These stories of bear antics come from a six-month period I spent taking care of bears at a sanctuary in Texas. I could not even be mad at them for making my job harder because I was too busy laughing! Bears can awe you with their majestic power–and five seconds later have you doubled over laughing at the goofball in them. “If I fits, I sits.” (Truth be told, he doesn’t fit he’s a 900 pound Grizzly bear.) There is suddenly no more room in the trough for water because the trough is full of bear. He is splashing the water out faster than you can put it in. He dips his paw in and splashes out half of the water you just replaced (not to mention the clean water is now twelve shades of mud). Then he forgets about the stream of water because he’s distracted by the crystal clear water in the trough. He lumbers over, watches you for a few seconds, bats his paws in the hose stream, and sticks his ginormous nose right in front of the jet of water, drenching you. He might be in the middle of a nap but as soon as he hears that water, he’s wide awake. The resident bear sees you, hears you, and smells you getting the hose out. I work alone, but with the support of a great group of other small business owners that Ive known for a few years (shameless plug for Mad Mad Makers). You pick one of the habitats and begin to fill up the water trough. If a bear’s water trough is full, take a snapshot and mark the calendar because it never happens. Your last task of the day is to check on the bears and make sure they have water for the night. You spent the following 8-12 hours cleaning up habitats, raking millions of leaves (because Texas doesn’t really have autumn but the leaves drop anyway), preparing more diets, and working on other necessary projects. to prepare diets for lions, tigers, cougars, and bobcats. So, imagine you have just finished a long day of work in the Texas heat. I understand the feeling is probably not mutual among my fellow hikers, however. Maybe it is because I have worked with bears, or because I am an animal person, or maybe it’s because I love bears and want to see them in the wild (from a distance, not staring down a mother and three cubs). Ticks scare me more than bears, if you can believe that. Strangely, bears are not really among those fears. As I prepare for my 2017 thru-hike, there are several fears hanging out in my mind.
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