I’m picking berries, they’re blue, its hot out, the bugs are so happy, horseflies, mosquitoes and deer flies and the pail thankfully is filling quickly. Let’s face it, it’s a fruit year, apples on the vine, wild strawberries, chokecherries in profusion, June berries were so ridiculous, I mean an ice cream pail in half an hour oh my goodness and if I get half the plums we have before the bears do, I’ll have plum jelly for years. But we have a lot of bears, big ones, like Yogi, loads of little ones like Boo Boo, so we’ll see. And while I’m picking the blues, I have to watch my step, the bears leave large deposits I try not to step in.
I have a love-hate relationship with bears, when I’m eating one, it’s pure love, when they’re smashing our fruit trees, and we grow 29 different fruits that bears, eat, a lot of, well, that’s when I’m not such a big fan of old Makwa, Ojibwa, Ursa Major, the great bear galactically, that can be the biggest boreal baloo ever.
The fun-loving dumpster diver, the ma with three cubs so cute, I mean how could a cute old sow with triplets ever be anything less than adorable? Well, ask any resort owner who learned to shackle their dumpsters, electric fence their fish cleaning stations, they’re one in the same bear. Bear, sometimes they’re just un-bear-able. Then, dashing across a ditch in the headlights, my perfect bear, never blacker, not eating our fruit, not smashing our fruit trees, no car accident, just a bear, now, totally bear-able.
- The Trout Whisperer
