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Jaws of Life

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Today’s post comes from Bart, the bear who found a smartphone in the woods.

H’lo, Bart here.

Just a note to say if you’re traveling near the woods for the 4th of July, please be kind and considerate when it comes to the local bear population.

And by that I mean watch your behavior if you happen to see us standing by the roadside as you drive into a National Forest. We’re not there to greet you – we’re looking for sloppy campers. So if you roll down your windows and offer us treats and try to get us to come over to the car, you should know that the rangers are watching and we might seem a little coy or even disinterested.

This is not actually the case.

We’ve noted your license plate and we’ll be coming to visit you later under conditions that are a little better for getting to your stash of goodies. It turns out we bears are famous for opening locked cars in unconventional ways. And all it takes is the smell of food inside – you don’t have to leave anything substantial in there.

Crumbs are enough.

Before you complain, just remember it’s not malicious vandalism – we’re simply being true to our nature.

And while we’re on the topic of peeling open vehicles, I’d like to take a little bit of credit for a heroic act. I saw that a fellow named Bob Renning did an amazing thing the other day when he pulled open the locked door of a burning car in order to save a stranger who was dying of smoke inhalation inside.

He did it through personal courage, brute strength, adrenaline, and smarts – he grabbed the top edge of the window frame and pulled it back, bending the metal at its weakest point and breaking the window so he could pull the victim to safety.

His heroically bent door is on the left. A door pulled open by a bear in search of food is on the right.

Hero Car
Bear Car

Need I say more? True heroes know where to look for inspiration.

Full disclosure: Mr. Renning performed his feat of strength while channeling an instinctive humanitarian impulse that is noble and good. I would do the very same thing to get a package of Ding Dongs out of the glove box. To tell the truth, I’ve done it to get a crumpled up Ding Dong wrapper off the floor of a locked car.

So I’m not saying Mr. Renning took his cues from a bear when he intervened, but if he had been a bear, he could not have done a better job.

Be nice to us! We’re brutes, but we’re cute!

Your pal,
Bart

What is your greatest feat of strength?

52 thoughts on “Jaws of Life”

  1. I think all the Baboons are out performing superhuman feats of strength this morning. I exercise great feats everyday biting my tongue to not comment or explode over the frequent idiocy of the higher ups at my work. Raising a daughter also took a great deal of strength. She is off to Boston this weekend with her best friend as BF competes in The national a singing competition for NATS (the national association of teachers of singing). It is a big deal for BF and I am happy for daughter to go with her. I am also happy that BF mother will be there, too.

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  2. Good morning. I don’t think I could open a car door that is locked by bending it open. I can handle jobs that require a little heavy lifting. I don’t need help loading my car as some people who work at certain stores seem to believe. Do they thing I am too old and weak to load a 40 pound bag of potting soil?

    The greatest feat of strength I can think of is carrying a heavy aluminum canoe up the stair step portage in the boundary waters. I did that when I was much younger. I have become a little too old and weak to do that again. I would need a canoe that is considerably lighter than that aluminum one to make a similar trip these days.

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    1. I sympathize with your agony of the stairstep portage, Jim. I haven’t had that particular pleasure yet, and if I ever do, I’ll certainly be hauling a 35-lb kevlar solo canoe. 🙂

      I’ve been fortunate enough to mostly use a wood strip canoe my father made back in 1965 for my canoe trips. It weighs 63 pounds, still heavy by today’s standards, but better than the old Alumacraft’s 75+ pounds (depending on length).

      Chris in Owatonna

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      1. Chris, I think the canoe that I had was more 75 pounds.; probably it close to 90 pounds. It really wasn’t the kind of canoe that one should use for a canoe trip in the boundary waters.

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        3. Portaging a Grumman aluminum canoe in the BWAC is probably the heaviest lifting I’ve done in a physical sense. But I’ve sometimes felt that I shouldered the weight of world singlehandedly.

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      2. The first time my dad did a portage (notorious Silver Falls Portage) it was with an aluminum canoe that had about 15 pounds of water trapped in the flotation chamber at the back end. He suffered.

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        2. And when he got to the end of the portage, a sharp hill that drops about 100 feet to the lake, the canoe suffered. He put the canoe at the crest of the hill and gave it a kick to send it careening from rock to rock all the way down.

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  3. In a more recent feat of strength, I also managed, at a moment’s notice last week, to wrangle an electrician to come to the house to move a pesky, ill placed wire and put in two new outlets so the window and door installers could install a new door in the garage. Electricians are hard to come by these days.

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  4. I am weaker than most men, although my legs have always been strong. One night we were canoeing a rapids on the Brule River, which is tricky in the dark for obvious reasons. My friends Charlie and Jeannie capsized and got their canoe pinned up against a big rock. The canoe was stuck against that rock. The canoe tipped in such a way that the current of the river flowed into the open side of the canoe, pinning it in place. To make things more hectic, Jeannie was eight months pregnant with their first child. It was a wild scene.

    Nobody could pull that canoe off the rock. But I got in the water and got my knees under the canoe, then used my leg strength to force the canoe up and free. It wasn’t exactly “superhuman,” but my friends were amazed. I’ll have to settle for that lone story as an example of strength.

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    1. Definitely qualifies as heroic in my book, Steve. I gotta wonder about the wisdom of paddling a river in the dark though. I hope whoever had that bright idea got a severe tongue lashing afterwards. But glad things turned out well.

      Chris in O-town

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      1. The only way you can fish that river for decent fish is in the dark. And there is really only one way to get at the productive water, which includes shooting “The Falls.” But hell, we were young and foolish then.

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        2. Why is fishing in the dark better in that river, Steve? And considering the rapids (not to mention the eight month pregnancy) wouldn’t fly fishing have been safer? I suspect a fair amount of beer was involved in the decision making?

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        3. That’s a river, PJ, where it is virtually impossible to catch a bigger trout in daylight. Trout 12 inches or longer only come out to feed when the sun goes off the water. I’m not sure why, but I fished that river for a dozen years or so without seeing a good sized fish in daylight.

          We were flyfishing. The Brule is big enough that you pretty much need a canoe to access the better spots. The prettiest water with the best trout lies between two distant bridges, and to move around you have to face “The Falls.” It isn’t a river for amateurs, which is one reason it has been so beautifully protected. You and Hans would love it. Believe me! The river is amazingly charming and unique.

          As for beer . . . no, we were totally sober! I’ve canoed that stretch with the rapids when under the influence of various drinks, but at night we knew better than to shoot rapids while buzzed.

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        4. We’ll have to check out the Brule before we’re both too decrepit to enjoy it. But it doesn’t sound like a good river for kayaking. Is it?

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        5. I hope this comment goes under PJ’s question. The Brule is wonderful for kayaking. In spring, the water that rushes toward Superior north of the town of Brule is a real smashing, dashing wild kayak ride. Open canoes then tend to get filled with water, even if your technique is good.

          But the river we loved was between Stone’s Bridge and Winnebijou (County B). That is calm water for the most part and perfectly lovely. The homes along that stretch were built in the 1890s to 1920s, and they are charming. Best of all is the water that runs by the enormous Cedar Island complex, the place where several US presidents have fished. The river gets noisy with rented canoes on weekends. It is best enjoyed early in the day on weekends, or at most times during the week. That river will always own part of my heart.

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  5. Unfortunately, my greatest feat of strength was lifting the rear quarter of my Toyota Tercel off the ground in a misguided attempt to loosen a lug nut in order to save some money by rotating my own tires. Instead, I stripped the lug nut, which required a tow to the local garage and repair of said lug nut bolt, all to the tune of about $150. Needless to say, that’s the last time I bothered trying to rotate tires myself. I’ll happily pay the money to the local garage–or better yet, buy my tires where free rotation is included every 6,000 miles. 😦

    Chris in Owatonna

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  6. It was robably was driving with Steve 26 hours to Portland and never once bringing up topics I knew to be emotionally-charged or memories I knew he’d see in an entirely different way. For me, keeping a boundary around 26 hours (and the next 3 days as well) of talking is more than a feat, it’s a miracle!

    A related feat was driving all that way since I’m a nervous driver and have rarely trekked more than one hour from the cottage. The next week end, my daughter asked if I’d like to go to Iowa for another body-building competition. I asked her how far it was and she said “About 6 hours”. I told her that “This is a mere puddle-jump for me!” I realized later that had I not done the BIG trip, I’d have declined her request.

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  8. Morning all. Like Renee and CB, my feats of strength are not literal. I’m sure you can all guess where I’m going — raising my daughter on my own is the top of the list. And I’m even going to take credit today for how well she has turned out!

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    1. Daughter’s trip to Boston is her first by plane herself so far away. She is meeting up with her BF at Logan Airport. Am I nervous? You bet. It will take great strength for me to remain calm on Friday when she travels. Has your daughter ever done such a thing?

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      1. I think you were asking vs. When my daughter was just 15, we put her on board the “Empire Builder” so she could travel to Montana to spend a month training sled dogs. The young woman who eventually stepped off that train back home was noticeably more mature and grown up.

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      2. Yes, my daughter is an inveterate flyer. She started flying from MSP to St. Louis and back when she was 8 or 9, to visit her grandparents. The last time she flew as an unaccompanied minor (she was 13), there were a handful of other UAs on the flight and the gate staff made them all wait until everyone else was boarded. This really irritated Teenager; she said “How hard is it to walk down the jetway and sit in your seat???”

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  9. I honestly don’t know about the physical feat – maybe helping load some truck doing some move. Psychically, it would be doing a great deal of listening to a family member tell horrific details of a bad experience, (when I really would rather not know said details), and remaining neutral enough to be of help as they see it all in a broader light.

    OT: just said Bye to out of town guest who took off from here today in a new, smallish RV. Note the envy in my voice…

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  11. I’ve portaged a canoe by myself. Don’t know what kind it was, some aluminum thing. Don’t remember which portage, but it is probably the shortest, smoothest, flattest portage in the BWCA. And I did need help getting the canoe up and down – after all, the canoe weighed almost as much as I did – but I carried it the whole way by myself.

    I also chopped quite a bit of wood one winter.

    Needless to say, this was a long time ago.

    I remember Jim Ed’s feat of strength on TLGMS: he tore a phone book in two (back when phone books were quite thick). I was so impressed.

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    1. I remember when I lived in NYC, my one wish was to live somewhere again where I could lift the phone book with one hand.

      OT: Which leads me to this – has any baboon tried looking up a phone number in the online White Pages, etc., lately? You can get a person’s criminal record, credit scores, arrest records, but I never did find a way to just get the phone number.

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      1. One problem is that so many people no longer have a land-line. If they do, I usually manage to find it.

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  13. I have little physical strength, so I know the importance of having the right tools. If I ever have to rescue someone from a burning car, I will require a crowbar.

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  14. my greatest feat of strength is my ability to continue sentences longer than it would seem possible foe a normal human being to do while carrying on s cvonversationvand psrticipatingvinva discussion with a group of people who over the course of the day have given thought to a discussed child rearing participating on strenuous outdoor activities and have mocked empathizing with and sang about unfortunate youth too dense to realize the danger of launching pregnant women into murky black whitewater all in the name of the ever elusive king of the trout similar to walter in golden pond and all this done with no capital letters at all which would if included tend to rule sentence structure in a way that would be counter intuitive in my thought configuration and the ability to dance and pivot from bone idea to the next

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  16. Morning all – Happy Fourth. Commenting here since today’s post doesn’t seem to want me to add a comment.

    I know someone who needs an ode. Thorin won a prize at the Tangletown Parade today – Most Handsome Boy Dog!

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      1. He won a ribbon and a fuzzy soccer ball squeaky toy – which Rhiannon immediately claimed. They are both sleeping right now and Rhiannon has the toy between her paws.

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  18. im going to bop back and forth between the jaws of life and the baboondocks today. dale is overworked and underpaid. its hard to get upset

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