What I did last weekend

[cjsmith]

I went to a star party, enjoyed a view of Half Dome, helped some kids (and adults) look through a telescope, made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, watched the Perseids, and chased off a bear.

Next time: even MORE warm clothes.
Next time: some electric way to heat water (camp stoves emit visible light) or several Thermoses.

Comments

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Wow, that sounds like fun!
Remind me to tell you my sisters bear story some time.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Go for it!

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

My sister and her family live up in Weaverville, a lumber town about halfway between Redding and Eureka. It's pretty rural.
Well, a few weeks back, she and her husband are awakened at about 2:30 in the morning by the sound of splintering wood. The dogs are going nuts, and the tearing wood sound is pretty loud. She gets up (her husband is disabled, and somewhat slower off the mark than she is), looks outside, and sees a very large bear ripping the back of her chicken coop apart. This is not some flimsy slapdash plywood structure--this is a winter-hardy cedar planked permanent structure. Now she's already lost a number of birds to a resident coyote with a taste for chicken, so this makes her angry. Plus, if the bear is hungry and aggressive enough to rip open the coop, no telling if he'll go after the house next. So she hollers at her husband to get their sons gun. But he can only find the .22. Shooting a bear with a .22 is only going to piss it off. But apparently between the shouting, the barking dogs, and the potshots from the .22, the bear had enough and took off. He destroyed a total of 6 chicken coops that night and my sister was the only person who didn't lose all her birds. She said that most of them were crammed in tight up near a vent in the ceiling, shaken up, but alive. Couple of dead ones, and one poor thing had a reverse mohawk down the length of her body where she's just gotten away but lost an awful lot of feathers.
Later, that bear or another one also took two pigs from a neighbor. Fish and Game had to kill two large bears in the area that were tearing into buildings and killing livestock. It's been a tough year, food-wise, so the critters are coming a lot closer to people than they normally would.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Holy moly. Glad she woke up. I wouldn't be surprised if the bear that got into the chicken coops was one that had to be killed by Fish and Game. Once they get too comfortable coming around people...

I admit to wishing I had a rubber-pellet gun when I was at the star party. Park rangers use those to try to get bears to be uncomfortable coming around people. I feel for her -- she's hungry, and if I were hungry I'd be awfully tempted to steal food -- but she's already way too habituated and Park Service will probably eventually have to kill her.

[ladycelia.livejournal.com]

Oh, one of the bears that got killed was definitely the one that had torn up the coop--they matched it to the tracks. The other one was the one that had taken the pigs.
Fish and Game told my sister that they've had to shoot an extraordinary number of bears this year because of aggression brought on by lack of food.
Another time, Ellen and her husband were driving home and a bear getting ready for winter came galumphing down a hillside right in front of their car. They couldn't stop and went right over it. They were driving a small SUV. The bears back was car hood height. My sister was in shock (it was a brand new car and she's just run completely OVER a bear), so she got out of the car. Bear stood up, shook itself, and went galumphing down the slope.
Bears are crazy-tough.