Monty by Jim Meddick for October 14, 2012

I don’t know if I’d dignify a gang of raccoons with the title “predators”.(A little-known and seldom-used term for a group of raccoons:a “gaze”.)

Monty, the experienced and wise safari-guide. Befouled by peanut butter, his chances of bear-encounter have gone way up high. Karma can be poetic….

I don’t have to run faster than the bear, I just have to run faster than you…

I think Moondog is safe. Bears may be attracted to peanut butter, but its being on Monty is a deterrent.

10’ up, 10’ out.

If the bear comes near you Monty run outta here!

As a kid, we were backpacking in New Mexico, in an area where you needed to put all of your edibles, as well as items like soap, in “bear bags” to avoid attracting bears and “mini bears” (rodents and the like). One morning I found a hole in my backpack. I dug into the pack to determine what food item I had inadvertantly left in the pack and was able to find a ziploc bag that the critter had chewed into. The bag held only a pair of filthy socks. How could I forget to put that tasty treat into the bear bag? On another trip, my friend and I were eating Oreos in the tent before bed. We put the leftover Oreos outside of the tent before going to bed, but didn’t account for the crumbs. We awoke to find two skunks in our tent. Making matters worse, they couldn’t find their way back out of the tent again and were beginning to panic. It made for an interesting night.

Been lucky on the camping…we would put the coolers in the car, but still kept the treats in the tent. Did spend an afternoon watching a squirrel use our campsite as a short cut to the tenters up the hill. That squirrel spent 2-3 hours removing one peanut at a time from a bag found in that tent. Until someone was surprised by the squirrel. The shrieks could be heard through out the campground park. (Canadian provincial park. designated camp sites, we could barely see the other sites through the trees and scrubs.)