Natasha and I went to Yosemite last weekend and stayed in a tent cabin. I’d never been to Yosemite before, but I was very impressed… photos can’t due the scenery justice.
I didn’t get attacked by a bear, but I did see a bear. Natasha and I were in the lodge at Curry Village drinking coffee and a smallish black bear walked up within 15 feet of the window. Before anyone else caught sight of it, it ran off into a group of abandoned cabins that had been deemed unsafe due to rockslides.
A deadly bear scales a tree in search of its next meal
Black bears (the only kind of bear that lives in California, thanks to the extermination of the animal on our state flag, the grizzly bear) don’t attack people very often and generally lead a vegetarian diet unless they are desperate for food. Mountain lions are definitely more dangerous, and so are rattlesnakes. There is something horrifying about the thought of getting attacked and eaten by a bear though, so I did some research (not real research, just on the internet) and came across this article.
The biggest lesson I learned from my “research” is that the best way to avoid bear attacks is to not be a moron around wildlife. The following is the perfect illustration of this principle:
*April 1995: In Shasta-Trinity National Forest, a man found what he thought was an abandoned cub but was actually a 70-pound yearling, put it in his vehicle and said he was driving it to an animal protection facility. In the two days that followed, two women joined on the trip, and while driving in the town of Mt. Shasta, received minor injuries from the yearling while in the car.
If I was forced to ride around in a car for two days with a stranger and two women he picked up, minor injuries would probably be involved. I can hardly fault the bear.