When I think of summer, I think of bears. Nearly every summer when I was a kid we’d visit Sequoia National Park, and every visit had its bear absurdities:
Like the bear that broke into a nearby camper’s Volkswagen and sat on the emergency brake. The man heard the racket and peered out of his tent just in time to see the bear “driving” his car downhill into a redwood grove. The bear survived. The bug didn’t.
Or the morning we woke to the sound of the blusterous old lady in the cabin next to us, shrieking, “Bad bear! No!” A huge black bear had decided to shop for groceries in her cooler, so naturally she’d felt the need to discipline him. We came out to see her fearlessly (and stupidly) whacking him on the bum with her broom. The bear continued to fish for goodies with 
one paw while nonchalantly swatting at her with the other. He finally galumphed away with a tender salmon in his mouth, opting not to eat the much tougher old lady.
Years later, my college buddy Jay and I drove to Sequoia at the start of the summer. We arrived in the wee hours and threw down our sleeping bags in the first cushy meadow we could find. I disappeared into slumberland, but Jay sat for awhile, eating Lay’s potato chips and communing with nature. Around dawn, I awoke to a low grunting sound, and told Jay to shut up. The grunting continued. I opened my eyes and saw a large bear snarfing potato chips from the Jay’s Lays buffet, i.e. the chips scattered across Jay’s sleeping body! I watched in frozen silence. The bear finally left with the bag in his mouth (chip bag, not sleeping bag). To this day, Jay thinks I ate his chips and made up the story.
Bears can be…
Adorable
“Hello, world!”
Amorous
“Not in public, Larry.”
Cool
“She’s all ‘Whoa!’ and I’m all ‘How you like me now?'”
Dangerous
Man: “Look, dinner! Bear: “Look, two dinners!”
Devious
“I’m not the droid you’re looking for.”
Nostalgic
“If ya want it, baby, ya got it. Just bust a move!”
Parental
“Don’t leave the lid up. Mom hates that.”
Embarrassed
“This never happens, really. I just slipped on the…oh, never mind.”
We may have played together in Sequoia’s campgrounds.
Maybe!
Not that old lady – she is one of great faith! 😂
Well, that’s one way to interpret it. ;>)
😅😀
I know I have “arrived” when you name one of your bears after me.😂
Bears are so cute! From a distance, of course. Last spring here in the suburbs of St. Louis we had to be careful because we had several young male black bears migrating through. They behaved themselves for the most part. And so did the people.
Thanks for the highly entertaining bear stories. But your narrative and the attached photos are about as close to a bear as I prefer to ever be, thanks.
Ninety percent of the bad dreams I’ve had throughout my life have involved bears or mice. In fact, I had a bear dream August 24th (and promptly posted it to Facebook, which is why I remember the date).
I worked out the mouse fear after working at Petco (which is a horrible, horrible place and no one should shop there) and, recently, ushering three field mice out of my apartment after I coerced my cat to drop them. But having watched “Grizzly Man” and “The Revenant,” I’m praying I never have to work out my fear of bears.
Does the “nobody can eat just one” Lays potato chip apply to bears?
Apparently so!
Delightful post, Mitch! Especially enjoyed the amorous bears. Reminded me of a shoe-shopping trip with my parents when I was thirteen. As they walked ahead of me, they began to hold hands– can you imagine?! I was mortified, and spoke similar words to your caption: “Please! Not in public!” After all, they were OLD–Dad was 37 and Mom 33!
Ew! Romance should be forbidden at that age!
LOVE this! I’ll be sharing it with my sister – the one I take a trip with every year out west in her RV.
Wonderful post. Made me smile and yea, they are just like humans…
Thanks for the smile to end my work week!
Adorable bears!
So fun!!!😎😎😎😎
Yes they are like humans. We have very wild black bears here. Often in our yard. They can be as weird as some people I know. We watched a cub jump and try to do a 360 in the air (like a basketball move) Then the mama bear tried it…fun but they don’t mix well with people (or dogs). One tried to eat my fishing tackle box and part of a life jacket.
Yep. They can’t all be Winnie the Pooh. In fact, none can.
I found out that while I was commenting, my wife was on the phone with a sister and watching a little bear in the back yard. too funny…I hope you don’t mind I mentioned you in a morning post
Don’t mind at all, Gary.
Do they hug? Or, where does the phrase ‘bear-hug’ cone from?
You got me curious, Vera, so I looked it up. Apparently, they don’t. I think the phrase must come from the idea of enfolding someone in a big, squeezy, all-out hug, the way a bear would IF it hugged you (which you might not survive–unless the bear in question was named Winnie-the-Pooh).
Ha… thanks, Mitch, so it is simply a manner of speech.
Yep, a very tactile one.
**come
My husband met a Grisley on an Alaskan trail. He managed to scare it away. That lady whacking the bear really was stupid. Nice, light post to start our weekend. God bless!
Thanks, you too, Nancy!
Love this story … but I may never go camping again.
Great post, Mitch. The wild offers a lot of comical moments. It is nice to be able to see them. Until instincts take over and you are in the moment.
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For your photo collection. Look at him all sprawled on his tummy in the video. Poor little guy. I’d have been worried that his mom was in a stall though.
https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/montana-black-bear-washroom-scli-intl/index.html
;>) Looks like they drugged him. He probably woke up in the woods a few hours later and thought, “Whoa, I had the weirded dream!”
Accurately named, we live in Woodinville. Bears are part of our weekly conversations around here. We’ve named them (though none named “Larry.”), and someone has created a personal FB account on behalf of the bears— writing/posting from their perspective! It’s quite entertaining.
Entertaining until they knock my hives over and rob my honey bees! (I’m a hobbiest beekeeper). Every year, we put safe guards in place and every year (minus this year— so far), the bears remind us that they are smarter than us!
Though they frustrate us, causing more work and costing us sometimes some serious dough, we love them. We never tire of seeing them hanging out in your backyard!
And I thought we had challenges with deer and racoons!
We’ve got those too, but they are considerably less “threatening” than the bears! Ha!