From my Memories

Bear - ling Down On A Fence

Dad was riding along towards home, enjoying the sun as it made a warm glow on his face. He was leisurely enjoying his ride home after a days work in the pasture. When out of the corner of his eye, he he spotted a big old black bear sundering across the pasture, just a little ways up ahead of him. It took him about a moment to think about it, or maybe he never thought about it at all, he just decided right now and then that he was going to have some fun, and give that old bear a run for it's money.

Well the chase was on, he opened the horse up to a full run and before the old bear knew it, a horse and rider was tight on his tail. Which startled him, just a little bit, and he figured he had better head for the tall timbers before he got run right over.

Bears were such a common thing in our pasture those days, that most of our horses would run one down, if we asked them to. We were always surprised as to how close we could get our horses to the back end of a bear, running at full speed when in pursuit.

Dad did not realize how close he was to a fence, and that it did not take him to long to cover the ground separating him from a four wired fence and the perimeter of the pasture. When he looked up, he all of a sudden realized he was approaching the fence very quickly, for it was less than a hundred yards in front of the bear, and he was less then forty feet behind the bear. At this point he realized there was no way that bear was going to be able to stop before it hit the fence, and was pretty sure, the bear was not even worrying about the fence being there.

Dad pulled his horse to a stop, just in time, to see the bear hit the fence. And hit it he did, at full speed. It was then he heard the wires stretching, and breaking, and staples zinging through the air. It was also at that point he knew he had just created a make work project for himself and that his fun had just made it so that he would not make it home for a number of hours. You can only imagine what would happen when a 300 pound bear hits a 4 wired fence at 30-40 km and hour.

So you guessed it, he was fixing fence for a while. But even though he had a quarter mile of fence to repair, he still figured it was a fun time he had while he was chasing the bear.

Dad always told a story so that I could relate and remember it. That was the neatest thing I remembered about dad, is that he could tell a good story. That is likely why I love telling stories myself.