BUTT END
WHAT’S COOKING? PHOTO: GARY MCGUFFIN
He Who Laughs Last Kevin Callan learns to leave INTIMIDATION to the experts
IT WAS A RELIEF to reach the take- out after fighting headwinds for the last three days of the trip. The row- house campground at the provincial park was crowded, but I was glad for the company and ready to relax. Relaxing was difficult, though,
thanks to the black bear that kept dropping by looking for a snack. I couldn’t understand why he was picking on me. I had the cleanest site in the campground. Charlie, the bear biologist camped beside me, told me it was because the bear could sense I was scared of him. But I was more exasperated than
scared when the bear ambled into my site the second night after my peaceful dinner of mac and cheese. I grabbed a pair of pots and banged them together. The pots made a racket but it didn’t scare the bear off. It probably made the situation worse when the remnant cheese- caked noodles flew out of the pots and across the campsite.
5 0 n C A NOE ROOT S early summer 2006
Long suppressed rage from years of being picked on in grade school playgrounds welled up from somewhere deep inside me and burst out.
I threw down the pots, grabbed
a rock and tossed it at him. He gave me a stare that said, “That was stu- pid!” and charged. He bore down on me like a freight
train, pulling up only five feet from me before rising up on his hind legs, snapping his teeth and growling. My mouth hung open in fright,
but the lessons from a dozen bear safety manuals leapt to mind and I waved my arms up in the air and yelled surprisingly creative things about his mother. They must have hit home. He turned on his heels and ran to the
edge of the site. That’s when I should have called
it quits. But I was buzzing on fear and adrenalin and, what’s more, I was angry. Long suppressed rage from years of being picked on in grade school playgrounds welled up from somewhere deep inside me and burst out. I wouldn’t be bullied anymore. I had chased the bear out of my campsite and now I would beat him at his own game of intimidation. I advanced wild-eyed on him,
snapping my teeth and making as fearsome a growling noise as a
150-pound weakling can make. The look he gave me told me he
was very unimpressed. He turned and scampered down the shore, but he couldn’t be said to be run- ning scared. He swung close by a row of boats, passing two Grum- mans and one kayak before dig- ging in his heels as he came to my canoe resting innocently on the beach. He gave it a sniff, and im- mediately went to work on it, tear- ing at the bow with his claws and ripping off part of the deck plate. With a final snort in my direc-
tion he skipped off, leaving me in a macaroni-strewn campsite with unpleasant memories of school- yard bullies once again bouncing around in my head.
—Kevin Callan has gone back to bang- ing pots nervously when confronted by bears.
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