Bear Country

People who live in bear country - the provincial park is named 'Killbear' - develop different personal sound systems to alert any nearby bears of their approach. Such people think that if the bear knows you're close, the nice, little bear will stay away. There's bear bells, whistling, singing - until recently I would argue with myself aloud and often lose. But now I yodel. The sort of yodelling you'd recognize from old Saturday morning TV cartoons as they taught me everything I know, apparently.

Well, I was walking along a southern Deerwood trail and, as I approached a blackberry thicket, I started a-yodelling. Bears love blackberries.

And I almost stepped in the biggest bear scat I've ever seen.

Big bear scat.

"I didn't know we had Grizz in this neck of the woods...". I blurted between yodels. I was even yodelling while I took this picture of fresh bear sample. You see, the more bear nervous I get, the louder and the faster I yodel.

I made it out of the blackberry thicket, but I laughed, imagining the last thing someone would see of me one day. "The bear was chasing him through the woods and for some reason he was yodelling at the top of his lungs".