The Bear Story
December 17, 2018I recently found out that I hadn’t told this story to a friend of mine, so I wanted to write it down. It’s a story about when we saw a bear in Canada while on our second van adventure.
So, we were in Waterton Lakes National Park (fun fact: combined with Glacier National Park, it’s the first International Peace Park) at a campground and had just finished cooking dinner. We heard some commotion and people were getting in their cars and campers. That’s when we faintly overheard the word “bear.”
Missy thought that it was probably nothing. I said something to the effect of, “nope, doesn’t matter, we’re eating dinner in the van.” Just then we saw the bear. It was just lumbering down the path in between campsites. Seconds later, a white pickup with park warden written on the side pulled up and the warden gets out armed with ~8 bear spray cans, a paintball gun, and a real gun.
He yelled at the bear. It started to avoid him, but was still interested in the campsites, so he sprayed it with some of the bear spray. It ran a little bit away and climbed a tree, but was still in the campground. The warden sprayed it with some more of the bear spray. He was probably 20 feet away and the bear was probably 15 feet off the ground. The spray was a direct hit no problem. So the bear just stayed up there sneezing and wheezing and wouldn’t come down. That’s when the warden shot it with the paintball gun. It might’ve had pepper balls in it, but we couldn’t really tell.
Eventually the bear came down and started to run while the warden jogged after it. At one point, the bear slowed and started to turn back and the warden yelled, “BEEEAAARRRR,” like that’s the bear’s name and it’s being a difficult pet. He shot it with some more paintballs for good measure and that sent the bear running again.
Finally, about 10 minutes later the warden came back and said, “sorry, but has anyone seen a white pickup, I seem to have misplaced it.”
So that’s my bear story. I’ll never forget “BEEEAAARRRR” and it’s the only time I’ve seen bear spray used, luckily.
