But I'm Always on a Mountain When

If you could compile a listing of one hundred innocent and useful items to take on a hiking or skiing trip, I'm certain the plain ordinary Chapstick would certainly be on 'everyone's list. Allegedly, according to some conventional wisdom and a few urban legends, bears are indeed attracted to the smell. Probably due to the high percentage of beeswax in it. In any case, my first day outside since Maryanne returned I was suddenly now seeing a near record number of bears. Probably because Maryanne had taken about two hundred tubes of Chapstick and rubbed them all over my backpack (inside and out), and then also my jacket and boots. It had no obvious smell to me... but I was drawing every black bear within miles!

Seeing bears in April was far from unusual. They're just coming out of their dens after a long winters nap and are HUNGRY. They're foraging everywhere, and even the shy black bears become a bit more people tolerant. These black bears were actually unusually tolerant of me, and often approached far closer than they ever would under normal circumstances. The older bears could have possibly recognized my scent and had me properly filed in their rather smart brains as "harmless -- not good to eat", but it seemed as if all of them were taking a special interest in me. Fortunately, although they were unusually curious, none decided to sample me to see if I was indeed edible.

I still didn't think too much about it until Grumpy Gertie came looking for me. In her malevolent brain I was probably inscribed as "very annoying -- probably very good to eat -- find out at earliest convenience".

Gertie got a whiff of me and decided that today was a pretty good day to settle up on some old grudges. She cornered me a few hours away from my cabin, near a small clearing along the edge of a trail with a fairly sheer outcrop of near vertical rock to one side, and a bit of a rough, near vertical slope going down the hill on the other side. I didn't like the odds of trying to scramble down that slope -- it would be more like a barely controlled fall. I decided that another dose of bear repellant would probably do Gertie a world of good in improving her attitude. There was just one problem... my can, which ought to have been full, was apparently now completely empty!

Now it was time to duck and cover and pray for the best. My rifle was on my shoulder, but there was no time to even think about using it. I fell into a fetal position covering my head and kept my eyes as far away from the enraged bear as possible. Playing dead usually works, and it did this time as well, mostly I think because there was something irresistible about my backpack, and she wanted that as her first course.

Gertie had herself a fine time first whacking my unmoving form about and trying to rip my backpack off from my shoulders. I had to move very slow and carefully, but I was able to slide my arms out enough from the straps that with another smack or two, Gertie had ripped my pack clean off of my back and sent it flying down the steep, near vertical hillside. She then had the choice of munching on me or chasing after my backpack, but the pack seemed much tastier to her and off she went after it.

My back was clawed up a bit, I had a fairly bad claw rip across my left thigh that hurt like hell and was bleeding a good bit, and I had a weak bite scrape mark on the back of my arms and across my neck where she had tried to bite and snap my neck, but my backpack had mostly protected me there. I wasn't about to wait for her to come back, and I skedaddled while the getting was good and Gertie declined to follow after me.

I stopped as soon as possible to take a long ice cold water bath to try and rinse off any lingering scents, and get my bleeding leg under control, but I was pretty sure whatever marking scent had been used it had been mostly in my pack. I scuffed my boots clean in the dirt but I did notice however, that my jacket, once wet, now seemed to be unusually water resistant, and I reluctantly buried it. Everything else seemed mostly fine. I limped back home slowly and didn't see another bear.

*********************

I hadn't entirely decided how I would deal with my unfaithful and murderous wife yet, but I eventually determined that I'd need to first try to find one of the Rangers who could then contact either the Park Police, the County Sheriff or a Federal Marshall... or all of the above. Crimes occurring in National Parks can get rather complicated quickly. They say there is never a Park Ranger around when you need one (except if you're lighting an illegal fire, or hunting or fishing in the wrong place), but there was one here and now in front of my cabin, apparently waiting for me. I had bad news for him -- and he had apparently some even worse news for me.

While my loving wife had been playing pretend "make-up" with me, her lover Dennis, who had accompanied her for immoral support on this trip, had set up camp at the nearest campground by our cabin to wait for her. He'd camped a time or two in his life and wasn't a complete tenderfoot, and was doing just fine until his lover Maryanne showed up at his camp soon after seeing me off on my daily hike, bringing along with her a bag with about 200 empty Chapstick tubes.

She hadn't wanted to just throw out the evidence anywhere around here... it would seem a bit suspicious to wonder why she needed so much lip protection, so she had emptied them all into a trashbag to take with them back to Seattle, to dispose of them discretely there. She never got the chance. Grumpy Gertie had found them first!

I'm a bit shaky on the exact timeline, but according to the investigating Rangers and an FBI team that come out later in the day, Maryanne had gone directly to her lover the moment my back was out of sight of our cabin. She and Dennis were enthusiastically celebrating their likely success in his tent in a state of complete undress when Gertie came into their camp, attracted by the scent of all of the Chapstick tubes. Now they might have been fine if they had just stayed quiet in their tent, but Maryanne, no lover of bears (especially Gertie) let loose with one of her earsplitting screams. Gertie, meaner and perhaps a little smarter than your average bear, recognized that particular scream and settled herself down for a bit of revenge... and a desperately needed early spring snack. Temporarily sated, she then followed the trail of appealing beeswax scent towards my cabin, and then she'd spent the morning following my scented path to track me down too.

There was fortunately at least one surviving witness who could collaborate all of the important details. Dennis survived the fairly massive mauling he took when he was finally knocked senseless and permanently crippled, which improving his ability to play dead until after Gertie had left. Maryanne, the primary target of Gertie's rage and hunger fared considerably less well off, and had to suffer the social indignity of a closed casket funeral for her remains.

I was now officially a widower, and somewhat against my intentions I ended up inheriting a rather large fortune from my late wife's estate. Despite the fact that it was clearly established in court that my late lamented spouse had died of an accidental death while engaged in the act of attempting to murder me, her family and their throng of lawyers didn't quite see it that way. Oh, I could have eventually prevailed through decades of appeals, but they seemed to want the money a lot more than I did, and I cut a deal with them to restore some peace and quiet to my life. I still ended up with a majority of the estate, which was a huge chunk of change that exceeded anything I was likely to spend in my lifetime, and if used for my scientific expenses would keep me up to my ears in bear shit for a very, very long time. For tax purposes I've created a scientific research foundation that writes me (and a few friends) a fat Grant check every spring.

*********************

Dennis eventually stood trial for his role in the ghastly drama, and blamed everything completely upon his late lover Maryanne, but the jury had rather less sympathy for the now wheelchair ridden cripple than he might have hoped. He did, however, provide the elusive motive for the crime. Money.

Her late Aunt was also highly against the institution of divorce, and the terms of her estate specified that if Maryanne divorced for any reasons within seven years of marriage, she would forfeit about one half of her Trust Fund. She had originally been willing to wait those seven years for Dennis, but his early return to her in Seattle had made her change her mind, and together they had devised this scheme to create an unfortunate 'accident' for me. In the end he received an initial stiff sentence of twenty years to life, but as his own family had the money and political connections for near unlimited appeals, he ended up serving only about seven years before his release.

Still, as far as I'm concerned, justice was done. Gertie made sure that Dennis would spend the rest of his life crippled in a wheelchair and her claws had well scarred his once devilishly handsome looks. I was not dissatisfied; as far as I was concerned justice had been done.

He didn't enjoy his freedom for long however. Shortly after his release from prison, Dennis married a striking and statuesque young blonde of good family, but poor financial reserves. Everyone had her pegged as a gold-digger and it wasn't much of shock to society when his unattended wheelchair somehow accidently slipped and somehow rolled into his backyard swimming pool where he drowned, to the shock and dismay of his heartbroken wife and caregiver. Yeah right... the 'grieving widow', now flush with his cash (and an absurd amount of life insurance money), was nearly immediately back once more in the embraces of an old boyfriend and they're living now on a yacht in Florida. Karma is a bitch sometimes.

Gertie's own days were now numbered and she'd munched on her last camper. I had wanted to do the hunting job myself, but that's what Rangers are for, plus I was still in the hospital getting a bunch of stitches and was kept for awhile for observation. It was very much against all of the rules and regulations and park policies, but somehow, accidentally, Gertie began her afterlife as a rug on the living room floor of my cabin... freshly taxidermied, but allegedly now recorded on some forged piece of paper as an 'antique', thus legal for me to own under the Protected Species Act. No one would confess to the crime, but judging from the sea of very guilty looking Ranger faces, I think they were all in on it together. None of them liked Gertie (or Maryanne) much and I think everyone was fairly glad to see them both gone... and me healthy and happy once more. It's good to have friends!

*********************

I didn't remain a merry widower myself for too very long. The next spring a new young lady biologist with a special interest in Bald Eagles came to join us and we hit it off together nearly immediately. A year later I proposed to her from the very top of Mount Challenger and she instantly accepted! Now we spend our entire time together out in the fields, hills and mountains, her eyes in the sky and mine on the ground. Together we make a hell of a team!

We're both happy to remain 'poor' in our wilderness cabin and quietly do our biological scientific research, and Gertie quietly keeps us warm company on those cold winter nights we spend lovemaking on her. We don't own much, but we have each other and it's everything in the world to us. In fact, we've got all of the bear necessities!