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Bears!

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Here’s a message that came in early this morning from our text-crazy friend in the woods, Bart the Bear. I think he was up all night, picking at the keys, trying to make up for his lack of thumbs.

Bart - The Bear Who Found a Cell Phone

Hey. Bart here.

Some campers were up here yesterday and I got kind of excited because they were talking about getting blackberries out of their backpacks.

“I can’t live without my blackberry,” one said.

“Me neither,” said the other one. “I’ve got it in my hand, like, all the time.”

I’m thinking these are my type of guys. I can’t live without blackberries either.

But then the first one said “My wife yells at me and says I can’t play with my blackberry at the table.”

Honest, it didn’t sound like these guys even KNEW that blackberries are food. And lookin’ at ‘em and playin’ with ‘em? They’re pretty, I admit, but geez! And what use is just one? You confuse me. How did you humans get to be so … everywhere … if you don’t know the difference between what’s good to eat … and toys?

Anyway, I almost charged in there and ripped open the backpacks myself, but I figured it wasn’t worth it for just two bites. When I have blackberries, I eat bunches.

Then they got to talking about other stuff I don’t care about, but my ears perked up when one said “this drop is gonna put us in a bear market.”

A bear market is a really interesting idea to me. Is that a market where you buy bears, or a place where bears go to buy the stuff that they like? I’d like it to be the second type, of course.

The other guys says “Put us in a bear market?
We’re already IN a bear market.”

Then the first guy answers with “It’ll be a SUPER bear market. A bear-a-palooza market!”

I started drooling ‘cause that sounds awesome. I can think of all sorts of things I’d like to get at a bear market, especially if I don’t have to pay. And I don’t, usually. I just take the stuff that looks good to me – as much as I can carry – and I come back for more, later. Unless the ranger shows up.

That’s Bear Marketing 101.

Anyway, I know lots of other bears – polars, grizzlies, koalas, black bears, brown bears and wooly bears too. If there’s someplace you guys are hiding from us every body calls a bear market, especially a SUPER bear market, let me know. I thought I heard them mention where it is, but I can’t remember if it was by a wall or near a street. One of those. Anyway, send me a map. I’ll organize a buying trip and we’ll give ‘em a day of commerce at the bear market like they’ll never forget!

And we’ll bring a picnic!

Are you the type of person who panics?

70 thoughts on “Bears!”

  2. Rise and Panic Baboons!

    Sometimes. Depends on the situation. Beth-ann is correct. When I see a bear and I am unarmed, I panic. When I lived in the beautiful woods of Northern MN and hiked the trails I always carried a walking stick that I could also use as a weapon if needed. But I never had the need. However, the bears regularly raided our garbage bins which were frequently full of campers detritus (my ex-husband ran a church camp North of Grand Rapids). I cleaned up a lot of strewn garbage in my day. I was probably a danger to the bears on one of those mornings.

    Recently, at an art event, our task was to decorate a walking stick. So I hauled out my dearly loved yet long neglected bear beater. It is now quite lovely. No panic involved.

    Anyone interested in a State Fair Field trip to see Prairie Home Companion?

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    2. I would assume that a walking stick would not be too effective at driving off a bear. I don’t much about this. I have heard of a bear being driven off by someone with a club. I think a bear has plenty of strength for over coming a person with a walking stick or a club. I supose a bear might be afraid of a person swinging a stick or club.

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  3. Good morning to all,

    Do I panic? What are you tallking about? Is there a problem? Should I start running or hide?

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  4. I was about to write that I surprisingly cool headed in emergencies. And then I got remembering some of the incredible panics I’ve had while fishing at night on trout streams. Any poise or balance I have in daylight disappears at night, and I’m capable of any idiotic panic then.

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      1. That’s a good question. Flycasting on a trout stream is difficult enough when you can see all the branches where your fly is stuck. At night . . .

        The simplest answer is that on many trout streams at many times of year, only small trout feed during the day. The big guys come out when it is dark and spooky. The angler gets to use larger flies to tempt much larger trout. But, oh, is it scary! You are out there alone in a wilderness surrounded by wolves, bears, bats, owls and coyotes. The sounds are amazingly spooky. You see things mostly in silhouette, sort of like the Disney version of Ichabod Crane. And you walk around trout rivers you can’t see, and some of them have quicksand patches. It helps if you are sort of stupid. If you have a sense of imagination, you don’t have a chance!!

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  6. 59 out there for today’s briefish ride. Have to get back to prep my wife’s medical smoothie, then make the chicken salad sandwiches, then pack up and head up to The Arb. This month, we go up at least once a month this year, we are going to have a picnic at that table up on the high spot half way around the drive. Flowers have been good but less than perfect for the last three months, but bet they will be great today.

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  7. I have been criticized for not panicking. When my son was young his brittle bone disease was much more problematic than it is now. Simple falls could result in femur fractures. I would generally scoop him up, put chewable tylenol in his mouth, ask for a bag of ice, and skedaddle to the orthopedist. Several times this happened at other people’s houses. Afterwards they would remark about how unsettling it was that I was so matter-of-fact and without panic.Someone actually suggested that I was obliged to check back with the witnesses to see that they were OK because they were traumatized not only by my son’t injury but by my eerie calm.

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    1. It’s sort of unsettling that they thought it was unsettling! They didn’t take into account that you’d done this multiple times.

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  8. OT Public Service Announcement, if you don’t mind. Months ago you guys told me many of you didn’t know of the two basic internet sites for researching movies: the Movie Review Query Engine (MRQE) and International Movie Database (IMDB).

    But what about music CDs? Alas, there is nothing quite as good. Once again, I use two sites. One is Amazon.com on the pages for an artist I’m interested in. The reviews are usually written by real fans or people who are feeling snarky, so you have to spend a lot of time reading reviews of CDs to get a sense of how much your respect the reviewer. And then you judge the review. The process, though clumsy, is sure better than no reviews at all.

    And then there is AMG. The Allmusic Guide (www.allmusic.com) is a more balanced and scholarly site discussing musicians and their recordings. The “Discography” tab will take you to good reviews of that artist, putting each recording in the context of that artist’s career.

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  9. I’d request Teddy Bears’ Picnic if I could. Sigh.

    I do not panic. I stay sort of eerily calm as Beth-Ann described. Sometimes this is helpful, but as she noted, not always – some people think you don’t comprehend the situation!

    There are exceptions, though. I do a mini panic now if I see we’re going to have a string of days with 95 plus temps. Happily that isn’t this week.

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    1. I think Mike Pengra might be taking requests on Radio Heartland. He doesn’t seem to be offering to take requests, but I did hear him play a request once. From what I can tell, Mike is hosting Radio Heartland from 7 to 10 in the morning and mostly just announces the tunes that he plays. He has done a few interviews and, at least once, a request.

      If you see this, Mike, maybe you can tell us if you want requests sent to you.

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  10. There are some situations where I have nearly fainted at the sight of blood. If I get bloody from a cut it doesn’t bother me and I can help a person with a cut. However, a few time when I watched an operation on an animal, I had trouble when they cut into the animal and had to leave the room.

    Like Beth-Ann, I can stay calm and try to take care of things in a medical emergency. I might not be as calm as Beth-Ann, but I have been faced with medical emergencies a number of times and, in these situations, I try to make sure that I pay attention to what might be need to be done.

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    1. I HAVE fainted at the sight of blood. I’ve fainted only twice in my life, and both times blood, or what looked like blood, was involved. But it wasn’t from panic, I can just feel the pain of the person with the injury and my stomach goes queasy. In fact, I can’t even listen to vivid descriptions of medical procedures and the same thing happen. And to think that I wanted to be a nurse!

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      1. I’m sort of the opposite. I would watch when I used to give blood. When I needed stitches on my thumb at 20, I watched every move they made. Viewed a large screen version of my arthroscopic knee surgery in June — that was way cool. If ever there’s a medical surgery shown on TV, I’m right up next to screen watching and exclaiming, “oh cool!” But gratuitous gore and violence in movies or TV I can’t handle.

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    2. I’ve fainted twice: the first time it happened I was straddling my little brother who was laying supine while my dad removed the stitches from his lower lip. My job was to hold the flashlight. “Hold it STILL!” my dad commanded. I thought I was holding it still. It was SO interesting. Dad would snip the stitch and pull it through and out. A tiny bead of blood would follow each stitch. I woke up on the kitchen floor with my feet up on the refrigerator.

      The next time was in nurses’ training. We were required to observe a circumcision. I have no idea why they would choose that particular surgery. I sometimes thought there was something a little perverse going on with one of the instructors… Anyway, there were at least five clamps on that little tiny penis and he was SCREAMING bloody murder! I fell backwards into my instructor’s arms. They didn’t give me credit for it either.

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  11. Greetings! I can usually give a sort of impression of attempting to be calm, but I’m panicking inside! All this severe weather and thunderstorms we’ve had this summer made me feel slightly panicky. While I know I’m safe in my house for the most part, when the wind, rain and hail are slashing at my windows I start to wonder about the strength and solidity of my house. At least there are no big trees around here.

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  12. I have been told I can look very calm in the face of crisis, but internally is another matter. My dad’s phrase for panic is “Now don’t get excited”, to which my mother always replies “I’m not excited!”

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  13. Not usually. I’ve been down the road of ‘panic’ enough that I’m somewhat desensitized. I’m usually focused on handling the task at hand. I’m sure there’s still some situations out there that I haven’t had to go through yet that would induce panic but, typically, nah…

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  14. Hey, Bart. I saw a red fox on the Sakatah today. I said hello for you. Maybe that is why he did not panic. He just sort of trotted 10 feet ahead of me for a few yards, the watched me from under the brush.

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  15. Do I panic? Not usually. I just stick my head in the sand. I’m certainly not about to look and see what yesterday’s decline in the stock market did to my IRA.

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  16. No, not too much panic anymore. I used to panic more often about some (personal) things. Like Joanne I get a little panicky about severe storms with a threat of tornadoes. Many of my friends lived through the St Peter tornado and their fear has rubbed off on me a little. I saw what St Peter looked like in the days following that event and I would not want to go through it. They’re all fine now, and I know that, but still…

    I’ve never been good at planning, financially or otherwise. I never would have invested in stocks if my father hadn’t passed away and left me some money. I’ve had to have a lot of investment guidance. Even so, all I’ve ever done is lose money in the stock market. I’ve been considering pulling some of it out and paying on my home equity loan.

    Gotta go! I’m taking fish samples to the pathology lab at the DNR building in St Paul today.

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    1. We were always told that carefully selected stocks, or mutual funds invested in stocks, gave the best return over the long run. This hasn’t been generally true for a number of years and, the way things look, it might not be true in the future. I am not an expert, but you don’t have to be too smart to see that the stock market hasn’t done well in recent history and isn’t doing well currently.

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  17. I don’t have a lot of experience with panic, but I’m familiar with existential dread.

    Having had a toe in the stock market for twenty-five years or so, I don’t get too worried about ups and downs. It’s never the end of the world.

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  18. Morning–

    Well, first thing, Don’t Panic!
    I don’t usually either, but when I was milking cows and a raccoon would drop down the silo chute as I did chores in the winter… I ran away screaming. Please excuse my short term memory, but have I told the story of me and the dogs chasing a raccoon and it grabbing me ‘up there’?

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      1. Well, since you ask…
        In the winter when food was more scarce for raccoons they would crawl up into the silo that holds corn silage so they could eat the corn in there. When I would come and turn on the silo unloaders the raccoons would come tumbling back down and try to get out where I’m now standing to turn on the equipment…
        (I’m leaving out a lot of details regarding equipment; this may not all make sense but don’t panic).
        My dogs would always be there waiting so if a raccoon did come down they could chase it and fight with it. Raccoon are vicious. One dog vs. raccoon doesn’t have much chance. Two dogs sort of even it up. Raccoons are messy as they poop all over the hay if they get into a barn and they’ll kill my chickens and eat eggs. I’m not a fan of raccoons.
        So this one night a raccoon drops down the chute, I run away screaming, the dogs take off after it but then I have a pitch fork so I think I’ll go help. Silly man.
        And we get in a stand-off when one of the dogs grabs the coon and, backing away with it, goes between my legs. (Picture me doing the scarecrow dance from foot to foot on tippy toe. And again, screaming.) The coon reaches up and grabs my inner thigh… way up high… I shriek some more…
        The rest of the story is I get it tested for rabies (I wasn’t sure if it bit me or grabbed me)– it was negative and I stopped chasing raccoons with a pitchfork.
        Now imagine me in the ER explaining this story to the docs… I’m sure the nurses think I’m crazy.
        It’s funny now; made me laugh as I typed this out… I still get kind of excited about raccoons…

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      3. I can see it in my mind’s eye. Makes me laugh, though I’m sure it wasn’t funny at the time.

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      4. Ben’s story sounds SO much like those stories you hear from somebody swearing to know the people involved. And the story goes like Ben’s, but then the ambulance arrives and the EMTs are carrying Ben on a stretcher, but when he describes the raccoon snagging his groin as it went by, the EMTs laugh until they drop Ben on his pitchfork . . . .

        You know the kind of story I mean, surely.

        Anyway, it is very funny now, Ben. Thanks for sharing.

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  19. So long as I know where my towel is, I won’t panic.

    (And, no, in truth, I am not a panicer either – too much stoic Scandinavian in my blood to be excitable that way. I might fret myself into a fine frenzy, but not a full-on panic. Besides, Husband has informed me that it is my job to be the calm one in our duo, and he can panic for both of us.)

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  20. I only panic for small crises-if there is something really big afoot, I’m too busy assessing and acting. If I can’t act, I make lists. Never fainted, but I will say I am better at doing something than having to watch if an injury is involved.

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    2. I will venture a guess that moms have a special ability to keep cool when they are in “mom mode.” So, let’s imagine that you are suddenly confronted with a large snake. Do you panic? Maybe! But if you and your kid are confronted by a large snake, do you panic? I think not. That special part of your body chemistry that produces Mom Courage kicks in so you can do what is needed to protect your kid.

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  22. I am reminded of 2 of my favorite bits of signage-

    1) posted backstage at a theatre I worked at:
    “When in Danger, or in Doubt, Run in Circles, Scream and Shout

    2) one that has currently come back into vogue from a WWII Brit campaign (but I believe not used at that time)
    Keep Calm and Carry On (or as the fiber community would have it-Keep Calm and Carry Yarn)

    While I feel it is important to keep up with global events, I am (for today at least) determined to not let something I cannot see or do anything about mess with me. The overgrown garden and messy house should keep me plenty busy and occupied-those I can do something about.

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    1. “When in Danger, or in Doubt, Run in Circles, Scream and Shout” —

      I have that one on my door courtesy of a former student who printed it out and posted it for me.

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  26. When I left this morning I thought it was do you picnic? I thought gee I like picnicking bread wine cheese fruit deviled eggs pickles potato salad

    Panic I do that too but I like picnicking better

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