Bear with Me
I remember the first doctor I went to in the early 1980’s asking me regarding my symptoms .. “Does it feel like a bear is chasing you?” I said yes it does. They told me I had asthma and gave me an inhaler which I used for years. We didn’t know about dysautonomia, or you know how an epinephrine inhaler was most definitely NOT the thing I should have been using to cope.
I actually can’t say that I’ve found “solutions” that allowed me to move freely in the world at large all these many years, but I realize given the dysfunction of my ANS one large piece of the puzzle is to avoid stress. But for all good intentions, sometimes life presents situations that challenge your Zen.
So this morning .. when this LITERAL BEAR shows up three feet away from my patio door and decides it’s going to spend the better part of the morning in MY BACKYARD … *sigh* … there really was nothing I could do aside from SUFFER an adrenaline over reaction. Everyone in the house (and the dogs) were busy tending to things you should tend to .. when there’s an injured bear in front of you. And I had no mental story of “fear” because I was safe inside and I knew the situation would be addressed. But still .. no matter how much Zen I wanted to bring on board, I was simply going to be a shaking, “nervous” mess and utterly useless if not another distraction.
Goodness our hairless sighthound was more instrumental in keeping us safe than I could have been. Bo was outside when she spotted the bear in her yard. And she took off barking towards it at a clip. The little dogs in the house went nuts. Mind you Bo barks at butterflies, so it’s not unusual to hear her making a fuss. But this call was different. And the little dogs knew it. I insisted the redneck go check it out. Unlike the little dogs, he was NOT convinced. But we knew the neighborhood bear had been in our trash this week and Trish spotted him out front in the middle of the night and mentioned that he appeared to be injured.
So my husband went out into the bright sun, after finishing only HALF of his coffee this morning. Head down to shield his eyes from the light he noticed Bo was barking up into the back 40, so he took large strides up the three rail tie steps and stood at the top of the second grade of land that is mostly avocado trees.
Then he turned to his right, only a few feet from where he had stopped .. just in time to see THE BEAR STAND UP. He said if he had tripped on the way up those steps he would have LANDED on top of the bear. The bear slowly walked further back and away and the redneck backed up and quickly gathered up Bo and brought her back to the house. (Before getting his LONG LENS and going back outside … cause that’s apparently what you do in our social media mania. Otherwise I’d have to you know use a Getty Image of a bear for the blog.)
As anti-climatic as the not-so-shaggy-dog story goes the bear eventually left on it’s own (after four hours).
Bob the Biologist eventually did call my daughter back mid afternoon after the fact. He says .. ye .. he’s familiar with the bear, everyone has been calling about it. Someone said it was STUCK IN A TREE several days ago .. so they assume it hurt it’s foot falling out of the tree. Bob was confident it would make a full recovery. And he wasn’t worried. Trish said Dude! What do we do if it’s in our yard and doesn’t seem to be leaving because it has an injured FOOT. And he’s like .. you can OPEN A GATE for him to leave through. Bob may think we are morons. However he added that bears are actually exceptionally resilient and he was confident they would heal in the next eleven days. Plus he gave her his cell phone number .. he’s not much interested in coming to tranquilize the bear, but he DOES want to see all the cool videos and pictures we have!
No fairy tale ending. No lessons learned. Nothing to grasp or glean that will make the next time any easier. Because THAT’S what Life looks like. Sometimes, despite all I can do .. it feels like a bear is chasing you down.
