fact: bears eat beets

more stories from the mountains. my family has been camping in the same campground for several years now and they have never had problems with animals - until this year. just to kind of create a visual for you, i'll explain our camping set up. this year we had a group that varied from 11 to 23 people at different times and there were three campers and six tents. we generally get three campsites that are kind of in a triangle and then have a huge area in the middle where we all hang out. my dad brings his big camping kitchen table and we set up an area with tarps where we cook and eat our meals. it's a nice little set up that my grandfather and i compared to tribal living, but that's another story.

so on to the wild animals. friday night my brother drove down to the trailhead to the falls (about a mile) and saw a bear. nobody believed him, so i went to check it out and sure enough there was an adult black bear in the dumpsters. the next night at about 9 or so, my cousins and i were all sitting around playing cards when we heard four shots. it scared the crap out of everybody, but then the game warden came around and told us they'd shot the bear with rubber bullets. problem solved, right? at about 12:30, my dad heard noise out at the kitchen. assuming it was racoons, he grabbed his headlamp and a walking stick and headed over to investigate. when he was pretty close to the kitchen, he saw the bear on other side of the table pulling bins off the shelves. dad stopped. the bear stopped. they looked at each other and then the bear took off in the opposite direction. the next day, my dad said he was really glad the bear chose to run away, because he wouldn't have had a chance if it had charged him. anyway, about that time my uncle came out from his camper and they cleaned up all of the food and went back to bed. problem solved again.

about an hour later, uncle tom heard something outside the window of their pop-up camper. the bear was back. he shone his light outside the window and told the bear to go away. it did. the next morning we found my grandma's favorite backing pan mangled and punctured because she'd left cornbread in it. i found it funny that the bear didn't touch the honey that was shaped like him.

at that point, it seemed like the bears were gone for good. there was no sign of them until tuesday night. mom, aunt andrea and all of the kids were sitting around the campfire at about 9:30 when my parents' and sister's dogs started barking in their crates. the kids stood up and saw that there was a bear cub by the crates. what do my cousins and siblings do? why run straight over to the bear of course. mom and andrea immediately freaked out. luckily the mother bear had already taken off. the baby bear ran super fast and got up in a tree. then it started making hissing and growling noises at everybody. they ended up having to keep a spotlight on it for about about 2 hours until the game warden could show up and get it down. the whole time my mom was freaked out about the mother bear coming back and mauling my family.

all of the run-ins made for an exciting trip and helped me to develop a pretty solid fear of bears.