Niagara Falls – Pain In The Bud

The bear was outside my tent.

Its moans cut through the night above the cricket song and I could see its distorted shadow cast against the fabric by the dying fire as it circled our camp.

Something ripped — the canvas of one of our packs, I later learned when daylight revealed the carnage outside — and there was a loud crunch of ursine teeth against plastic packaging and the styrofoam of an egg container.

Then my friend Larry did what he’d been doing all night: he raised a ruckus by banging pots and pans, scaring the 500-pound animal away. Temporarily.

The bear’s breathy vocalizations faded into the distance. After a few minutes I breathed a sigh of relief. I had to pee so badly, worse than I’d ever had to go in my life, but there was no way in hell I was stepping out of my tent. Then I heard the air horn from the campsite a mile or two away.

The bear was making its circuit again. I was still too scared to leave my tent.

An adult male American black bear, the species I encountered in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

How we blundered into a bear

Larry was a family friend and outdoorsman. Since my brother and I were kids of a single mom it had become something of a tradition for Larry to take us and others on annual camping trips every summer. Without Larry, who was the closest thing to a father I’ve had, we would have never known what it was like to tell scary stories by a fire, hook a fish from a river or navigate rapids while whitewater rafting.

That year we headed upstate to the Adirondacks with the aim of climbing Mount Marcy, the highest peak in New York.

Most people think of New York City when they think of our state, and the city and its environs were what I was familiar with. But New York is a big state and once you get north of the suburbs it’s almost entirely rural. If randomly blindfolded and dropped in the middle of the Adirondack mountains, few people would guess they were in New York.

We arrived at the ranger station, registered our destination and set off. Why we didn’t know about the bear I cannot say, but we found out later he was notorious. The rangers were well aware of him, and he was the reason why, after hiking for some 15 miles to Marcy Dam, we saw dozens of packs hanging from the dam itself, fastened to the metal safety railings.

That was our second opportunity to learn about the bear, but when we saw the packs we just shrugged and made our way further in to find a good spot for camp.

After the day-long hike we hurried to set up our tents and got a fire going before sundown, then made dinner. When you’re camping — real camping, not the drive-up KOA camping that’s really an excuse to get drunk with your buddies — you do two things to keep critters out of your camp: you hang your packs from a tree with a sturdy branch, and you dump any leftovers several hundred feet away.

So when my brother and my friend Richie went to go dump the leftover mac and cheese, they came back white-faced.

“Larry! Larry!” they shouted. “There’s a bear!”

Larry shook his head.

“You didn’t see a bear,” he said, laughing.

“But we did!”

Larry didn’t believe them, and I didn’t either. Until I was ripped out of sleep by the sound of a prime specimen of ursus americanus tearing through our camp, helping himself to our food.

Black bears aren’t aggressive in the same way their ursine brethren can be, but they can still be exceptionally dangerous. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

I cannot tell you how many times the bear came back that night, or how many return trips it took him to consume every last morsel of food we brought with us.

What I can say for certain is that he spent the majority of the night making a loop between our camp and two others, including the camp with the air horn.

I was already a bit freaked out even before the bear invited himself into our camp. I had never been in true wilderness before. I never knew night could be so dark, nor had I ever been to a place where there wasn’t even a hint of the ambient glow of a city on the horizon.

I tried to convince myself that the thin fabric of my tent somehow afforded protection the same way a child terrified of ghosts or monsters convinces himself his blanket can shield him from the supernatural. Every kid knows the monsters can’t get you if you’re under your blanket.

By the time the bear came around for the second time that night, I had to piss like a racehorse. I toyed with the idea of slipping out ninja-like for a stealth draining, but who was I kidding? I was too terrified to move.

I thought of urinating every few seconds. I dreamed about it. In the video game The Legend of Zelda, which I played a lot as a kid, there are hidden lakes on the map where fairies restore your health. Your character, Link, says “Ah! Refreshing!” as you’re healed.

I dreamed I was Link stepping to the edge of a lake, where a fairy kindly invited me to urinate.

“Ah!” I said as I emptied my bladder. “Refreshing!”

For a few glorious moments, it was real. It was so good.

Then I woke up and I was back in the tent with a full bladder and the bear outside, tearing his way through our gear in search of every last bag of peanuts and stick of beef jerky.

I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too. I reached a hand down just to be sure. I was dry. In a way I wished I had peed myself. At least it would be over.

Larry was banging the pots and pans again, and a few minutes later the familiar air horn cut through the night, giving us a temporary reprieve. The bear was someone else’s problem for the next 20 or 30 minutes as he made his rounds to raid the other campsites.

The post apocalypse

The long night finally relented. Birds began tweeting, the sun came over the horizon, and our ordeal was over.

I poked my head out of the tent, then ran to the nearest tree and recreated Niagara Falls in miniature for what felt like an eternity. Sweet relief!

Then I noticed the carnage.

It was actually even more of a mess than this!

Every pack we’d left hanging from a nearby tree had been shredded. The torn fabric and zipper remnants swayed in the breeze, still attached to the ropes around the tree branch. Potato chip bags had been popped with bear teeth and crunched along with their contents, then spat back out. The ground was strewn with egg shells, and all that was left of the bacon was half a plastic wrapper.

The entire area was dusted with powdered milk. Remnants of graham crackers, chocolate and marshmallows were scattered in the dirt. In a horrifying display of casual strength, the bear had split a Coleman cooler in half to get at the raw hot dogs and hamburgers inside . There were the barely recognizable remnants of a box of Lucky Charms. And one pack was left intact except for the smallest zipper pouch, which had been clawed open for the handful of granola bars inside.

I stared at it, amazed that an animal could smell food in sealed plastic wrappers inside a canvas rucksack.

We broke camp quickly because we had to go back to civilization. There was no other option: we had no food left.

When we returned to the ranger station, Larry spoke to one of the rangers, who said the other campers were hanging their packs from the dam because the notorious bear had learned how to cut down packs hanging from trees. Just like it did to our gear. Then he reminded Larry why it’s a good idea to have those conversations before you venture into the woods.

It was the most terrifying night of my life, but as an adult I just shake my head and smile whenever I think about it. And all these years later, when I wake up in the middle of the night and stumble to the bathroom, Bud in tow, I still shake off the last drops, sigh, and whisper “Ah, refreshing!”

Note: Every damn word of this is true, or at least as accurate as it can be when experienced through the eyes of a 10-year-old and recalled all these years later. It eventually occurred to me that Larry must have been terrified, if not for himself, then for the fact that he had someone else’s kids with him. I know I’d be crapping bricks if I’d taken my brother’s kids camping and an unreasonably clever bear wouldn’t leave us alone. I told this story to my nieces one night, and instead of having a bit of sympathy, they think it’s absolutely hilarious that their dad and uncle were terrorized by a black bear during a camping trip. Their favorite part is my dream of being Link from The Legend of Zelda and joyfully peeing into a lake. Apparently my misfortunes are rich comedic material for them.

Header image via Wikimedia Commons

It’s too bad cats can’t swear.

While kittens don’t often have problems finding homes due to their overwhelming cuteness and antics, it usually takes a sad story to drum up considerable interest when an adult feline is up for adoption.

As the SPCA of Niagara learned, talkative parrots, especially birds who can swear up a storm, have their pick of homes.

In June, a potty-mouthed parrot named Pepper was surrendered to the shelter, and when the SPCA put the call out — specifying they’d prefer someone with experience caring for birds and a sense of humor — the applications kept rolling in, totaling more than 400.

“His famous line is ‘Do you want me to kick your ass?'” a shelter employee said in an interview last month shortly after announcing Pepper was up for adoption.

Shelter staff asked applicants to include photos of their bird enclosures in addition to the usual pre-adoption questions, eventually narrowing the Pepper Sweepstakes down to 10 potential homes.

This past week, Pepper was finally taken to his new abode in Olean, a small city in western New York. The couple who adopted him are not only experienced with birds, they know all about avian vulgarity. They have a parrot named Shelby who apparently “makes Pepper look like a saint.”

As for Pepper, it looks like he’s getting his bearings before heaping abuse on his new caretakers.

“He hasn’t cursed at them yet, but we know it’s coming,” shelter staff wrote in an update.

In recent decades, research has shown birds can be exceptionally intelligent. Crows, for example, use tools, can differentiate between human faces, and remember which humans have wronged them or treated them well.

While many people assumed parrots merely imitate human language, long term behavioral studies show the birds are able to use words in context and invent novel combinations of words. As with other animals, syntax remains elusive.

The most famous example was Alex the African Gray, who was the subject of research by animal cognition expert Dr. Irene Pepperberg. Alex, who died in 2007 at the age of 31, was able to count and could perform simple calculations. He was talkative, conversant and often told his caretakers how he was feeling, what he wanted, and what he thought of the tests they’d give him. (Like a child, Alex would try to get out of exercises he was bored with by asking for water, saying he was tired and wanted a nap, or just flubbing his answers.)

We are not above crude humor here at PITB, and in the past we’ve written about Ruby, our favorite talking parrot. Ruby lives in the UK with her owner, Nick Chapman, and the pair were among the very earliest Youtube stars thanks to videos of Ruby’s shockingly vulgar, extremely British tirades and Chapman’s infectious laugh.

Warning for those who are offended by bad language or are viewing at work: Ruby is known for liberal use of c-bombs-, t-bombs, f-bombs and just about every other linguistic bomb you can think of, in addition to British slang like “bollocks.” If that’s a problem for you, skip this video.

Eric the Legend, a parrot who lives in Australia, is also a favorite on Youtube for his habit of declaring himself “a fookin’ legend!“

We’re glad Pepper has found a home where his idiosyncratic nature will be cherished, and we hope the future will bring videos of Pepper and Shelby going back and forth. Parrots are social animals, after all, and what fun are insults if you’ve got no one to trade them with?

Top image of Pepper courtesy of Niagara SPCA.