Bear hunt

After listening to friends’ stories of encounters with bears, I find myself peering out the curtains at all hours on the lookout for a bear wondering around the grounds. Going for a run on my own, pushing the stroller, I am concentrating more on looking out for bears between the tall pine trees than on the agony of running at such high altitude. Hearing a growl, my heart starts racing and my legs somehow shift a gear, then the sound of screeching tyres makes me aware that it was only an old truck starting up.

BOOM! BOOM! The sounds of gunshots outside our bedroom window. We leap out of bed after midnight, frightened, and peer through the curtains. Gunpowder smoke drifts in front of the dimly lit lamp posts. We can just make out two men standing in the car park with rifles. A bear! It must have been a bear!

By this stage my friends are aware that it is my US mission to catch sight of a bear.

One evening a friend yells ‘Taryn, Taryn, you gotta come quickly! A bear!’ My heart pounding, I run outside to join her, with others now following, and we creep around the corner of a building and stand and stare. We wait. Then all of a sudden this enormous brown bear leaps from a grocery store’s dumpster and looks like its heading our way. We panic and are about to run when we realize that the bear has stopped. He is standing in the dark alley way, staring directly at us, growling softly.

Just when I thought my bear hunt mission was fulfilled, a friend comes home late one night and finds herself face to face with a bear trying to get to a pot of honey on the kitchen counter. The bear gets a fright and exits the way he came in, through the bathroom. The bathroom door slams shut and the bear gets angry! He thrashes around the bathroom, managing to flush the chain and break the basin, before leaping through the already broken window. The same bear has been spotted lurking around the house, pondering how he is going to get to that pot of honey!

Bear Hunt Mission: Complete