faster than it could.

Black Bear up a Birch tree.

The bear stood there looking at me. I looked his way, but not directly at its face. Looking directly at a wild animals face, especially the eyes, can make them very nervous. A nervous wild animal can be dangerous. And this situation was dangerous enough. Since my car was also locked, I decided that the cabin door was the best option. And standing in that rain was just making me very wet.

So, I turned slowly and unlocked the door. Now the bear was coming toward me. I very quickly threw the door open and rushed inside! I just got the door closed and the bear was standing against the door, hitting it with his paws. I did have a very good door, 2 inch (5cm) thick, solid wood. It was very strong, however, a door is only as strong as the locking mechanism holding it shut.

One of our cuter critters, a Red Squirrel.

In most cases, that is the weak link in every houses doors. But I digress. Anyway, since a similar thing happened before with a bear standing at my door, I now had some extra protection in the form of an iron bar that I could lock securely across the door. That was nice. But this was not getting me out for breakfast. The bear stayed around for about 20 minutes walking between my cabin and the car. Finally it walked off into the trees and once it had gone far enough, I went quickly to my car and drove off to town for breakfast.

I told the waitress about the bear and she informed me that a bear about that size had attacked a man at the edge of town a couple of days before. He had to be taken to the hospital but was not seriously hurt because another man that lived next door had seen what was happening and had managed to scare the bear away. The authorities had been trying to locate the bear, but without success.

Another Red Squirrel.

I talked with them also and showed them where I had seen the bear, if it was the same one I don’t know, but they checked it out anyway. They did find an aggressive bear on the neighboring property and dealt with it. There were always a lot of bears out there. There were actually a lot of different animals out there. Did someone mention wolves? Oh well, maybe next time. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2024 Steve McLeod.