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Grin and Bear it
Shoshin
No one in particularNowhere Special Veteran
Grin and Bear it...
..and this young woman did just that 
3
Comments
When I see a bear on its hind legs it reminds me of the hip hop pants some youth bear wear
"Hey Erma! Long time no see!"
Was 'Erma the bear' a TV show @Lionduck ?
Here in NZ ERMA stands for Environmental Risk Management Authority
Seeing the bear's interaction with the young woman in Mexico, got me wondering if any members here have had any close encounters with the wildlife in their neck of the woods...
@Shoshin
We usually include one or two kayaking expeditions every summer up on the Canadian Pacific North Coast but most of the places we can get into to land & camp also have the same features that are attractive to bears as foraging sites. Sometimes we have to clear away the bear scat just to get a clean area big enough to set up our tent. Other times we've been storm stayed for days on a beach while mother bears and their trailing cubs daily traipse through our campsite to get to the shoreline for their food foraging. All parties involved just try to pretend that nobody else is there and it generally works.
Our scariest encounter though was on a small island off the Coast of Haida Gwaii which showed no signs of any bear presence. Our camping tent is a couple of inches shy of my full length so occasional my head might push out the back wall of the tent. Now maybe since we'd already been out kayaking by that time for a couple of weeks, that I might have smelt a bit more foodish than normal but I woke up in the middle of the night to a bear sniffing my head that was pushing against the tent wall. It loudly snuffled against this bulge in the fabric for a few moments before doing a full exploratory swipe of his rasping tongue across my head separated only by a milometer of nylon.
Apparently dissatisfied with that taste experience, it simply wandered off again.
You just don't want to get any closer to wildlife than that.
That must have been a hair razing experience @how...
I remember some Canadian friends who were visiting Australia back in 1970, they told me of times they were chased by bears and bears trying to get into their cabin of a night...
It reminds me of the story in the news not so long ago about the man who was attacked by a mountain lion in the southern US but killed it with his bare hands. I wonder if the woman in the video would have put up as much of a fight... its not a good thing when a curious bear decides you are lunch (or dinner).
@Shoshin
The funny part of that story was that I had a hand axe in the tent with me. You know, something to make me feel manly in the wilderness. When we were both awoken by the bears approach, I reached out for that axe. Jan whispered out "What should we do?".
I tried to grasp the axe handle but found that I had been sleeping on top of my arm and it had completely fallen asleep. I didn't even have enough feeling in it to pick it up. So my words of wisdom whispered back to her at that moment were "Go back to sleep".
Even now, 25 years later, when some new moment of courage might be called for, Jan can still jokingly chide me with a "Go back to sleep".
The autopsy on that particular mountain lion that was killed reported it to be young, small and malnourished. A sad story to be sure.
I wasn't surprised to see that bear attracted to that woman and then for it to run off.
The same smell that draws bears to fruit trees, draws them to hair product but one of the interesting things about bears is that despite their superior speed and strength, they have an innate fear of groups of opponents. Almost all unprovoked bear attacks in North America have been against groups of 1 or 2 people. Bear attack statistics indicate that when a group gets to 3-4 people or more, bears stop seeing them as potential food and start viewing them instead as a potentially dangerous pack predators.
I am sure its an understanding that's encoded within the very genome of a bear because without such an understanding, how unlikely would it be for that bear to have progeny.
When I lived in Colorado we went camping in the Rockies and were told to put all our food in a barrel and string it up in a tree so they couldn't smell it and come pester us.
Quite a novel experience for sure!
I was used to looking out for black snakes not bears when I was camping growing up.
@Bunks
I guess familiarity breeds complacency because where I can put up with bears and cougars, the one time I almost stepped on a large snake that was coiled like a rattler, I somehow transported myself 12 feet away from it before I was conscious of doing it.
You know, like a cockroach that has a secondary brain to start its legs moving it away from danger even before it's primary brain can process the information.
It turned out that my snake wasn't dangerous to anything larger than a frog but my legs apparently didn't get that memo until later.
Now your little deadly Australian camping pets are what I think of as a real nightmare.
Yeah, there does seem to be a lot of fear of snakes and spiders but the reality is that snake / spider bite deaths are extremely rare.
I grew up in the bush and I can honestly say I could count on one hand the amount of poisonous snakes and spiders I've seen in my lifetime.
His other hand is missing, due to a particularly interested small, fluffy, but otherwise deadly kitten...
Amazing story @how. I’d love to go kayak-camping here in the UK. The Great Glen is supposed to be very good.
Back in the early 1970s I use to go to see the snakeman in La Perouse...
I must admit when I first arrived in Oz for quite some time I wouldn't walk anywhere barefooted for fear of poisonous snakes and spiders...I overcame my fear by studying them....
Some people have a phobia about things that creep and crawl
But if they took time out to study them...they would have no fear at all
Yes, my ex wife was told when she moved to Oz to always check her shoes in the morning before she put them on in case a creepy crawly had got in there during the night haha
A friend of mine visited Indonesia quite a few years ago, and was awoken one night by faint, erratic 'pitty-pat' noises... turning on her light, through the fine gauze of her mosquito net she spied 5 or 6 gekoes running around her room on the floor, walls, and ceiling. She frantically called Reception, to report the intruders, only to be calmly told, "oh yes, they eat all the cockroaches." She put the phone down, turned off the light and buried herself in her bed from head to toes...
I can't bear to think what would have happened, if he hadn't been rescued...(See what I did there...?
)
Some years ago, I drove down to Arizona to interview for a job at a local museum. I arrived on a Friday, and too late to see anyone, so I went out into the desert to camp until Monday.
I was lying on the ground in the middle of the day - my sleeping bag beside me since it was hotter than blazes at the time - and heard something that sounded a little like a car approaching in the distance.
Opened my eyes to see a very large Mohave rattlesnake (about 5 feet long), with head about 15 inches from my nose. I levitated up and backwards into a bush. The snake was greatly upset by this maneuver and coiled up in defensive posture, rattling furiously and ready to strike.
I waited quietly for the snake to calm down and leave, but she wouldn't do it - enjoying my discomfiture, I suppose. Finally got a tire iron from the car and used it to drag the raging reptile into some bushes, where I thought she would feel more secure and might be more inclined to go away, but no luck there - she just kept rattling on and on. I had to take a walk for about an hour, and when I returned the snake had finally left, gone to seek amusement elsewhere.
That would have been scary @Fosdick ....
I was born in the year of the snake ( according to the Chinese zodiac ) I hang around and often rattle on...I guess I'm a rattlesnake....
I'm a Pig....say no more
Haha @Bunks
Me too. (No hashtag)
Along with the deadly poisonous snakes in Oz, there are also lots of harmless ones...I've encountered a few carpet snakes (small pythons ) when in the bush...
When I was up visiting some friends who lived in the bush in Queensland, (inland close to the NSW border...back in the early 80s)...
One morning the friend went outside to put the breakfast things on the table on the veranda and found a carpet snake coiled up on the table, we managed to scoop it up and put it into a chilly bin, and took it to my friend's neighbour's farm, he put the snake in his hay barn to feed on the rats and mice...If Aussie farmers come across carpet snakes they'll often catch them and use them as biological control agents in their hay barns...
When I first arrived in NZ (no snakes here) it took a while for the mind not to react when I came across a stick on the path when out walking in the bush....the sight of the curved/bent stick (which resembled a snake) would often set the heart racing when the eye consciousness would mistake the stick for one....
Hmm which reminds me of the story about perception and how appearances can be deceptive.. A Buddhist master's new attendant brought the master a bowl of soup, and engrave in the ceiling of the master's room were images of snakes, the attendant saw an image of a snake reflecting in the bowl of soup, panicked dropping the bowl and rushing out of the room....
When I lived in NZ it took me a while to feel comfortable walking in long grass in summer without constantly scanning the ground around me for our slithery friends.......conditioning!
The only snakes you need to worry about are the ones you don't see.
I am surrounded by dangerous animals on all sides. Most consider themselves human. It is worse than I thought ...
Do they come in tamed?
