Everyone who knows me knows I love animals. I love all kinds of animals, including the dangerous
ones in the wild. From the safety of my television screen or the cover of a
National Geographic magazine, they’re beautiful creatures. There are no tigers in our neighborhood, no
rhinos running through our backyard, so there’s no reason for me to fear them.
The only real "semi-dangerous" wild animal I’ve encountered in our domestic life is probably a
coyote—occasionally they enter suburbia—but they’re more of a threat to small
animals than to people.
In the past few years, however, I have developed a strange
fear of bears. While driving up to Great Meadow, Virginia a few years ago for a
camping trip, my husband and I saw a big black bear poking his head out of the
trees. That pretty much ended the fun part of the camping trip for me. Our
small dog was with us, and along with my own personal safety, I was suddenly
terrified for her welfare (even though we were camping with about five other couples
who all had small children, and they didn’t seem at all worried). My husband
assured me that spotting the bear was a fluke—no other bears would be around. Once we arrived at the
camp ground, however, the sign posted on the ranger station read: Mama bear and her three cubs have been seen
roaming these campgrounds. Be on alert. Please use bear boxes to lock up all
food.
And that just about did it for me. I spent the rest of the day
expecting to see a bear lumbering into our campground, and I couldn’t sleep
that night for fear of a bear attack. We ended up only staying one night and
left early the next day. A camper I am not.
So during our travels this past week in California, I once
again experienced my fear of the almighty bear. While hiking in South Lake
Tahoe, I asked my husband, “Are there any bears around here?”
“No,” he answered. “In all the years I’ve been coming up
here, I’ve never seen a bear.”
The very next thing I saw was this:
Fun over.
But we had friends with us, so I pushed through the fear,
hiking along the wooded paths and around the lake. We even rented some bicycles
and rode through the woods (I figured at least I’d have a good chance of outrunning bears
on a bike).
Just as I was beginning to relax and have a good time, we
stopped at a look-out point and began chatting with a couple--there with their
yellow lab. Somehow the conversation turned to bears and how Lake Tahoe was filled with them.
“The
last six years they’ve been really active around here and in the residential areas,” the wife told us.
And then they proceeded to relay a story about their house being repeatedly burglarized by
bears that literally ripped the front door off the hinges, entered the house
and made themselves at home (including raiding the refrigerator). “And then
they just left again,” she assured us. “The bears were gone by the time we got
home.”
To me, a bear home-invasion experience is much like people who hear voices
in a house telling them to “get out!" A bear ripping the front door off of my
home and entering it would have the same effect on me: a For Sale sign in the
front yard.
So as we rode back to the camp ground to return our bikes, I felt newly assured that my fear of bears was completely justified.
What fears do you have?
