The Baboon Congress

The Bear That Ate Jerry

63 Comments

Happy Groundhog Day!

Somehow it seemed appropriate that a wild animal should make an appearance in the blog today, and I’m happy to say that one was provided by our wilderness loving friend from St. Paul.

Today’s guest blog is by Steve Grooms

In early June of 1967, I took a Boundary Waters canoe trip with my roommate, Bill, and his California friend, Jerry Voorhees. Bill was a tall, arrogant fellow who enjoyed barking out commands to Jerry and me. Although I was twenty-five at the time, Bill called me “Steevie,” because he knew it annoyed me. It amused Bill to order Jerry and me about like the drill sergeants he’d suffered under in Army Basic Training.

Jerry is harder to sketch. A plump fellow with thick glasses, Jerry was no athlete and less of an outdoorsman. He was on the canoe trip because Bill ordered him to be. Jerry was a sweet, accommodating soul who lacked self-esteem. Bill didn’t help Jerry’s composure with all the abuse he heaped on Jerry, calling him “fat” a dozen times an hour and mocking Jerry’s stammer. Jerry’s father had been a liberal New Deal congressman in California who became famous because he was the first politician to have his career trashed by mudslinging lies from young Richard Nixon.

The trip was more fun than it might have been. I caught a trophy northern pike whose memory still thrills me. We were out in the bush for six days. When we got back to Grand Marais, we were stunned to read that the Israelis and Arabs had conducted a whole war in our absence, the “Six Days War.”

Other than that, the most memorable moment was provided by the bear.

We slept three across in our little tent. Jerry, as the omega trip member, was stuck between Bill and me. Our heads were at the back of the tent, our feet by the door. It was rather tight in there.

We had gone to bed one night after dinner. It was fairly late, late enough that the loons had finally gone silent. Spring peepers trilled from every puddle in the woods. Jerry snored softly. Bill tossed in his sleeping bag.

I had almost fallen asleep when I heard the bear. Something was shuffling around our campsite, something with heavy feet. We had not been careful enough to run our food packs up into the trees, which should have concerned me. Stupidly, I wasn’t afraid.

Instead of being scared, I was enjoying the moment because I knew Bill heard the bear. Bill’s breathing changed, becoming fast and ragged. I had been with Bill in a violent storm once, and I knew how terrified he could be when he felt himself threatened. I grinned into my pillow, picturing Bill on the far side of the tent, his face a mask of terror. Jerry snored on.

“Jerry! There’s a bear!” hissed Bill.

“Snaaaaark,” said Jerry.

“Jerry, dammit! There’s a BEAR!”

“Snoooooooooooop!” said Jerry.

I pressed my fist into my mouth to keep from laughing out loud.

That’s when Bill snapped. In total panic, he grabbed Jerry with his left hand, clamping down on Jerry’s right thigh like the Jaws of Death.

Jerry, dammit, THERE’S A BEAR!”

“I KNOW! I KNOW!” screamed Jerry, now very awake. “And he’s GOT ME BY THE LEG!”

That’s when we broke into laughter. The three of us hooted and whooped until our pillows were soggy with tears and our tummies ached. Whatever the creature in our camp had been, it obviously fled in panic when we began roaring with laughter.

Jerry later explained that he was awakened by the vice-like grip of Bill’s hand on his leg. “I thought he was going to eat me right up,” said Jerry, “starting with the sweetest meat.”

Have you ever had a frightening animal encounter?

63 thoughts on “The Bear That Ate Jerry”

  1. Morning all! Who’s going to do “Rise & Shine” w/ Jacque off in gay Paree?

    Besides my elk scare when I was 8, the only animal scare I’ve had was a non-scare. Or rather I should say non-animal. When I was a young married thing, my spouse was seriously into camping and hiking, not something I had ever experienced in my life. On a beautiful trip out west, we hiked A LOT. I had purchased a book of wildflowers and was keeping track of what we’d seen, so was enjoying the hiking for the most part. Bears had been spotted on some of the trails near Lake Louise and one had even been closed, but my ex really wanted to see the area, so we puchased some bear bells and took off. I “heard” bears around every corner; at every bend I expected to see bears as we took the turn. I’m surprised I didn’t have a coronary from the fear. And I also got very sore calves from the walk because I was stamping my feet so hard to make sure the bells were tinkling on every step. I’m sure the bears were probably sitting back a bit from the trail laughing their heads off. Of course, we never saw a bear, never heard a bear, never even saw any evidence of a bear. But I still have the bear bells in my dresser drawer!

    Nice piece, Steve. My first good laugh of the day. Nice start!

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    2. Sherrilee, when we were visiting Glacier Park last summer we learned that those bear bells are now refered to as dinner bells by some people who think they don’t really help keep bears away from you.

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  2. a good story, told by a good story-teller is a fine thing so early in the morning, Steve! thanks! and “good on” Jerry! it’s always good to hear that a bully got a comeuppance.

    to answer your question – hmmmm. i don’t think so. i’m sure (on my walks in the woods, or to the barn in the late nights and early mornings) there were critters watching me but i haven’t felt threatened. i like to scare myself by imagining a low growl as i enter the dark garage. fun, but i don’t know what i’d do if i actually heard it! probably run into the house and change my underwear.
    a gracious good morning to You All!

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  3. great story steve, happy groundhogs day all. i heard a discussion last night on wcco that has become a valued treasure in the film world and is discussed in terms of religious discussion of how it is a film that is one of the greatest ever made. i had to laugh, it has always been a favorite. wouldn’t it be nice to get do overs until you got it right. we could try ….
    my animal story is the one where i was up in the canadian rockies with an art buddy who went off with a pad of paper and some pastels to do the mountain that was behind our campsight. i wasn’t in the mood for the climb and worked in acrylics from the picnic table in the campsight on the mountain lake. it was beautiful, tranquil and perfect for a meditative creative session. the campsight was very remote and on that particular morning the other campers were all gone so i had the whole place ( 15 primitive sites) to myself. i was off in a nirvana moment and was surprised when i look way off to the left instead of straight ahead at the lake i had been painting. off to the left was a bear maybe 30 feet away who had not noticed me either, i stood up whooped and hollered and waved my arms and the bear bolted back to the woods with the agility of a ballet dancer. it got to the woods and turned around to check the situation at hand more closely, kept an eye on it and went to the fire to grab a pan and a big old stirring spoon to bang the pang with. the spaghetti pan had the best bang sound so it was the one elected to be the bear gong. it went on for an hour. the bear wanted to come in and eat and i wanted to finish my painting. it would come in and i would bang. it was getting less and less concerns about the bang and i began getting off the table and banging the pan while running at the bear and yelling appropriate stuff like “get out of here bear” . eventually the bear doubled back and went around the camp rather than through it and it started approaching form the opposite side and i got uppity. i was tired of being interrupted and decided to make my feeling known that i want peace and quite and the beat had better just get the heck out of here for today. i walked a good 100 feet and the bear had not noticed i was sneaking up to provide impact when i banged the pan to scare her away. i did take it by surprise but as i have learned since it is not a good idea to surprise bears. it came running straight for me in a flash, i had no time to do anything other than stand there in amazement at how fast a bear can move. instead of going for my throat the bear jetted past me maybe 3 feet away. it ran past and when i turned to follow its path i realized i had gotten between the bear and her cubs. she chased them up a tree t saftey and with that i understood her persistence and allowed her to share my camp until she was done with her family outing. my friend got back and was surprised to see the spaghetti pot looking like it had been beaten within an inch of its life. he had no idea.

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  4. Good morning to all,

    I’ve had several encounters with threatening dogs which I backed away from very carefully. On a trip in the boundary waters, members of the party I was with had to wait for a large moose to leave that was blocking the portage trail. That’s as close as I have come to having frightening encounters with animals.

    I have never seen a bear in the wild. In the boundary waters and in Glacier National Park we were always a little afraid that we might have a bad encounter with a bear. We carried a big can of pepper spray with us in Glacier when we were out walking and didn’t really do much walking. I think we were being a little too careful.

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  5. We like to camp but are not great campers due to lack of experience. My mother did not consider it a vacation to sleep on the ground and make do without running water, thank you very much.

    Nothing daunted, the s&h and I decided we would give it a try up at Big Bay State Park the day after school was out for the year. It was a memorable trip in lots of ways, but we are talking animals today. The last night we were there, we were both pretty tired and decided to go into LaPointe for pizza and have one last round of s’mores for dessert. After that, I cleaned up as usual but just could not make myself hike the leftover bits to the car as I had every other time.

    Sure enough, about an hour after we had zipped into the tent and discovered what we hoped were the last of the ticks (terrifying wildlife contact in itself), we heard something rustling around out there. It did not sound terribly big, so I unzipped the tent and pointed the flashlight in the direction of the picnic table to see the brown paper bag moving around underneath it with someone clearly inside it. I zipped up the tent and we waited for the noise to stop, which it eventually did.

    Next morning it was revealed that about half a bag of chocolate chips had been consumed, a couple of graham crackers had been roughed up and the bag of marshmellows was GONE. We later found the empty bag about 30 feet away, completely empty. We figured that somewhere on Madeline Island there was some smallish animal with an almighty tummy ache.

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      1. We thought it was a marauding team of RTSs (rotten theiving squirrels as they are known and loved in our yard). There were a lot of little red ones around. We also had 3 deer who would come to visit during breakfast every morning-we considered them our neighbors from the next campsite over. Goodness the deer are tame up there.

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  6. Good morning, Babooners…I can’t blieve I’m the first to check in…perhaps by the time I get this written, I won’t be…

    I had a bit of a fright but no actual encounter with an animal the summer/fall I spent in Yellowstone Park. It was at a time shortly after the Park Service had moved the black bears in the back country and had recently closed the open dumps so it was a summer the Grizzlies had moved in. A couple of college men had been killed in their campsite, grizzlies were being trapped and moved…my closest sight was a tranquilized bear that was one of them.
    In the fall, a park ranger friend and I spent some time in the back country south of Yellowstone Lake (getting there in a loaded down kayak and a small motor puttsing along the shore in a windy snow storm was the first miracle of the trip). The next day we left our campsite on a little peninsula to hike farther into the wilderness. As we tromped along in the day before snow, I noticed large animal tracks…then the tree with the claw marks. I asked “Are these bear tracks?” Answer “I hoped you wouldn’t notice” With the confidence the bear was long gone ahead of us, we trudged on.

    We never did see a bear, but upon return to our campsite we found all the food that had been left up high — including cans, catsup bottles — demolished and distributed about the camp…and the Park Service looking for us with apprehension.

    But all’s well that ends well, yes?

    Stay warm everyone

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  7. Oooooooooh! There are bears and then there are bears. Most folks know that black bears are mostly harmless, although if you annoy a black bear that is already having a bad day, you might get et. But grizzlies are a whole ‘nother thing.

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    1. indeed…they are a whole nuther thing. A friend keeps insisting I watch “Grizzly Man” — but knowing how it ends, I keep resisting.

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  8. I have told my three bear stories, the one my father shot–and several items in the process; the one tried to break into the house when my mother and I were there; the one that toured our (pregnant wife and I) under-construction house on Lake Superior.
    It is zero here in AZ.

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    1. I had no idea there was also a Staten Island Chuck.

      S&h was giving me the business about how Phil, who most likely isn’t even looking for his shadow can have anything to do with spring in Minnesota.

      We are glad for the sake of goatlings and goat moms for the early spring, although we ourselves are fond of a good winter.

      OT-we are rationing our way through the quart of Liberty caramel custard-thanks you guys for introducing us to something great we can never get again 🙂

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  10. What a great story, Steve! My wild animal story is from the same locale and involved the same species. But in my case, we hung the food pack up in a tree, just not high enough; the bear took the whole pack, except for the waist belt and disappeared into the woods while my friend and I watched from the tent. Things to bang on were not at hand. We decided to head back to the car – fortunately we were near the end of a two-week trip – but things got a little more complicated when, in the middle of the lake, Sue realized that the car keys were also in the food pack … but that is a whole other story.
    Thanks for a good start to the day!

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      1. We went back to look for the pack but no luck and no bear to help 😉 A long adventure ensued involving two hitchhiking rides down and up the Gunflint trail, a locksmith, and eventually my friend’s husband driving up from the Cities with a spare key. Good times to look back and laugh about later, but unlike Steve’s story, not quite as humorous at the time, especially while riding in the back of a pickup truck with “bear bait” (that is, piles of rotting meat).
        Gosh, my life has become pretty staid in the intervening years! Except for missing my morning flight to Seattle on Monday due to highway gridlock, my travel stories these days are awfully tame.

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  11. Clearly I have not been in the wild enough as I do not have any crazy bear stories (or other wild critter stories) to tell. Except for the occasional raccoon in the trees in the city, and the hawks that like to dine on the neighborhood rabbits (and occasionally peer down and wonder if I am going to try to get between them and dinner), not much out of the ordinary deer seen on a walk in the woods and that sort of thing.

    As a kid we spent a handful of summer vacations at an old mining camp in South Dakota that had been sort of renovated and reopened as a vacation spot. I think there may have been running cold water plumbed into the cabin (one of the originals from the spots mining camp days), but you had to rent the “new” cabin to get a flush toilet. There was also a donkey on site who liked to come visit in the morning. Her name was Goldie and she would eat sugar cubes out of my hand. Not wild at all. One year we came for our week and there was no Goldie. Apparently she had died that spring trying to get her foal off the railroad tracks ahead of a train – the foal survived, Goldie did not. I was heartbroken.

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    2. I’m just catching up too – fun to think about the exhibits I’ve seen. Calder and Chihuly stand out. I always like to go into the period rooms at the MIA too.

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      2. There are some Chihuly pieces in downtown Minneapolis in the Cappella University building, on the skyway level. I have a friend who I meet for lunch a few times a year and we always meet by the Chihulys.

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  12. I was attacked by the neighbor’s German Shepherd when I was 10. She had always been a friendly dog and I had no reason to fear her, but one day she was whimpering and whining on her tether outside the neighbor’s house. I went over to pet her, thinking she just wanted some affection, but when I tried to pet her, she jumped at me, scratching my face (4 stitches) and leaving a long scratch down my back as I fled.

    That was easily the most traumatic experience of my childhood, and to this day I do not like dogs and don’t trust any dog to not attack me, no matter how innocent they seem.

    I know some of you are thinking: “well, you must have provoked the dog in some way, like 10-yr-old boys are prone to do, so you deserved it.” I assure you I did not provoker her.

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. Bad luck, Chris. My dog-loving daughter could identify with you. She went to pet the golden retriever at the home of a friend. That dog had a brain issue and could suddenly become aggressive. Molly got her right hand bit deeply enough to require stitches. There was an upside to that, as we say now. Molly had an oddly difficult time mastering the concept of “right and left.” At some point she was able to memorize the fact that her scarred “dog-bite hand” was her right hand.

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    2. Chris – not a fun memory! My baby sister was also bitten by a neighbor dog. We have always had dogs, so at the age of 6, it just didn’t occur to her that she couldn’t hug and squeeze every dog she met. Just 2 little stitches, but they were on her face, so to this day, she has a little dimple that looks like a natural dimple, so most people don’t realize it’s a scar. Not sure how she managed to get around the trauma mentally, because she does have dogs of her own now.

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    3. I don’t completely trust dogs even though I enjoy their company. Small children should not be left alone with dogs. Even a very friendly dog can change mood and decide to bite you. I’m not afraid of dogs. I just think that their potential for doing harm is underestimated in some cases.

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      1. People worry a lot about wolves fatally attacking humans. But there are only two proven recorded cases of that happening in North America. But each year we lose between 30 and 40 people (mostly children) to dogs.

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  13. Fine fine story, Steve. While the 3 of you were laughing with exuberance, didn’t anyone fart? That’s what first graders do. Especially the boys.

    I would share a wild animal story if I had one, but I’d have to make it up and that could take some time, although I won’t rule it out because today in SF there is no school on account of the extreme temps, although it’s only hovering around zero and winds are expected to diminish, so we could have had it, but who am I to argue with the misguided deciders who employ me?

    Anna – your museum piece yesterday was wonderful and I enjoyed reading everyone’s contributions, but like Steve, I couldn’t come up with anything that stood out other than when I was at the MoMA in NYC last October and my son spotted Julianne Moore – I think she was looking at a Terry Redlin – wearing skinny jeans, brown leather boots that laced up the back and a jacket with fringe. So yeah … there was that.

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    1. You’ll never top the boa constricter story anyway, so put your feet up and enjoy the day off. Look at it this way, at least you aren’t stuck in school for another day with kids they won’t let you send out to recess- I pity the teachers on this one.

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      5. I don’t remember eraser tag, but we did play a lot of games on snow days in western Iowa in the 70’s when there were a LOT of blizzards.

        Sadly, in my son’s case, they are just made to stay in the lunch room for the duration. He reads, but it is not pleasant and I am afraid I do not understand why they do it. They get very little time for either recess or lunch, so I suppose it is not that long to sit in that cramped, noisy space.

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      6. That’s not right. Kids shouldn’t have to spend any longer in a lunchroom than necessary. I think you parents should form a coup.

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      7. I have some experience with letting kids out for recess at elementary schools when I did subbing. It seems like some of the teachers thought it was also their recess and they didn’t watch the kids very much. I don’t blame the teachers for treating this as a time for them to be more or less on break. However, kids still need to be watched out on the play ground and I frequently had to help kids that were having problems that some of the teachers were ignoring.

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  14. Morning–

    Fun story Steve–

    I have a couple dog stories, nothing serious, just situations where they scared me… and I’ve had lots of encounters with possums and skunks and raccoons… I believe I’ve mentioned the raccoon biting my crotch in the past… I sort of deserved that one; it was him or me… but it was indeed frighting.
    We have a lot of coyotes around here and a few years ago while combining soybeans a coyote laid down at the end of the field and watched us. When we came to that end of the field s/he’d get up and walk a few rows into the cornfield, we’d turn around to go to the other end again and he’d come back out and lay down… Half hour later I went home and got a camera and s/he was still just laying there… finally did wander off as I took pictures. Sort of weird and scary at the same time…

    Came home one day to find a donkey and a horse standing in the yard. We don’t own a donkey or a horse so …this wasn’t something I expected to find.
    Kept them for a week before finding the owners…

    Two hour school delay here this morning… stay warm Babooners!

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  15. I was really angry the other day to hear about an area rancher from near Watford City, ND (about 60 miles from where I live) who came upon a female mountain lion and three 40 pound young lions in his barn. The lion had killed a deer and had dragged the carcass in the barn to eat. The rancher shot all 4 cats. I don’t see why he had to do that. I know it must have been somewhat unnerving to walk into his barn and see 4 pairs of glowing eyes staring at him, but they weren’t eating one of his cows, for goodness sake. It was a deer. He could have scared them off and removed the carcass from the barn. I just don’t see why he had to shoot them.

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    1. That just makes me cranky and mad. Bet the cats would have left without touching any of his livestock if he would have just let them finish the deer. Bah.

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  16. That’s a funny story, Steve. Some people behave in strange ways when they are out in the wilderness. I was sitting out one night in the boundary waters and the person I was with thought a space ship was coming toward us from the sky. I didn’t think this could be the case, but we did retreat into our tent. There was no encounter with aliens. They might not have been able to see us in our tent.

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  17. I’m afraid my most frightening encounter would be with Charlie the Cat when he was in the backyard On Leash. I would have to come out and pick him up to untangle him, or unwrap him from The Tree which he’d circled numerous times. It took too much time, I thought, to unhook him so I learned it was wise to sort of sneak up on him from behind and grab him firmly around the middle with both hands, and hold my arms straight out in front of me as I unwound him. The first time I didn’t do that I don’t want to talk about.

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    1. Our cat vet in DC was a lovely young woman with very fine hands. They were entirely covered with a very fine mesh of scars.

      Hope your days are smoothing out, BiR and Husband is knitting back together nicely.

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      2. Yes, Linda, and he was already kind of wabi-sabi from a scar on his back from a car accident when he was 12.

        MIG – interesting your use of knitting… I gave him comfrey tea today, which is also called “bone-knit”. (I’m lucky I even have comfrey, which I’m told the FDA in its wisdom has made illegal…)

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  18. I don’t have any frightening animal encounter stories to tell, though I’m sure there are a lot of critters that have frightening human encounter stories to tell about me. Usually they are rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, or birds that I’ve scooped up and put into a cage and transported to the Wildlife Rehab Center. I always seem to be around when there is a small animal in distress. Once I even found a northern flying squirrel.

    Rumor has it there are coyotes around the bluff in my neighborhood, but I’ve never seen one – just the occasional pile of what I suspect is coyote scat. There was one time I was walking my cat Sammy near the bluff, and he stopped and stared intently out into the brush and all the fur on his back and tail stood straight up. Just to be on the safe side, I picked him up and carried him for a block or so, but I didn’t see or hear anything.

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      1. That’s what would keep me awake nights if I had outdoor cats. Sammy only goes out with me.

        A number of my neighbors have had cats go missing.

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  19. Sitting in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Had a wonderful drive over across deserts and by mountains. Went only this far because I have to spend the rest of this day dealing with papers to get printed and signed because we have a buyer for our house. Tomorrow we go onto our son’s in San Jose.

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