Page 40 of Last Chance Cowboy
Batten down the hatches of his soul, and he never had to worry about pieces of it flying away on the wind.
Assuming there were any pieces left.
“Another important part of wilderness survival is awareness. I’ve been walking through the brush before and startled the bear out of hiding. Normally, a black bear is going to see you and try to get away from you. Unless they have a baby, and then you’re in a situation. We don’t officially have grizzly bears here, but they have been known to wander over from Idaho from time to time. State borders don’t mean much to a bear.”
She blinked up at him. “What’s the difference between a black bear and a grizzly bear? I mean, in terms of not wanting to run into them.”
“Well, with a black bear, if you start to get attacked by one, you lie on the ground, cover your neck, curl yourself into a ball as best as you can to try and cover up your vital organs, odds are it’ll chew on your fingers for a while, maybe jump up and down on your back, and then lose interest.”
He turned away from her and kept up the hike.
“That’s horrifying.”
Shesoundedhorrified. And for some reason, he was enjoying teasing her.
“A grizzly bear is probably going to eat you, or just kill you for fun. I mean, by all means, put up a fight, it’s honorable. It’s just probably not goingto matter much.”
“Great.”
“Like I said, the odds of you running into a grizzly bear out here are low. Another thing you can do to deter them is to make a lot of noise. Some people wear bells on their clothes.”
“Bells!”
“Sure. It’s a great way to make noise in the wilderness. You can warn them you’re coming, and then if you run into one, you still have your bear spray.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “But like I said, awareness is a big part of it. So, you keep an eye out for signs. Footprints, bear scat.”
“Bear scat?”
“Poop. Black bear poop generally has a lot of berries in it, it’s pretty identifiable.”
“Well, what about the grizzly bear… scat?”
He turned back toward her. “Usually has little bells in it. Smells like pepper spray.”
Her eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open, and he felt a laugh building inside his chest.
Instead of holding it back, he laughed.
His dad had told him that joke years ago, and it was still one hell of a dad joke.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “You don’t need to wear bells. And generally you’re not going to need to worry about grizzlies, but what I said about black bears is true.” Further down the trail, he saw a pile of bear sign. “Right here,” he said.
He touched it with his toe, exposing the berries in the pile. It was relatively dry. “This is old, you can tell because it’s just kind of dry and dusty. So I wouldn’t take that as a sign that there’s a bear close by, but you can also take it as a warning that a bear does like to walk through here now and again.”
She looked around, her eyes wide. “Have you ever seen a bear here?” He asked her.
“No,” she said.
“Right. You’ve been here for a few months. I’ve seen twobears around the cabin, and I’ve lived here for five years. I also spent a lot of time down by the creek, and when you think about it, that’s not very many bear sightings in that space of time.”
“True,” she said.
“None of this is to make you afraid of nature, or of the animals. It’s just to make you aware.”
“Okay. Right.”
“This is deer sign right here,” he said when they came upon a pile of round pellets. Then, he knelt down and touched a perfectly formed print. “This was a buck.”
“What? You can tell that?”
