Bears

Bears

When I was growing up we had many encounters with bears. I am not sure which one to start with but I guess the funniest and the scariest would likely be the best. There is actually two that come very close in this category, The one that I am going to start with I will call:

It Was Barely A Bear

This story begins in the fall of the year, very likely late July to mid-August, we, my brother Chuck and I, were out haying a fare distance from home. So we had taken our tent along, it was one of those big cabin type tents, that slept about six to eight people. So we had all of our stuff packed into the tent for safe keeping. Encluding all of our food, pots and pans, dishes and the works.

We had worked hard all day and we were very tired and had gone to bed at a decent time that evening to get a good sleep, so we could get a good start the next morning. We had to get repairs done to the machinery every morning, while we were waiting for the morning sun to burn the night dew off of the swaths of hay before we could start baleing again.

Our cousins were haying just across the road from us, but they were a little farther ahead of us and they were already hauling their hay home. They had taken a load of hay home, and were coming back to get another one, why they were hauling hay all night long I will never know. But they had stopped in town and had picked up some ice cream. Now you must understand, we loved our ice cream very much. It so happened that either they had bought too much ice cream and they couldn’t eat it all, or they were being nice and decided to bring some out for us. I'm not sure which.

But it was 1 A.M. in the morning and we were sound asleep. So their way of waking us was very inventive. Roy, their hired man would act like a bear, and scare our shorts off and then they would give us our ice cream. Roy, being part Indian, could do a real good imitation of a bear.

Here’s how it all played out. Remember now we were sound asleep in a dark tent, but the moon was shining bright outside. Roy comes in towards the tent on his hands and knees, grunting like a bear, he feels along the side of the tent, until he finds where we have a bunch of things piled along the inside of the tent. With a loud woof, and a big grunt, he swings with all his might, smashing into the pile of pans and dishes, sending them flying all over the tent. You can only imagine our fright.

This brought my brother and me, sitting straight up in bed, wondering what on earth was going on. Was it an earthquake or what? It was then, that we saw the shadow of the bear, big and black outside our tent. It was about that time, that he smashed his hand into our grub box, sending things once again, flying across the tent. I almost met myself coming back as I sprang out of bed.

By this time we were getting pretty scared. My brother reached over and grabbed the big butcher knife, that was in a grub box close by. Lifting it up over his head, he then turned to me and said, “Before I take him on with this knife, I am going to yell, and see if that scares him away first”. With that, he let the wildest, and loudest blood curdling scream I had ever heard. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but he said something that showed everyone on the outside of the tent that we were very scared. Whatever he said, made my cousin realize, that they might be in a dangerous situation, if we had a gun in the tent with us, because chances are, we could of shot first and ask questions later.

At that, he, my cousin started to laugh, and then we were ready to kill them. As they came to the door of the tent, and saw my brother holding the big butcher knife, well, the little Indian went almost as white as one of us pale faces. Later, we had a good laugh about it and then, enjoyed some now very melted ice cream, but it still tasted good even in the middle of the night.