Story Break
Not Everything With Teeth Is Grizzly
Musquaw Moments
So what’s this thing called again?
Musquaw is an American Indian name for the common black bear. It is sometimes translated as Cranky Old Fuzzy Thing, but there is no way of knowing at this late date what the word musquaw originally meant.
It could just as well have been Lunch Stealer, Surprisingly Unpleasant Death Hiding In The Bushes, Giant Toothy Muncher, or something else. No research says whether anyone has ever gone over to a bear and asked what musquaw means, but considering how many crazy people are in circulation, maybe someone has.
The black bear, once extremely common throughout large parts of North America, is now extremely common throughout large parts of North America, due to several centuries of apparently inept hunting and trapping.
Or maybe bears are smarter than humans.
Originally sought for their fur, meat, and fat, bears eventually caught on, and now they themselves often seek out backpackers whom they rob of their Pop-Tarts, granola bars, and fashionable waterproof-breathable clothing. The resulting disguises enable bears to blend in and snag free lunch at company picnics, New Age woodsy weddings, drum circles, and annual gatherings of the various backpacker clans.
So if you go backpacking or camping you just might encounter a bear, and if the bear is hungry it might steal your food, but if it isn’t hungry it may steal your shorts instead.
Ways to avoid bear confrontations
First, before you go anywhere, make a phone call and inquire about bear activities.
This sounds logical, wouldn’t you think?
But hang on a moment. You should be aware that very few bears will bother answering a phone, no matter how long you let it ring. This has been proven through extensive use of government grants.
How about land lines? Nope. It’s true that some bears do still have land lines, but they won’t even admit it.
Cell phones, obviously? No, totally not, so forget it. Cell phones are way too small for bears to use, and where exactly do you get a charger out there? Also, no pockets. See the problem? Try calling anyway, if only to reassure your mother.
Hey, great idea — why not call your mother? She’ll tell you what to do. Couldn’t hurt. Obviously, if your mother is anything like normal she will tell you to stay home, which might not be that bad a choice for someone who thinks that they can call bears on the telephone.
At home you can watch TV and drink beer. And find pizza and burgers on every street corner. So maybe backpacking is not such a great thing for you anyway.
Think about it.
So let’s continue with what to do if you encounter a bear.
If you encounter a bear, don’t panic.
Panic upsets bears. If you look down and see a bear chewing on your foot or on your hand or whatever, just go to your quiet place and wait. Try humming a happy tune. See if the bear wanders off after a while. This might work. Humming is sometimes underrated as a critter repellent.
Avoid going into shock if possible. A cup of herb tea may help, and is good for your digestion too.
Blood loss is bad though, so be careful. Try not to lose blood. Watch carefully where it pools on the ground. You might need it again later so keep track of it.
Also, forget about your hand. Obviously the bear needs it more than you do. So quit whining and grow another one.
Finally, never carry food in your pants. This sort of thing annoys bears no end.
Why? Because bears can smell food no matter where you hide it. And they don’t like dumb people playing tricks. And bears don’t have hands. (Except sometimes — see previous section about gnawing behavior.)
Sure, claws. We know that. Bears have claws. But claws get hung up if a bear tries to pick your pocket, and then you turn around to see what’s going on, and there’s a bear. How does that sound good?
Being caught causes a bear to lose face, and you don’t want that — very, very bad.
Remember those claws? Even the mellowest bear may become distracted and thoughtless and overexcited due to your frantic screaming and use those claws to remove your face instead, instead of whatever it was in your pocket that first seemed interesting.
If the bear can even remember back that far. Which it probably can’t. Because it’s a bear. So watch what you do then.
Looks like…ummm
The black bear or musquaw is seldom more than six feet (2 m) in length, and its fur may appear smooth and glossy. This is true if you view one from a distance.
Up close, no, not so much. The length doesn’t change, of course, but you have to recalibrate your thinking about the smooth and glossy part.
Bears — not real good with the personal grooming, maybe.
Bear fur is greasy and bears make questionable lifestyle decisions. A hoity-toity place for a bear to sleep, for example, is under a log. You pick up all kinds of cruft that way, even if you are not covered in greasy fur.
So naturally you find all kinds of bugs and boogers and dead nits in bear fur all the time.
OK. Back to length.
While it is true that size matters, six feet isn’t much among bears. It is also true that length alone is not the whole story. Slim is not scary, and nothing ever called slim was scary. In any way. This goes for people, animals, even body parts. We are just not impressed by this idea.
Girth! That makes a difference. Heft! Meatiness!
So remember that even a short bear is fatter than you are, and the part that isn’t fat? Pure muscle.
The rest is mostly appetite, and anything left over is irritable. Avoid laughing at bears. They pick up on this immediately.
Remember too, no bear has ever been to school. They are therefore ignorant of etiquette and short on manners. Bears mostly grunt, fart, chew, rummage, shit, and sleep. A bear might do all these with its fore-quarters stuck in your tent, and this is not a bunch of fun. For you. Especially if you are in there too.
For the bear, it is fun. Lots of fun. It’s like Christmas morning for a bear.
If you don’t happen to have a tent, no problem. Bears love finding backpacks out in the open too. At least as much as you do. And they get endless pleasure slobbering and chewing on backpacks and everything they can dig out of them.
Bears, besides being messy eaters, are not house-broken or potty-trained, and do not know how to use plumbing facilities or shampoo. So we have yet one more name for the black bear — Old Stinky Butt.
Watch yourself
Keep all this in mind so you know what not to say in the presence of a bear.
Bears are sensitive about what others say about them and any given bear, almost at random, may decide to eat you out of spite. As though it needed a reason.
It is best for you to keep pretending that the bear you see is as smooth and fluffy as it appears in all those retouched photos in magazines. You know, as though the bear has just come blow-dried from a fancy salon where it was massaged, shampooed, rinsed, and conditioned with a selection of woodland-scented sprays and lotions.
If you do confront a bear about its hygiene while in the outdoors, please do remain calm while it eats you, which is very, very likely. Remaining calm will help to make things less stressful for the next backpacker who comes along, and may soothe the bear as well as allowing it to more efficiently absorb needed calories and vitamins related to the eating-you part.
While the normal food of the black bear is not backpackers but comes mostly from plant sources, a bear will gladly eat anything at all that cannot get away, including you, as noted.
Anything kept in a pen, for example, is also fair game.
Farmers know this as bears are especially fond of young pigs (regarded as delicacies for some kinky reason). If mad with pig lust, black bears have been known to carry off entire live full-grown hogs in a deadly embrace, presumably to munch down in more pleasant surroundings than the typical pig sty.
But you never really know what actually happens when the two of them get to a secluded place. And you probably don’t want to know, so keep your distance, and never oink in bear country.
Remember this as you lie awake in your tent at night. Do not oink, not even once, not even gently, even though it is the only thing that makes you feel cozy and safe and helps you to fall asleep. Furry ears may be alert, and you could live to regret it, if only for a few more seconds.
Other foods
Generally though, the black bear prefers acorns, berries, fruits of all kinds, grasses, shoots, and buds, with honey prized above all else. A bear will gladly climb a tree to reach honey, ignoring any and all bee stings. If the bee nest proves too deep to reach, the bear may even gnaw through wood to get at the sweet stuff, though hikers carrying honey-nut granola bars are much easier to run down and to gnaw through.
Why do black bears eat?
- Because they like to.
- To keep their fur bushy.
- To maintain a decent fighting weight.
- So they can sleep all winter.
The rest of the story
Despite occasional bouts of murderous frenzy, black bears are mostly quiet and retiring little fellows, skipping gaily through forest and glen, dancing happily amid clouds of butterflies in blossom-filled dewy meadows, and only rarely biting through tree trunks.
The black bear generally remains aloof from mankind, scrupulously avoiding human habitations, peevishly minding its own business.
If you wonder what that bear-business might be, well it is mainly conducted during the winter, the off-season, when tourists are home watching bowling on TV, when backpackers have all been thoroughly scrubbed and shaved, and are once again working happily for minimum wage, stocking shelves in big-box stores, and when activity in the woods has slowed to an icy calm, all quiet and buried deep in the purest fluffy snow.
This is when the bear comes into its own. First it mates. Then it sleeps.
Hidden away safely in a cave or hollow tree the black bear gestates, finally giving birth to a litter of two to four cubs. While not busy tending to these, the bear catches up on its reading, its correspondence with family members, its taxes, or its knitting.
By spring the bear has written every one of its relatives and friends about everything that happened the year before, and each of its little ones is bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to be shot and stewed with onions and served on a bed of greens come hunting season.
This is true of female bears. The sows.
Female bears are called sows only by male bears. (Could you guess?) The big male guys den in groups, smoke cigars, and gamble all winter. Or worse — watch football on TV and lie to each other about the sows they’ve hung out with.
But poker is really their big thing. Even bigger than running off with pigs.
Billabong, Five-Card Stud, Six-Card Stud, Wyoming Thunder Grunt. Anything with cards.
Anything belligerent and manly, or bearly, you might say. Bears generally play poker in groups of four or more. This means they have to seek out much larger dens than female bears.
But because they are stuck all winter looking at the same ugly mugs, the same sets of furry nostrils and beady eyes, cabin fever is a problem and they often get annoyed with each other, so they fight, but that’s the way it goes.
Come spring, these are the bears that cut loose, break into cars, drive into town, and get into all kinds of trouble with the law.
Many of them though, surprisingly, eventually become police officers. Some turn to bar tending, and a few, generally later in life when they’ve matured and calmed down a bit, get jobs as park rangers. Go figure.