funniculee is dredging up old memories of past literary loves
It was a number of years ago – I was camping with my family in the Adirondacks in upstate New York. We had a campsite on the very edge of the campground, right up next to the woods.
One rainy evening, as we were sitting under our tarp shelter, finishing our dinner of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, a mama bear waddled around the side of our tent. Talk about surprise! We left the stewpot and all our dishes and hightailed it out of there, a good many yards away. As soon as we got far enough away, we realized that mama was being trailed by 2 lil’ bearcubs. It’s good that we backed WAY OFF, because you know what they say about bears with cubs – dangerous if they feel their kids are being threatened.
This was obviously a well-seasoned “Yogi-type” bear, for she seemed relatively comfortable with being in the campground and close to so many human beings. And she definitely knew how to get at the good stuff. She didn’t spend too long investigating our empty stewpot, but moved on to better pickings.
We followed her at a distance, and witnessed one of the funnier things I have seen in my entire life. Some folks, not heeding the bear warnings posted EVERYWHERE, left their campsite and left their well-stocked cooler sitting out on the picnic table. She waddled up to it, swiped it open, rooted around for a bit, pulled out a big package of bratwurst or beef (it was definitely some kind of meat), and then…I kid you not…SWATTED THE COOLER CLOSED. Neatly as can be. I laughed my butt off, but really felt for the poor slobs who had left their cooler out in plain sight. I’m sure they were completely perplexed at the mysterious disappearance of their dinner.
So in retrospect, maybe this doesn’t count as seeing a bear “in the wild” per se, but she was definitely not captive. And her cubs were adorable.
