And we thought a mouse was a problem. This morning we went out for our three-mile run (really a fairly slow jog). About 1 ¼ mile into it, I looked down the road and said, "What is that on the road?" At first I thought it might be a cow—inside the state park? We both looked, and then I said, "It's a black bear."
We both looked, took a deep breath, turned around and started running away from the bear. I thought there was a restroom just a little ways back, but it seemed like we would never reach it. I knew there was a trash dumpster near the road and I found myself wondering if we could stand behind it and circle around it fast enough to be safe.
John kept looking over his shoulder to see if the bear was following us. John kept thing, "When we run way, are we bating the bear like we would be if it were a dog?" Then I thought I had read that bears didn't have good eyesight, so maybe it didn't even know we were on the road.
Every restroom in the park has signs pointing out that black bears live here. We didn't have any doubt about what we had seen.
For about a half mile, we kept running away from the bear and not talking. We needed to save our air to run faster if the bear came after us. Finally, we realized there was no threat. We could talk about what happened and finish our shortened run.
In the end, the bear sighting was probably the highlight of the past six months. We haven't seen a black bear since
By the way, something set off the mouse trap overnight into Monday, but we haven't seen any evidence of a mouse since then. Yea?
Lucky you! to see a bear. Sorry, you were frightened and ran away. If you had just stopped you could have watched it. Black bears are not very aggressive. Given the hundreds of thousands of man/bear contacts each year there are very few dangerous encounters.
ReplyDeleteAround here you have to be prepared to share the wild blueberry patch with the bears. You need to make noise as you go. They bears prefer their own company.
If a bear approaches make yourself big, make a lot of noise, and don't turn your back.
Sadly, the movies makes black bears appear fierce. The are not aggressive like Grizzly or Polar bears.
One day I had 12 bears on my field of oats. Oh! how they love oats. They lie on their backs and pull the oat plants on their chest to eat them and then they push themselves about this way. Sadly, they destroy more than the eat.
We used to go to the dump at night to watch them. There would be 6 or 8 foraging.They would ignore us.