[balistic]

Not to turn sijun into some kind of stupid blog, but I wrote this for another board where they were talking about experiences with bears and thought I'd share it here. Feel free to post any interesting stories you might have about where you grew up.
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Up until I reached the age of ten my family lived in a tiny mountain town in California called Sierra City (population: 250). It's since been overrun with mountain bikers and rock climbers and suchlike eXtreem individuals, but at the time it was a quiet place, save for the occassional forest fire or grizzled old gold prospector offing himself with a crate of dynamite (tip: don't store your dynamite next to a leaky microwave oven). Oh and then there were the bears. Big, brown, 600-pound gonna-eatcha typa bears.

These bears were fairly accustomed to people, and had grown fearless and opportunistic. We had an electric fence around our garbage cans to keep the bears from nosing through them. They'd managed to break into at least a few cabins and raid refridgerators. At some point my parents bought me one of those plastic Fisher Price sandboxes to play in. The bears thought it resembled a cooler or icebox that might contain people food, so it hadn't been outside for a week before it was riddled with drool-encrusted punctures big enough to fit a sharpie marker through.

Think about that for a second. Think about being an unsupervised seven-year-old playing outdoors, sitting in a container that a top-tier omnivore correlates with a snacking opportunity. Oh, you can forget about the bears for a few minutes while you concentrate on pitting ED-209 against a Tonka truck filled with M.U.S.C.L.E Men in a winner-takes-all fight to the death, but then you notice those puncture marks again and feel instinctually obliged to perform a thorough 360-degree visual audit of the forest around you.

Understandably, I was a nervous child.

But back to the garbage. Those bears fucking loved garbage. We left some garbage in my dad's 69 Chevy van one night, because the dump closed after sundown. In the morning we found muddy paw prints on the roof (this van is at least 7' tall), and one side mirror had been ripped clean off its bolts.

The dump itself was something of a bear nightclub, which is why it was closed to humans after dark. It wasn't uncommon to see one there during the day, but by night it was Yogipalooza. There were signs all over the place advising people not to feed the bears. You'd think that if the half-ton of muscle, teeth and surly hate didn't put you off feeding them, maybe the steep fines listed on the hazard placards would steer you back to sanity. However, when you live someplace like that, you become aware of a certain class of people on whom such logic is lost. Pop called them "flat-landers". The flat-landers would feed the bears. They'd drive all the way up from Sacramento and have their kids sit in the exposed bed of a little 2WD Datsun truck, throwing slices of Wonder bread to the bears. Any sane person with any kind of respect for nature realizes that by throwing bread to bears, one is extending an invitation for the creature to perhaps make a sandwich.

"Here's some bread, I'm made of meat, you do the math."

Pop would warn the flat-landers, especially the ones with kids, that he was going to call the Sheriff if they didn't stop feeding the bears and leave the dump. This was in the late 1980s, before cell phones, but usually a couple bleeps out of the CB radio in the van was enough to get the city slickers to roll out.

I don't know where I'm really going with this, but respect nature, and DON'T FEED THE GODDAMN BEARS YOU DUMB FLAT-LANDER.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[abunai]

If you feed bears, you deserve to be eaten?

I've only ever been bugged by Canada geese, but those fuckers are mean.
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-Gio

afterglow

[Drunken Monkey]

Dude, you should have wrestled the bears. Thats how Zangieff became such a good fighter. You'd be like 8 feet tall, 500 pound ass kicker. Man... i wish i had that opportunity. I grew up in a poor neighborhood in former USSR. All i did was recycle the empty beer and vodka bootles my dad left me. I made a fortune at the time. And i spent it all on bootleg american rap cassets. And Viktor Tsoy ofcourse.
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"A fear of weapons is a sign of retarded sexual and emotional maturity" - Sigmund Freud

[eyewoo]

Cool story... and fun to read. Well written.
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[Andromeda]

[balistic]

haha, good story andromeda. It's nice to know that kids are the same everywhere.
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brian.prince|light.comp.paint

[Capt. Fred]

I have a bad memory, but I can remember�
French bangers (fire crackers)� firing handfuls of big gravel, out of a tube meant for protecting sapplings. That was awesome. Initially designed as a high angle short barrel motar but certain alterations made it suitable for use as a shotgun.