This is the picture I took of the bear. It was pretty dim and I was a little excited , so on the print I got you couldn't see much. My friend at work, Dave Valentine, scanned my 35mm negs and inverted the color to give me a recognizable image. (Thanks, Dave!) Then I jacked up the contrast and brightness in Photoshop so you can see what's going on. Anyway that's why it's blurry and blotchy like a UFO photo. [click on the picture to view it at full size (640 x 480); hit your browser's 'Back' button to return here.]

In the fall of 1996 we had a medium-sized black bear visit us in our campsite in Quetico Provincial Park. He (I think it was male, because we were scared of it) had been rummaging through Jeff's pack, next to his tent, for a while before my brother and I noticed him. By then he'd bitten through a plastic bottle of Seagram's and was lapping up whiskey out of a puddle in Jeff's rain suit. Now that I think of it, maybe the bear deliberately spread out Jeff's rain suit first so as not to waste the whiskey.

Anyway we did all the stuff you're supposed to do to chase a bear away, yelling and banging stuff. If you ran at him yelling, he'd ignore you. If you ran at him whacking softball-sized rocks together and projecting the thought "I'm going to throw this at your nose as hard as I can, and I don't care if I die, and I have a rare genetic disease that causes me to taste really bad", then he'd back off but not more than a few yards. Then he'd crash through the bushes for a while and enter our camp from another angle. Eventually he became aware of some beef jerky which our partners Jeff & Dan The Boneheads had left hanging on a tree a couple feet off the ground. I refer to them as Jeff & Dan The Boneheads because they don't have Internet access or their own Web sites and therefore can't defend themselves in this forum, in fact may never read my criticisms. Too bad for them, AHHHH Hahahahahaha!!! You pathetic losers!

[Actually since the above was written, my good friend Dan has in fact gotten an Internet account. Of course he understands I was just kidding -- right, buddy? Haha. Dan's really a great guy, a former volunteer firefighter who I'm sure saved thousands of lives but was too modest to say so. He's tall, handsome and single. And he's got a great sense of humor. That Jeff, though... what a moron.]

[8/17/98 -- OK, Jeff's online now too (with his own domain name even, he's so cool), so I should mention that I was only joking of course, he really is a great guy.]

Well, anyway, to get back to my story, you know how you're supposed to hang all your food way up in the air so as not attract bears? Well we sort of assumed that meant at night, but now we know it means whenever the stuff's not right in front of you.

The final outcome of the event was: we packed up and moved to another campsite. But, in Quetico in September, it's a long way from crowded so that's no serious problem. And after all, he was there first, right? The woods belong to nature's creatures and we are only visitors. Well, unless I've got a gun.


(This page last updated 8/17/98.)