The Bearfender!

[Here's a self-indulgent yet compelling note I added to my Facebook profile yesterday.]

It occurs to me I should explain about the bear that I had to fend off with a spatula. Well, here's the story. Me and Matt got to Yosemite Saturday around 11am and set up camp and then it rained. Well, Sunday morning I wake up at about 4:30, and I'm DYING for a cup of coffee, as is my wont at that hour.

So I open up the bearbox and get myself some coffee out of the thermos, and I notice that Matt's hiking boots are wet, so I say "OK, I'm gonna build a fire so's I can dry out Matt's boots," which is what I do.

Well, then I say "Well, as long as I got this fire goin', I might as well fry up some bacon." So I commence to frying the bacon, and I'm sitting there at the picnic table drinking my coffee and frying my bacon at approximately 4:45am, and a bear shows up and starts nosing around, just like a dog.

So I grab holda my spatula and slap it down on the table a few times, and that bear hightailed it out of there in such a panic that I was a-feared he was going to run right into somebody's tent!

He was a juvenile. I guess they scare pretty easy.

And then I said to Jeffrey the next morning I said "This spatula is special now. We need a name for it."

And Jeffrey said "We shall call it 'The Bearfender.'"

Next morning around the same time, the bear's mom showed up and helped herself to a box of Twinkies or something that some campers had left out. Sadly, I had misplaced the Bearfender, and though I banged my camp shovel repeatedly on the fire pit, I could not dissuade this mighty junk food bandit from her course of action.

But seriously people, keep your food in the bear box when you go camping! Do you really want to walk out of your tent in the morning and find a 350-pound omnivore eating your Twinkies? You're gonna have more than wet boots to worry about I guarantee.

Kurt "big daddy" True
15 november 2008