Date: 2010-01-23
To: The Bear Whisperer
Miles today: 0.0

And other stupid human tricks¢¦In a recent rather cheerful journal entry on obituaries, I wrote of my curiosity about the stated cause of death, and the factors that seem to promote or constrain longevity for guys. Being married improves our actuarial odds enormously but, failing that (no pun intended), having a pet to keep us company ¢ especially a dog ¢ seems to help. Unless, of course, that pet becomes the cause of death ¢ which sometimes happens. It happened a couple of months ago in Sterling, Virginia where I used to run as a volunteer EMT with the Rescue Squad. Without going into all of the gory details, and at risk of offending their legion of fans, I really have to question the wisdom of those who believe that Pit Bulls make an ideal family pet. Now, don¢t get me wrong ¢ I love dogs. I grew up with them, I¢ve owned them as an adult, and I often work with them in the field during search and rescue operations. One of the things on my bucket list, in fact, is to own a bloodhound and train her as a scent-trailing dog for SAR work. The thing about dogs is that they¢ve had a long association with man, not just becoming ¢domesticated¢ but earning a reputation as ¢man¢s best friend¢. A similar story of domestication can be told of a few other animals, like horses, oxen, llamas, and ¢ some would argue ¢ pot bellied pigs. (This same evolutionary process, however, does not apply to cats, for which the reverse association is clearly more applicable: THEY can justifiably claim to have domesticated US, as would be obvious to even the most casual observer.) All such pets (again, cats excluded) require some degree of training to be fully useful, and to justify the cost of their upkeep. At a minimum, if they¢re going to be in the house, they need to be ¢house-broken¢. Some people, of course, are rather better at training animals than others. In fact, when you encounter one of these pets who behave inappropriately, you can pretty much trace the cause back to the owner, and his/her shortcomings. Some pets, of course, have had an unhappy ¢childhood¢, and their behavior reflects that unhappiness. Fortunately, there are a growing number of specialists who have learned to deal with problem pets, and seem to have a real affinity for them. One of these, Frank Bell, is known as ¢the horse whisperer¢ for his highly successful but unorthodox (and extraordinarily gentle) approach to dealing with difficult horses. Another trainer, who works with problem dogs, Cesar Milan, has taken on the title of ¢dog whisperer¢. His approach is rather less gentle, and depends on making it clear to what is, essentially, a pack animal, that the owner is (or at least should be) the ¢leader of the pack¢. I thought about of all these things recently when I heard an advertisement for a T.V. special about a ¢Bear Whisperer¢. I had two reactions. My first was: ¢A WHAT? If I¢m hearing that correctly, I don¢t think I want to watch. I didn¢t much care for those Texas Chain Saw movies either.¢ My second reaction was: ¢Wait a minute. Maybe I could learn something that would help to protect me if I were to encounter another bear on the AT during my up-coming hike.¢    As I also mentioned in a recent journal entry, I have had the great good fortune to actually encounter several bears on the AT during previous hikes. In every case, they turned tail and ran as soon as they saw me, which explains why I have no photographs of any of them. In none of those cases did it occur to me that I should have attempted to convince the bear to stick around. Had they, in fact, been so inclined, it would have been ME doing the old disappearing act ¢ though as slowly as possible so as not to arouse the bear¢s attack instincts. Under neither of these scenarios is there likely to be any ¢bear whispering¢ involved. I have heard, however, of other hiker¢s encounters with bears (and here, I¢m talking about black bears in the Appalachians, not grizzly bears out west, let¢s be clear about that!) that were a bit more ¢up close and personal¢. One hiker is alleged to have been sleeping quite contentedly in his sleeping bag in an AT shelter, and woke up to the smell of bear¢s breath ¢ as the bear was basically straddling him. Had that been me, and had my heart survived the initial shock, the possibility of my whispering to the bear is distinctly less likely than my screaming like a little girl at the top of my lungs!Well, I never did have time to check out that TV program, but I recently did a Google search for ¢Bear Whisperer¢ with some interesting results. It turns out there have been two guys with that title, one in Alaska and one in California. Besides location, another difference between them is their ¢style¢ of bear whispering ¢ which helps to explain why one of them is, um, no longer with us. The one in Alaska apparently believed that he could be a friend to the bears, and that they would accept him (and his girl friend who is, um, also no longer with us). He would set up camp in areas where the bears lived ¢ which included where they hunted other animals for food, being both carnivores and non-domesticated. He would then approach the bears, slowly, whispering about how he really liked them and telling them that he wasn¢t going to hurt them, and just wanted to be friends. He had been warned not to do these things by the local park rangers, but ignored their advice. He got away with it for a number of years, and wrote a book about his adventures, but eventually his luck ran out.The one in California was a very experienced hunter and trapper, and was quite good at those sports, but eventually tired of them. At about the same time, with the encroachment of residential development into local bear habitat, marauding bears became a problem for the town where he lived. He became a volunteer with local law enforcement and began looking for ways that the bears and the residents (and tourists) could co-exist. His solutions included things like really sturdy and lockable garbage containers, and penalties for purposefully leaving food out to attract bears for photo ops. In some cases, that was not enough, so he¢d be called in to deal with problem bears. His solution was to try to convince them to leave the area. He¢d talk to them real nice and try to sort of "shoo them away". If that didn¢t work, he¢d up the ante ¢ setting off fireworks to scare them away. If THAT didn¢t work, he¢d use a tranquilizer gun and then relocate them. He was so successful that the residents took to calling him their ¢Bear Whisperer¢. I¢m sure there are some lessons here for through hikers, but I'll have to save those for another day, as I¢m out of space. Besides, I¢ve got my journal entry up before the newspaper boy has arrived, and all I really care about is meeting the expectations of "certain people who shall remain nameless". Maybe I should try that whispering thing on them¢¦