Cussedness

Bear Story

My brother Dave is back in the UK from Canada at the moment, and on Sunday we met up with him and his girlfriend, Mel. They live and work in Whistler, B.C., in the Canadian Rockies, a part of the world that presents its residents with a number of interesting and novel ways of meeting an untimely death; one of the more famous of these is the local bear population.

Over dinner, Dave and Mel told us an impressive story about a couple of their friends who were unlucky enough to find a bear trapped inside their apartment block. It made the press, and is distinctive because it was the first recorded bear attack inside a home in Whistler: here’s a write up.

Naturally, the press reports are divergent from the account given by Dave’s friends, whom, for the purposes of relating this tale, we shall call Pete and Bob.

Pete and Bob were in their apartment, possibly enjoying some refreshments subsequent to a long evening in Whistler, and possibly in rather jubilant frames of mind, when they heard some strange, rather loud noises from downstairs. Pete went to investigate, and opened the door to the apartment entrance hall to discover a very large and very angry bear in the process of destroying the fixtures and fittings. Having closed the door with some alacrity, Pete quickly deduced the probable chain of events leading to the presence of an American black bear in his home, an occurrence requiring some explanation for those who do not normally share a habitat with bears.

Rubbish in Whistler is kept indoors, in special bin rooms, because rubbish is a bear attractant, and keeping it behind closed doors prevents them from getting at it. When Pete and Bob returned to their flat, they had closed the outer door, but they had not locked it. Unfortunately, bears can sometimes force unlocked doors open; they do not, as a rule, understand the finer details of how the overall door-opening process works, however, and whilst this bear had clearly managed to get inside the apartment building, it couldn’t open the door again to get out. The bear, a large specimen, was instead undertaking the demolition of the entrance hall in an attempt to escape, and judging from the sounds emanating from the hallway was starting to cause some serious damage to the door separating him from the rest of the apartment. It was clear to Pete that something had to be done to remedy the situation.

Pete decided to consult with Bob. After a short discussion, during which Pete was evidently insufficiently convincing, Bob decided that further investigation was necessary. He headed downstairs, opened the door to the entrance hall, and very quickly closed it again. Having established the salient details to Bob’s satisfaction, the two friends sat down to determine the best course of action.

Pete proposed taking matters in hand. He would get out via the back door, walk around to the other side of the building, and open the front door to allow the bear to escape. He argued that they didn’t have time to call the authorities, and that certain accoutrements of some of their lifestyle choices may have raised complications after the bear had been dealt with. Bob assented to these concerns and to Pete’s proposed solution. Accordingly, Pete exited via the back door, leaving Bob outside the hallway.

It was at this point that Bob made a mistake.

I am reliably informed by those acquaintances of mine who have, on occasion, experimented with more than a couple of glasses of wine, that whilst one is under the influence of quantities of said inebriant, one’s judgement and perception can be adversely affected. Indeed, I am told that one can even begin to doubt the evidence of one’s own eyes, so it is understandable that sometimes a supplemental confirmation of facts may be required. Personally, though, I find it a little surprising that anyone would want to confirm for a second time the presence of a large, noisy, and very angry top-carnivore trapped in one’s 12′ by 3′ entrance hall, rather than, for example, running away very, very quickly. To me, retiring to relative safety seems the only sensible procedure in such a situation.

But Bob did not, in fact, decide to run away and hide. Bob opened the door for a second look at the bear.

At this exact same point in time, the bear, tiring of the course of interior remodelling upon which he had embarked, determined that a closer investigation of the opening door was called for, and started to force his way through. Bob gamely resisted the several hundred kilograms of raging bear for some unspecified, presumably short period of time, but to no avail. The bear forced his way into the room, slashing Bob across the face with his four inch claws in passing, and fled through the open back door. The whole scene was observed by another of Pete and Bob’s flatmates, who had watched events unfold with rapidly rising horror from his bedroom, having been awoken by the noise of the bear just a few moments earlier.

Meanwhile, Pete had opened the front door and was somewhat surprised to discover that the bear had vanished, and even more surprised and shocked to discover his flatmate holding his face together with his hands.

Fortunately for Bob, the back door had been open and, fortunately, the bear had hit Bob in his face, rather than in the neck. Had the back door not been open, or had the bear aimed his claws an inch lower, Bob would almost certainly have ended up dead, with the dubious distinction of being the first resident of Whistler to be slain by a bear in his own home. Instead he woke up in hospital the next morning with twenty seven stitches and, due to his advanced state of refreshment prior to the attack, no recollection of the evening whatsoever.

5 comments • 2006-11-21 20:56 • Categories: Miscellaneous • Tags: Bears, Canada, Family, Idiots, Mayhem, Whistler