SHE SHOVED A BEAR pic.twitter.com/a46vljFNV7
— cat (@9livesrock) June 1, 2021
Goddess protect her, if her mom has a service dog, presumably this kid has not had the luxury of waiting on further instructions. And, in retrospect, she advises against shoving bears, per NPR:
A 17-year-old Southern California girl got in a shoving match with a bear to protect her dogs and walked away nearly unscathed.
Hailey Morinico and her mother were gardening in their backyard in Bradbury, Calif., on Monday afternoon when a bear and her cubs began walking atop a cinder block wall at one end of the garden…
Video of the terrifying encounter shows that the appearance of the family of California black bears on the short wall set off one of Morinico’s dogs, which began barking and lunging at them. Mama bear, in turn, started swatting at the large dog and three small ones that had joined the canine vs. ursine confrontation…
“I see the bear, it’s grabbing my dog, Valentina, and I have to run over there. She’s a baby,” Morinico said. “And the first thing I think to do is push the bear. And somehow it worked.”…
The teen said she is lucky to have walked away with only a sprained finger and a scraped knee.
Her advice: Do not push bears. “Don’t do what I did — you might not have the same outcome.”
debbie
Sometimes reflexes are not your friends.
Timurid
Mongo only pawn in game of life.
Ken
@debbie: As a friend of mine found out when he dropped a carving knife, and managed to catch it before it hit the ground.
Another Scott
Adrenaline is a hell of a thing.
Just an amazing story, and video. I’m glad she’s Ok!
Cheers,
Scott.
MagdaInBlack
She was running on pure adrenaline. Wow !
( and Scott beat me to it)
Roger Moore
The most important thing: if you live in one of the foothill communities like Bradbury, plan for encounters with bears. There are enough bears out there and they like coming down into town enough that you should treat a bear encounter as a “when” not an “if”. Fortunately, most of them don’t want trouble any more than you do, so they can often be scared away.
Old Dan and Little Ann
Fucking Crazy!
Jackie
OT: Nikki Fried just jumped into the race to unseat DeSantis!!! Goooo Nikki!
J R in WV
Better to be quick than to be dead!
I must confess, I have taken to reading Space Opera, SciFi Fantasy, anything to distract me from the current terrible news cycle. So if you wonder, I’m deep into my tablet’s ability to provide a huge volume of inexpensive fiction. Including Frankensteinbeck’s work… which is pretty amusing and distracting.
Otherwise things are doing well.
Oh. Went to town this afternoon. Stopped for lunch, because it’s ill-advised to go to Kroger’s on a hungry stomach. In the sandwich shop, lady walks to the cash register with her mask under her chin. All the other folks working on food are wearing a mask properly.
She asks “How can I help you?”
I reply, “Please put your mask on properly!”
She replies “We’re no longer required to wear them!” and does adjust the mask to cover her mouth and nose.
I said “If you want to sell me lunch, please continue to wear a mask!” Lunch was very good. Kroger’s was light on masks, moreso than for many months. I may learn how to order to pick up, as opposed to spending 3 hours shopping.
You all take care, stay safe, wear a mask in crowds !!!
WaterGirl
@Ken: Ouch.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: Does the reference to your tablet mean that you finally found it? Or did you have to buy one?
You didn’t say “new tablet”, so I have high hopes for the former.
TheOtherHank
I once got into a fight with a duck, but that’s not nearly as risky as this
debbie
@Ken:
Just a nick, but the same thing happened to me last week.
TaMara (HFG)
Colorado just had its second bear mauling this spring. The first one, you probably heard, a woman was killed while walking her dogs and they found and euthanized the mama and cubs because they had eaten on the body – and it’s assumed those bears cannot be rehabilitated.
Yesterday a man came upon a mama and her cubs in his garage and was injured as he tried to slowly back away. Mama was euthanized, they’re looking for the cubs, and they are hoping to rehabilitate them.
These both made the news because it is so rare…
TaMara (HFG)
@Ken: A friend of mine – a paramedic no less – dropped a knife into her foot and without thinking, pulled it out. Luckily, it had not severed anything on the way in…or out.
Ohio Mom
JR in WV:
The mask compliance at my Kroger’s has been dropping precipitously for a couple of weeks now. Today was the last day Ohio is requiring masks so I am expecting almost all bare faces the next time I’m there. Except for mine.
dmsilev
@Ken: Shop class in elementary school, I dropped a hot soldering iron and likewise reflexively tried to catch it. Ouch. Never did that again.
burnspbesq
Bear encounters are not uncommon where upscale suburbia has invaded their territory.
Jeffro
@Ken:
@TaMara (HFG):
@dmsilev:
I’m going to jinx myself by saying this but oh well: I have dropped multiple knives over the years while cooking and never once reached out to try and grab any of them.
(Jeffro, next week: “AAAAAARRRGH! Why did I say that????!?”
burnspbesq
@J R in WV:
‘Search on “J.N. Chaney” in the Kindle Store.
craigie
@TaMara (HFG): “Euthanized” is such a nice word for what’s really happening.
Dan B
In other news of things that you should not do there was instant karma for a group of homophobes harassing some gay people flying a Pride flag on their boating Moses Lake, WA – the heart of RMNJ territory outside of the border with Idaho. The bigots were circling the gay folks boat yelling and giving them the finger when their boat caught fire and exploded. They were rescued by the gay boaters but did not thank them. The authorities are investigating.
There is a debate as to whether the wonderful allies at the Jewish Space Laser or the fact that gay people can control not only hurricanes and earthquakes but can direct fire from a distance.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: Bradbury is very upscale.
RaflW
As there continues to be development/growth into the habitat, this will continue. I also wonder what hydrologic stresses in the West may contribute to wildlife venturing in and encountering more often.
.
@craigie: I think it’s much more direct and accurate than ‘put down’, for example.
Ken
@burnspbesq: It’s hard to avoid invading their territory, especially if you throw in their former territory.
(I am wondering what’s the story behind the blank space in the California Central Valley. Lack of evidence? Too wet before human intervention?)
Mike in NC
Going to Key West last week was the first time we flew in 20 months. In normal times we seldom flew more than once every year or two, so we never signed up for TSA Precheck. Pisses me off that after all these years we still have to take off our shoes before getting on a plane. Also annoyed by people who are too cheap to check a bag, so they try to cram large suitcases into the overhead bins. When we landed last night, the plane sat on the tarmac for 45 minutes until a gate was available.
CaseyL
I was taking a bead-making class. The instructor emphasized, over and over again, that we were on NO ACCOUNT to let our hands pass in front of our torches – not only was the flame ridiculously hot, it was hot enough that almost half was invisible.
So what do I do? I was trying to move my marver stick (the metal stick holding the little blob of molten glass) to a better angle and… passed my hand right in front of and even into the flame. Very quickly, but still…
I felt nothing (other than hugely, hugely embarrassed), shot over to the sink, and put my hand under cold running water and kept it there for, well, a good 5 minutes.
I was VERY lucky, and walked away with no burn at all.
Jeffro
@burnspbesq: we have a juvenile black bear running around our neighborhood and Mrs. Fro saw him just last week! 0_0
(this is on top of everything else running around here in central VA – I look up newly-spotted species of frogs, lizards, turtles, and birds all the time, in addition to occasionally seeing old favorites like snapping turtles and Cooper’s hawks)
Ken
Airbending, earthbending, firebending. Any evidence of waterbending?
rikyrah
Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) tweeted at 8:05 PM on Tue, Jun 01, 2021:
House Dem Caucus chair Hakeem Jeffries on the call today raised the prospect of the Justice Dept appointing a special counsel to investigate the Capitol attack, among other proposals, per source familiar.
(https://twitter.com/hugolowell/status/1399894812338364417?s=03)
Kelly
@dmsilev: Two years ago I cut some steel rebar with an angle grinder, then picked it up bare handed. Got a blister.
Roger Moore
@burnspbesq:
In this case, interestingly enough, the people were there first. Southern California was originally home to brown bears but not black. When the brown bears were hunted to extinction, the area was temporarily free of bears. Some time in the mid 20th Century, the National Park Service relocated some problem black bears from Yosemite to Southern California, which is where the current population came from.
prostratedragon
@Dan B: My favorite story of the day, though bear shoving is pretty good too.
Geminid
@burnspbesq: I know some folks who heard some thuds! outside their house one night. The next morning they found that a bear had been flipping large step stones, hunting for grubs. This was in one of the suburbs close to Charlottesville. I don’t see bear in Greene County, 20 miles northwest, but huntin’ is a big deal out here, and once people get enough deer they see bear as a challenge. It’s not really much of a challenge, though; bear have no chance against men with rifles.
Ken
I just saw an ad for the new Disney-Pixar movie Luca . The IMDB page doesn’t credit H. P. Lovecraft, even thought the story appears to be about a Deep One infiltrating human society.
Geminid
@Ken: I’ve heard that a really good waterwitch doesn’t just find underground water, but can move it as well.
burnspbesq
@Mike in NC:
‘You want to talk air-travel hell? You haven’t lived until you’re standing in line to get on the 4:00 flight from LAX to JFK and a bunch of Hasidic men show up.
burnspbesq
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Indeed. LA County’s answer to Emerald Bay.
NotMax
Amazing bear snapshot just before a horrible fate.
Comrade Colette
@burnspbesq: I haven’t lived that particular brand of hell, but I have been on a high-speed ferry on the Danube with a late-boarding group of Hasidic men, each of whom loudly and rudely insisted he could not sit next to a woman – and of course that she was the one who had to move.
I did not.
Neither did my mother.
(Seats were in pairs, and we’d each grabbed a seat next to a window, which is why we weren’t sitting together.)
trollhattan
I wonder if a bear was chasing this kid in Oregon, who managed to break both the high school and college records in the 1500, at 3:34:36. (Old HS record was four seconds slower and set twenty years ago.)
https://www.runnersworld.com/news/a36579509/hobbs-kessler-high-school-1500-meter-record-portland-track-festival-results/
Betty
@Mike in NC: Ah, the joys of flying. Napolitano said she planned to get rid of the shoe thing yet we are. The water is also stupid. There never was a legitimate threat.
Gin & Tonic
@Geminid: No challenge, and you can’t eat the meat.
Jackie
@Dan B: This made the local news – but, only AFTER it went viral. I’m ashamed of my side of the Mountains.?
Martin
I get it. A few years ago we had a bobcat (didn’t realize it was a bobcat) in a tree outside my back door. I’m out there shoving a flashlight up into this tree trying to see what’s growling and hissing at me.
I have a remarkably poor sense of self-preservation. I’m smart enough to not walk into traffic, but I’m not reflexively inclined to not walk into traffic. If there were a bear harassing my dog, I’d do the same thing trusting my white male mediocrity to protect me. And then I’d come inside after, look at the TikTok, and agree that was a wildly stupid thing to do.
NotMax
Animalia: “Short” is relative when a bear could tower 12 feet.
;)
Gin & Tonic
@Betty: My daughter was flying last week (with her husband) to visit the in-laws in Florida. TSA apparently believes that hummus is a liquid, and she had to throw it out.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Saw a piece once about a resort in Japan which includes bear sashimi, in season, on the menu.
trollhattan
@Gin & Tonic:
Hummas/Hamas, potato/kill you in your sleep, one cannot be too careful.
beef
@Ken:
No, but some genderbending has been reported.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Trichinosis here we come!
Uncle Cosmo
@dmsilev: HS advanced science class, well over 50 years ago – I grabbed a half-full Erlenmeyer flask off a stand failing to notice that under the stand stood a Bunsen burner, and it was lit… I threw the flask across the countertop & it skidded to a stop, unbroken, as I screamed for the teacher. Butesin picrate was my saving salve that day…
CaseyL
I’ve never encountered a bear while alone. The closest I’ve come was with a group of people, all at a resort that specializes in bear watching, and we had a guide with us. A young grizz came up through the trees, and our guide had us all walk backwards, bunched together, singing and clapping, to where the road curved and the bear could no longer see us. (The bear was completely uninterested, just wanting to find a nice spot to nap.)
On another trip some years earlier, while in Glacier National Park, I bought and read a great book called Bear Aware. It was unintentionally hilarious, such as noting that playing dead works with grizzlies but not with black bears – after helpfully pointing out that it’s hard to distinguish a grizz from a black bear from a distance. “Look for the hump,” the book said, which of course begs the question of how you’re supposed to do that when the bear is coming straight at you at 35 mph!
Jay
@Gin & Tonic:
you can eat bear meat, in fact, in Canada, you are supposed to.
however, you can’t eat polar bear livers.
bears diet is pretty low on the food chain, as a result bear meat is safer than say, bluefin tuna.
Dan B
@Ken: There was much discussion of how gay people combined with water is very powerful.
Two black women kissed at their hotel’s pool and were shouted at with curses by two women who claimed “There are children watching!” while dropping f-bombs. The crowd started yelling at the two nutcase including chants of “shame” until security escorted them out.
Water and the gehz!
Ruckus
@debbie:
One hopefully learns very early on that reflexes in some situations are not your friends. Such as working in a machine shop. One reflex is to stick out a foot to break the fall of something you’ve dropped. A block of steel, that say weighs 20 lbs and has sharp edges, can easily make your foot into a very bloody jigsaw puzzle. One that weighs 40 lbs can easily make said puzzle unable to be reassembled. The list in this type of job, of reflexes to ignore, is longish and best learned very early.
joel hanes
@J R in WV:
I have taken to reading Space Opera
The Vorkosigan books by Bujold are very fine indeed.
And in fantasy, I like her Chalion series quite a lot, especially the first.
Geminid
@Gin & Tonic: I’ve eaten bear meat that was pretty good. But I still wish people didn’t hunt them. I guess I sympathize with bears ’cause I’m nearsighted too.
If bears were more plentiful here, my friend Debbie might need to put a bear-proof enclosure around her two beehives. But she likes to build and there are plenty of suitable trees for material. There is a replica of an old mountain farm up on the Blue Ridge Parkway at Humpback Gap. It includes a bear-proof hog pen.
Dan B
Two black women kissed at their hotel’s pool in Sacramento and were shouted at with curses by two women who claimed “There are children watching!” while dropping f-bombs. The crowd started yelling at the two nutcase including chants of “shame” until security escorted them out.
Water and the gehz!
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Specifically, if memory serves, bear paw sashimi. Apparently other parts of the bear aren’t considered sashimi grade meat.
Jay
@CaseyL:
https://portal.clubrunner.ca/1969/stories/just-for-laughs-1
dmsilev
@CaseyL:
Seems pretty straightforward. You play dead, and if the bear ignores you it was a grizzly. If not, it was a black bear.
Martin
@Gin & Tonic: Can’t say she wasn’t warned.
Anoniminous
@Betty:
I disagree. Dihydrogen monoxide is a dangerous and corrosive – it destroys STEEL!!! – and will kill you if you inhale too much.
Ken
Similarly, most of the ways to tell a crocodile from an alligator involve examining the teeth and jaws.
Dan B
@CaseyL: Years ago we were at Newberry Caldera in Central Oregon. There were signs to beware of bears. My partner insisted we pitch tent close to the car so we could get in to safety. Guess where the bear was at 2 AM?
If you guessed ON TOP OF THE CAR! You did good. Car had a dent in the hood forever.
NotMax
@Ruckus
During the short stint I worked when in college unloading tractor trailers at a UPS hub during the graveyard shift, witnessed someone reaching to grab the topmost carton in a stack, not realizing there was a small package out of view on top of that one.
Said small parcel toppled, conking the guy smack on the noggin. Knocked him out cold, as it turned out to be a package holding a single 45 pound ball bearing.
Jay
@CaseyL:
I used to fish remote estuaries and rivers during salmon season. Between the sedges, rushes and underbrush, seeing a bear until it was close, was almost impossible. So in the beginning, I carried a 12 gauge shotgun loaded with a banger first, then slugs.
Learned that the bears were really only interested in the salmon, other bears and the good fishing spots. Learned how to smell them or hear them, and avoid them. Learned how to speak to them. Stopped carrying the shotgun.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
NM Special to replace Deb Haaland
earlier that day…
frosty
@Ken: I’m not sure when I started doing this, or if there was an injury involved, but my reflex on dropping knives or most any tool is to step back, raise my hands, and watch where it goes. Most stuff will survive a drop.
Ken
Now I’m trying to figure out why someone would order a single giant ball bearing. Other than for comedic value, that is. (Was it from the Acme Corporation?)
Roger Moore
@CaseyL:
What this really means is that you need to know about the specifics of the area you’re visiting rather than generalities. For example, they can’t say you can tell bears apart by looking at their fur, because in some areas the black bears have lighter colored fur. But if you know the black bears in your area are actually black, the fur color can be useful.
Ruckus
I lived in Monrovia for the first 2 decades of my life, Bradbury was basically the ritzy part of Monrovia, although it is a separate city. Where I lived, if I walked 2 blocks north, I was in uninhabited mountains that had a lot of wildlife. We used to have peacocks roam in our yard, although they came from the arboretum about 4 miles away in Arcadia. But deer and other wildlife was not unusual, although most people know better than to fuck with them. And over the last few decades the bears have multiplied and do drop in from time to time, looking for food. The north end of Bradbury is up against the hills and wild life would feel right at home there.
Miss Bianca
@TaMara (HFG): Oh, great…I’ve been dreading either me or the dogs or both encountering a mama and cubs around our place…I saw two adolescent cubs come ambling up the driveway last year and it freaked me the fuck out…fortunately, both dogs were indoors at the time.
Anoniminous
@NotMax:
That company needed to hire Mike Ehrmantraut, Security Consultant
Workplace Safety: Madrigal Electromotive Security Training
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
Special elections are an unreliable metric. Turnout is almost always depressed, unique conflation of circumstances in Georgia this year being the exception (yeah, know those were technically runoffs and not specials, but the point stands).
Roger Moore
@Ruckus:
The bears have been moving much deeper into the cities. A couple of years ago, they tranquilized one in Arcadia south of the 210. That’s a couple of miles into the city, and it most likely crossed the freeway at a busy street underpass. I don’t think they’re living in town the way coyotes do, but they’re extending how long they stay.
Jay
@Ken:
it could be the ball in the bearing, but was more likely to be the whole “bearing assembly, ball”,
Martin
@Ken: Replacement bearing for a crane, something like that. 45 lbs would be about 6 inches in diameter – smaller than one might think. I think the main gun turrets on battleships sat on 10″ bearings or thereabouts. They probably weighed 150-200lbs each.
Ruckus
@NotMax:
Yep.
I’ve worked around things that can not just injure you but worse if you get in the way, for the last 60 yrs. I learned my first week the hard way that it can be very dangerous. I was put running an old style machine that could take a rather large bite out of a piece of steel and the cutting tool was making really beautiful blue chips that curled up as it cut. I picked one up, no one had told me not to…. One of the more experienced guys saw me and just picked me up and carried me over to the sink, turned on the cold water and stuck my hand in the water. Which kept that beautiful blue chip from curling around my thumb, which likely would have meant it would have to be amputated. Now I wasn’t smart enough to not pick up a piece of steel that was so hot that it turned blue but I was smart enough never to be that stupid again. I kept the piece of steel, epoxied it to a finished piece of wood as a reminder. Made a nice looking bit of artwork as well. I may still have it in a box somewhere.
CaseyL
@Roger Moore: Their territories can overlap. The place I went bear watching had both black bears and grizzlies. The black bears would come right up to the lodge; the grizzlies stayed in the wilderness areas. We got blase about seeing black bears, because they were all over the place.
I’m not nearly as afraid of bears as I should be; I like them too much. (Not so stupid as to try making friends with one, though, should I be anywhere near it!)
Jay
@Roger Moore:
in BC they advise that people outdoors carry bear spray and bells that constantly make noise as you move.
They also advise that you learn to become aware of recent bear sign such as tracks, fur snagged in branches, rubbing trees, scat.
Grizzly tracks for example, both front and hind, have claw indentations roughly half the size of the paw print. Black bear tracks have a claw imprint more dog like.
Blackbear scat contains seeds from berries, fibre from grasses and other plants where Grizzly scat contains bells and smells of pepper.
NotMax
@Ken
Ours was not to reason why, ours was to try to keep to a pace of ten items per minute moved from the trailer to the conveyor belt.
And to stick around, no matter how long it took, if an expected truck was delayed for any reason. In an unheated warehouse with the bay doors open. In winter. In Minnesota.
;)
Worst items to handle were the irregulars, odd or unusual shaped packages not in cartons or otherwise not compatible with stacking. Things like wrapped up muffler and tailpipe assemblies, which were stowed in a compartment underneath the floor of the trailer. Hidden sharp edges not uncommon in those.
Martin
@NotMax: That said, consistently improved turnouts in special elections would suggest greater engagement by the electorate and would point to better turnout in the midterms. If Dems are turning out in greater numbers for this election, then 2022 might cover the gerrymander point advantage the GOP holds.
HumboldtBlue
Drone operator forgot to read his Greek mythology and went all Icarus with his drone.
Jay
@CaseyL:
Blackbears kill far more people than Grizzlies, and often do it as an act of active predation. Most human kills by Grizzles are defensive.
Human kills of both bears of course, way outnumber bear kills of humans.
I have eaten bear a couple of times as a guest, but even when I hunted, I would never hunt bear.
mrmoshpotato
I doubt the Superfans would approve.
mrmoshpotato
Oopsy.
Brachiator
Hailey was messing with a momma bear and her cubs? She is sooooo lucky.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
There is more food in town than in the hills. They are bigger than the normal city inhabitants. And hungry. And I know where the 210 is, I lived here before it was built. Actually a couple of friend were driving on it a couple of days before it officially opened and stopped by the CHP. I actually lived in Monrovia before all but the Pasadena Freeway was built. I remember riding on 2 lane roads that were the only way to get north of LA to visit relatives. One of my uncles had his houses bought up twice because they were building freeways there. I’m not sure but always thought his buying the houses in the first place was because somehow he had an idea exactly where the freeways would be built and bought houses with eminent domain in mind. He made out well from this.
Another Scott
@dmsilev: Similarly:
A sure-fire way to tell what kind of bear is chasing you is to climb a tree:
– If the bear follows you up the tree, it’s a black bear.
– If the bear knocks the tree down, it’s a grizzly bear.
(There’s probably an addendum if it’s a polar bear.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Increasing food and fuel prices have the conservatives in my feed freaking out and blaming Biden. It seems like we never get a break.
Searcher
@Jay: I’ve occasionally considered getting a shotgun because bears are common where I’m at — I’ve seen a bear in my yard twice in person, once from about 10 feet away, and have noticed evidence of their passage a dozen times or so — but ultimately decided that because I wasn’t going to carry the darned thing everywhere I went every time I went outside there wasn’t much point in having it at all. If I could get back inside the house to get a firearm, well, there wouldn’t be much point in going back outside. Even if I was in the house and saw a bear enter the yard when my child was outside, I’d be much more likely to hurl myself out the door as quickly as possible, bare-handed, than spend the time going to the gun safe, unlocking it, retrieving the ammunition, loading it, and then going outside to see if my child was still alive.
Geminid
@Martin: Virginia’s election this November should provide a data point regarding the relative motivation of Republican and Democratic voters. Biden fell just short of a ten point win last November, and that was the largest margin of victory for a Democrat since LBJ in 1964. Northam won the last Governor’s race by 9 points I think. These will be good benchmarks to compare to the result this November.
Tim Kaine and Mark Warner did much better than this in their last Senate races, but they had weak opponents. Virginia seems so reliably Democratic these days that it’s easy to forget that Mark Warner barely won reelection in 2014. That’s the same year Eric Cantor lost his primary, and I think it marked the crest of the tea party wave in this state. The tea party cranks and their bible thumping allies are even stronger now within the Republican party, but the party itself is shrinking.
Interstadial
@Ken: The red areas on the central coast and in southern California are new territory for the black bear. Pre-European settlement, those areas had only grizzly (brown) bears. So it wasn’t just the Central Valley where they were absent.
At least when grizzly bears were around in California, black bears seemed to be mostly limited to areas with coniferous forests. My guess is that the tall trees provide a fast escape route, since grizzly bears will prey on black bears.
Parts of the Central Valley were very wet but other areas were very dry. It was a real mix of habitats.
Another Scott
Zooks!!
Zooks!!!
Cheers,
Scott.
Quiltingfool
@Martin: One night I heard the chickens raising a ruckus. Went out to see what was going on, and there was a bobcat nosing around the pens. In my most stern teacher voice, I scolded the cat. He didn’t care. And continued to mosey around the yard. My husband was not impressed with how I handled the situation. Most country folk would have shot it, but I just don’t like the thought of killing a bobcat. Of course, I didn’t want my chickens to be killed, either. They always got so excited when I’d get home from work — they knew I was the “Lunch Lady.”
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
I don’t know. The “if not…” part seems to be something the authorities would find out at the time of the autopsy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Another Scott: I thought those things looked like something made up for a muppet movie or Harry Potter. Now, having heard one, and the one I looked up on YouTube because… what?… they sound even more unreal.
The Dangerman
Shoving a bear? A boo boo, certainly not smarter then the average person.
Citizen Alan
@Brachiator: Luckily for her, mama bear made the tactically unwise decision to try tightrope walking along the top of a cinderblock fence no more than a foot wide at most, and the girl shoved her broadside and knocked her down into the other yard before running away.
NotMax
@The Dangerman
At first read that as shaving a bear.
Also not a keen idea.
Jay
@Another Scott:
if it doesn’t know what a tree is, it’s a Polar Bear.
JCJ
@NotMax: Which do you suppose is more dangerous – shaving a bear or shaving a cat’s ass? ?
Ken
@NotMax: Definitely something Jim would have been sent to do, while Marlin Perkins filmed it from the Jeep.
Roger Moore
@Another Scott:
If there are trees to climb, it’s not a polar bear.
NotMax
@JCJ
“Tonight, on a very special episode of Jackass…”
Person who pulled the second shortest straw assigned to apply the after shave lotion.
:)
@The Dangerman
BTW, I saw what you did there.
;)
mrmoshpotato
@Citizen Alan: I think the bear walking the wall contributed to the woman’s decision to give it a shove. It’s not like she went out there all “I’m gonna body slam this bear!”
Sister Golden Bear
@Dan B: I see it as more of an example of divine chancla.
Proof that God exists, and she’s pissed at the haters.
jnfr
This is terrifying. I feel lucky we just get coyotes and bobcats and raccoons.
Sister Golden Bear
@Ken:
Too miserably hot during the summers, same reason you won’t find them in the eastern desert areas. Plus probably not enough (naturally occuring) food.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Finance bros, man. I don’t know.
Mary G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Party time! (no link to FTFNYT where I went by accident)
???
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Eat the rich.
PIGL
@Ruckus: bears in Monrovia? As in west africa?
Mallard Filmore
@Quiltingfool:
My housecat is terrified of the sound of plastic grocery bags. Instead of scolding, next time try snapping one of those bags.
HumboldtBlue
I really enjoy Greg Judy.
I know nothing of husbandry, but he makes it so relatable.
Feathers
I did have an encounter with a bear. Rural Virginia, near Sperryville, just east of Shenandoah National Park. I was in high school and staying at the cabin of some friends of my parents, along with a few other family. I took about four or five kids down the dirt driveway for a walk. We were about a half mile or so from the cabin when we came to a clearing with a big blackberry bush. There was a bear munching out on the blackberries. I yelled out, Bear, started jumping up and down and yelling. The kids froze. The bear looked at me with a very startled face, turned and bolted. We all skedaddled back to the house. There was relief, jealousy, and an asshole or two saying they didn’t believe us. Nearly 40 years later, I’m being introduced to the kids’ kids as the lady who saved me from the bear.
My parents bought a cabin nearby. There is a fully stocked trout stream at the base of the property. Needless to say, this means you see some bears. They run away when you yell at them. We have theorized that they know going to the stream is risky, it runs alongside the road, so they are on the lookout for humans. My parents put a porch on the front of the cabin and bears will actually hang out there. They stay away if they know people are there, but my mom has opened the door and surprised one, which ran off.
On a sadder note, and more to the point of the post, it is estimated that over half of fatal human/bear encounters involve dogs. Either the dog tries to protect the human and the human tries to save the dog, or the dog is being chased by the bear and runs to the human. That is something people who bring dogs to the cabin are warned about.
Comrade Colette
So you know that icebreaker activity large groups sometimes do, where you’re asked “tell us something about you that no one would guess from looking” or “what is your superpower” or “say one fun fact about yourself”? I know I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s mine:
I’m a bear magnet.
I have never not seen a bear in Yosemite, and I’ve been there over a dozen times.
The first time I visited my parents while they lived in Anchorage, they’d been there two years and had never seen a bear. We saw one on the way back from picking me up at the airport. We saw bears on each of my three subsequent visits, including twice in their front yard. I went backpacking alone near Girdwood and saw one 10 minutes up the trail.
I was pulling into a campground in Tahoe once with some friends and someone made a joke about bears. We stopped the car, and one climbed onto the top of it. With us inside. Within a minute.
I fuckin’ hate bears. I’m scared to death of them. And yet I am to bears as Joe Btfsplk is to rainclouds. Mother Nature has a deeply sick sense of humor.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Comrade Colette:
Me too, but I’ve only been once.
Comrade Colette
@?BillinGlendaleCA: You should go back! And take pictures for us!
Let me know if you want bears in your photos. I’m just a few hours away.
Jay
@Comrade Colette:
Coastal Indigenous People here, refer to bears as cousins,
it’s a blessing, other than for your car.
mrmoshpotato
Enjoy that picture. You’re welcome.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Comrade Colette: From what I’ve heard, pretty much all the National Parks are a zoo right now(the people kind). When I stayed in Joshua Tree for the morning back in March, there was about a 1/2 mile line of cars to get into the park.
HumboldtBlue
This blog.
piratedan
@NotMax: I’m convinced that if the Dem wins handily it will be considered non-representative or an outlier, if they do less than anticipated then it’s treated as a potential harbinger of political doom.
Still, happy for the folks of NM that they continue to be served by Dem.
HumboldtBlue
@mrmoshpotato:
Christ.
mrmoshpotato
@HumboldtBlue: LOL! Totally makes you want to blast some Sabbath while eating a Big Mac, eh?
R-Jud
@beef: I am so glad someone jumped on that joke.
Ruckus
@PIGL:
As in 25 miles from LA city hall. As in a town in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County. Incorporated in 1887
burnspbesq
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I’m sure Biden was directly and personally responsible for the cyber attack on a Brazilian company.
sab
So next door where the landlady evicted my stepdaughter a deer has moved in with her two babies, one very young, the other a yearling. The pitbull tried to run them off, but mama deer ran the pitbull back to the house. The pitbull now lives next door with us.
The mama deer won’t let people in the yard. She roars up every time people try to step off the deck into the yard.
I can’t wait to watch realtors try to show the place.
Patricia Kayden
@Roger Moore: The brown bears which were hunted to extinction were there first.
Technocrat
@Comrade Colette: My sister-in-law dislikes birds, and is mildly afraid of them. Wouldn’t you know they follow her around like she was Cinderella?
When I first learned of this quirk I thought it was funny. After watching her draw noticeably more avians to my porch than usual, I now lean towards “inexplicable and mildly creepy”.
sab
@Technocrat: My mother also hated/feared birds and attracted them. It was creepy.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
bears haven’t been the same without Ditka
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
@sab: you’re mom is Tippi Hedren?
sab
@David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch: Tippi Hedren wasn’t unique.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Oh Trump’s babbling about “being reinstated in August” makes sense now; Trump is going to do MAGA rallies again now the pandemic is dying down and those rallies are the presidency in Dumb Ass Donny’s narcissistic mind.
LiminalOwl
@joel hanes: Love the Vorkosigan books, second that recommendation! (Chalion didn’t work for me, not sure why.)
@Ken: I will look forward to seeing Luca, thank you. And I will take a tangent to recommend Ruthanna Emrys’s books, starting with Winter Tide.
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
I found it, down between the passenger seat and the console… actually Wife found it and I pried it out. Yay!!
J R in WV
@burnspbesq:
Thanks for the tip!!
J R in WV
Bears. I have had several encounters with bears here in WV. First was camping with my brother many years ago in Cranberry Back country, a no hunting bear preserve at the time.
There is a former timber RR grade now a gravel road closed to vehicles, and we were walking upstream beside the Cranberry River when a bear cub ran across the trail in front of us, then up a very steep hillside. Then came MAMA, so much bigger than the cub. Bro started to walk forward, I said, no, wait! Another cub crossed the trail and up the hill. Bro started again, I said, NO Wait! The third cub was in a small panic as he had realized he was all alone.
Then we headed on up the trail towards the gate and parking lot some miles away. Then we came upon a solitary male black bear standing out in the river. He was flipping over big flat rocks for the foods found under big rocks. Really big rocks! Like the size of a truck tire, 300 or 400 pound rocks, for the crawdads and trout. We stood and watched, and suddenly he perceived he was being watched, spun around to look at us, and tore away across the river into a Rhododendron Hell patch. We could see bushes and trees being knocked around as he just tore away in a straight line.
Many years later on, we drove up Rt 39 to meet my folks for dinner at a wonderful Italian place in an old farmhouse, was wonderful food, enjoyed being with the folks, at the time we had a 1991 Saab 900, a very sturdy vehicle. As we left Mama’s Restaurant there was a wonderful sunset to the west, huge looming thunderheads with flickers of lightning plus red and gold gleaming sunset colors.
Rt. 39 is a narrow 2-lane country road and the shoulders were un-mown with high weeds right up to the pavement. Very quickly we were in a downpour and the twisty mountain road made for slow driving. Then while in a set of hairpin curves we saw a BIG black mass moving on the right, and I clipped it with the right front corner, and as the bear spun, it’s rear end hit the passenger-side door, which we could feel the second thump from that.
I coasted on slowly, and Wife said “Should we check to see if the bear is OK?” and I said “What could we do for the bear if it isn’t OK? Provide a target for its rage?” I hope the bear was OK, they are becoming less rare over the past few years.
The insurance actually covered all the damage, even though “Hit a bear” sounds absurd as a cause for damage to a car.
evodevo
@Comrade Colette:
Yep…they are so afraid of menstruating women cooties that they will not sit within 6 feet of a woman they don’t personally know…fundie religion craziness isn’t confined to talibangelicals…