Verbal Assault by a Bear

Why start with the present, when I can go off on a tangent from October 2008, when my ex-boyfriend and I were verbally assaulted by a bear?

October 13, 2008 - Sunday night of Columbus Day weekend. Secluded in the woods. Last campsite at the end of long rutted gravel road. Our only neighbors: a pasture of fenced-in steers. And Schmeau and I were the only fools still tent camping inside bear country, outside the protective boundaries of the national park's strict food storage regulations.


I was lying awake at what turned out to be approximately 2:30 a.m. debating the value of the frigid fanny-blasting I'd have to endure to pop a squat in the woods.

I'm too tired to move out from under the down comforter. 

Yeah, well, you have to piss like a race horse. 

But it's so co-o-o-old! 

If you pee yourself it's gonna be colder. And that overly intense backpacker at the shelter in the Smokies said if you hold it you'll make yourself colder 'cause your body has to burn energy to keep the liquid at body-temperature.

He was totally just screwing with us because our overpacked bags screamed "Amateurs!" 

Just get up. 

Noooo! 

And so the urine battle waged itself in my brain and bladder, until five minutes later I was still in the tent (fortunately!) when I heard what sounded like a human or other medium-to-large animal trompling dry leaves entirely too close to the tent. Simultanteous head-pop and hiss from me and the Schmeau: "What's that?" 

The medium-to-large humanoid/heavy mammal began to snuffle and snort. Schmeau, outdoorsman extraordinaire of the J.Crew variety: "I think it's wild hogs."
Bear. Could totally be a bear. Hope it's just hogs. 

Riiight, because being gored by them would be aaaaawesome.

And at that moment -- "HUFF!"

The medium-to-large-heavy-humanoid-mammal let out a very loud breath that sounded like it was no more than 11 inches from our tent, the kind of exhalation you hear bears make in the movies before one of the extras is maimed or dies. 

At this point I stopped breathing entirely for god knows how long, and then declared in a terrified whisper after it moved a little further from our tent, "That's a bear!" Even J.Crew agreed, following up with: "Do you have clothes on?" "Of course!" Who sleeps naked in the woods in bear country when it's freezing? Schmeau rifled through the blankets for his jammies.

We sat up, only half covered by the blanket now, listening in terrified silence to the bear snorting

around our tent. Schmeau asked, "Do you have your keys?" 

Genius! If the bear rips through the tent and attacks, we can use them to jab the bear in the eyes as suggested in every "FWD: WATCH OUT!!! SEXUAL PREDATORS ARE EVERYWHERE!!! email from my mom. Out loud, I answered, "Yes, why?" As it turned out, he, more rationally, was planning our escape route if we had to make a run for it. Or more likely his escape route since his slight frame and fondness of self made him the likely survivor sprinting to safety, with only snags in his Abercrombie boxers, while I, the bumbling girlfriend, was abandoned as bear bait. 

Then I remembered another of my mother's random "BEWARE!!!" forwards suggesting that people sleep with their key fobs in their nightstands as makeshift burglar alarms. And afterall, they (the observers of others' ill-fated encounters who write large bear-attack volumes purchased by mothers for their easily terrified children to read by the campfire) always say if you run into a bear, you should make lots of noise to scare it off. So I had the brilliant idea that my car alarm would be very noisy, and thus very scary, and thus a good way to scare off the bear.

So I set it off.

All we could hear were our eardrums bleeding, and all we could see were the headlights flashing on and off through the tent. I turned it off. We weren't sure that the bear was gone, so I triggered it again to be sure. 

I turned it off again, and then........I heard the noise that likely should have been the last sound of my life. 

"RAAAAWWWWRRRRRRRRR!"

Approximately two-point-nine-nine-nine feet from the tent, we heard the bear let out a deafening, violently angry roar that echoed and reverberated across the fields. Though Appalachian ecologists and my own commonsense tell me otherwise, what my eyes could not see, but my mind clearly could through the flame-retardant red cloth was not a black bear but a grizzly reared up on its hind legs, teeth glinting in an open mouth, preparing for the dramatic death-charge featured prominently in nature documentaries. 

All at the same time, I somehow stopped breathing and moving and whispered the obvious, "I think we pissed it off!" 

And then we heard another bear call back to it. At which point I realized we'd made a fatal mistake. Because there was not one bear, but two, and because the bear got angry instead of running, it was quite possibly a mama bear with a cub. F*&K! 

"Never get between a mother bear and her cub," said the impartial observer of my impending ill fate. My car alarm had violently inserted itself between the two, scared the baby bear, and enraged mama. Clearly we were going to die. 

The cub came closer; the snuffling resumed; we heard a car on the gravel road; we hoped in vain the farmer who owned the campground was coming to rescue us. He did not. For an eternity that likely spanned 7 seconds, we sat there trapped in our tent by the bears, cellphones and pocketknives and all other weapon-like implements (except for my car keys and the blanket we perhaps could have thrown over the bear's head as it attacked) in the car, shaking violently with cold and fear, contemplating our deaths, as the cub licked barbecue drippings off the grill and moaned in pleasure over his appetizer. 

Suddenly - like something out of a horror movie - in rapid succession, the steers of the afore-mentioned pasture each let out haunting, terrified, high-pitched, shrieking wails, over and over and over, echoing across the fields. (Apparently, Schmeau's adept Eddie Bauer ears heard the bears scamper off during this, though I did not, as I was busy silently chanting long-abandoned Catholic prayers from my youth. "Now and at the hour of our death" was an apt, but not entirely comforting phrase that repeated itself as rapidly as the wails). 

And then there was silence.  Silence punctuated by falling acorns that made us jump every 5 seconds of the forever we waited to chance that the bears might finally be gone. We unzipped the bottom of the tent door, and peaked out the crack, and didn't see anything (because of course we were peaking through a zipper crack). So we counted to three, unzipped it all the way, and leapt into the car in our pajamas and sock-feet. I slammed the car in reverse, cursing my laziness for not backing it into the spot during the daylight in case of a late-night bear attack,  and we peeled out down the gravel rode for the safety of the streetlight-illuminated public restrooms. 

After all, I still had to pee. And magically, I hadn't gone in my pants.

So moral of the story, as the disappointed observer of my near-death experience would sum up, "When under siege by a bear and/or bears, do not set off your car alarm, especially if you do not know how many and what age of bears may be present. Instead, one should wait in terrified, frozen silence to be rescued by baying bovines who will sound the 'Stampede the predator!' alarm and save your life."

That, and bears are more terrifying than you could ever imagine. 

Hail Guernsey, full of grace, the Angus is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst Brahmans, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jersey. Holy Guernsey, Heifer of God, pray for us campers, sending forth bovines to prevent the hour of our death. Amen. 

Betcha didn't learn that one in your catechism.