I owe my life to the raspberries and blueberries of Gregory Canyon. For without them, the enormous black bear I came face to face with around a blind corner yesterday would have sized me up as soft, pink, low-challenge, high calorie meal. Amongst the two menu items standing before him (my border collie and myself) I was clearly the better cuisine. If nothing else, my dog could run away after getting in a few nips. My puny human jaw is laughably weak in the animal kingdom, my top speed on two legs makes me regretfully slow and even if I had the strength of five Jackie Chans or six Mike Tysons, the hardest attack I could muster against a 350 lb. bruin would feebly bounce off his muscly hide like marshmallows off a Sherman tank. I began to think the only skill worthy of bear escape in my arsenal is free climbing a 5.9 pitch to safety.
Thankfully, Mr. Bear wasn’t the least bit interested in snacking on us. Even my friend-to-all-dogs border collie knew it might be best to just sit still and let the big guy go about his business rather than greet him with a friendly whiff of the butt. The whole scene was very calm and soon the bear lumbered off into the brush to continue his ursine duties such as eating berries and pooping in the woods.
As I continued down the trail, I was grateful to be on the other side of the predator/prey equation if only for a brief and uneventful moment. It’s a good frame of reference to be in close quarters with a clearly superior species. Regardless of your views on animal intelligence, the fact is that bear made a choice not to whomp me into a pulp, which he could have done with relative ease. It’s a shame people don’t have a more developed sense of bear-like decision making. Our collective motto seems to be “if we can kill it, we will (other humans not exempt).”
Let’s face it, there are very few times in our lives when our very mortality is in the paws of wild animals. David Quammen has an excellent book about just this called Monster of God, where he visits the last few places on earth where man is still a prey species to such fearsome predators as Asian lions, Australian crocodiles, Siberian tigers and Romanian brown bears. In a world where man’s endless cruelty to most of mother nature’s brood is legendary, to expect mercy from any wild animal seems arrogant to say the least.
