Misted

The other day I heard a noise in our carport.  Suspecting a bear I got my rifle and bear spray.  I opened the back door and sure enough, a bear was dragging a trash bag out of the carport.  I yelled at him, but the bear just looked at me and kept dragging the trash bag out into the yard.  He showed no fear.  As I tried to get close enough to spray him, about 15 feet, he would move away dragging the trash bag.  I got real aggressive, yelling and walking fast toward him.  He bowed up his back, hissed at me, picked up the bag and walked across the road into the woods, leaving a trail of trash.
I asked Carolyn, who was standing in the door watching, to bring me a trash bag.  As I followed the bear, I picked up the trash and caught up with him on the other side of the road.  He was just sitting there picking through the bag looking for something to eat.  I kept advancing on him trying to scare him away, but he would pick up the trash bag and move another 20 feet, sit down and start going through the bag again.
This went on for about 100 yards and by then I had all the trash in my bag, so I turned around and headed back to my house.  The bear followed me like a puppy dog.  I thought, “enough is enough,” so I got the bear spray ready, checked the wind, it was calm and sprayed.  He was no more than 15 feet away.  The orange mist shot out to about 10 feet and stopped.  The bear sat there looking at the mist.  Suddenly the orange mist reversed direction.  Before I could get out of the way it passed over me.
The effect wasn’t terrible, but my eyes were pouring tears, my nose was running a stream and burning right smart like.  Everything was a blur.  I danced around for what seemed like five minutes holding the trash bag, rifle and spray.  When I could finally see, the bear was still sitting there 15 feet away, patiently watching my antics.  I made my way through the woods to my neighbor’s yard with the bear right on my tail.  He, my neighbor, came running over yelling and waving.  The reinforcements were finally too much for the bear so he trotted off into woods.
Another bear had a story to tell his friends about the crazy carryings on of humans.  “All that,” the bear must have thought, “over a stupid bag of trash.”

Marshall Warren