Bears and Little Girls

My daughter isn’t quite two. In a few minutes she’ll wake up from her nap and she’ll want to watch “Little Bear” on the cartoon channel. I don’t know if I can stomach that. I’ve been thinking about little girls and bears all day.

The first time I took my daughter to Benton Falls was late last August. We swam in the lake together, watching the bluegill school up in the clear water just off the beach, and then I hiked her down the hill on my shoulders so she could wet her head in the spray from the falls. She giggled, surprised by its chill. Afterwards she wandered down the creek searching out just the right pebble to give Daddy. I still have it, right here on my windowsill. It’s smooth and glittery. Heart-shaped.

Five years ago, a lifetime before my daughter came along, I was backpacking in Utah and a ranger warned me to avoid a certain canyon. There had been a juniper berry famine or some such thing, and hungry black bears were roaming down out of the mountains to forage in low-lying areas. Tents had been invaded and food bags torn loose from their hangings. Savvy hikers should stay well clear.

This was roughly the same time Elizabeth Smart was abducted from the safety of her own bed in Salt Lake City. A self-styled polygamist “prophet” snatched her away into the desert and kept her as his second wife for nine months. Eventually an alert woman tipped off the Salt Lake police that the cloaked, veiled teenager wandering about with the bearded lunatic was suspicious and needed investigation.

Bears seem harmless to children. They’re cute and fuzzy and their best friends are Christopher Robin and Boo Boo. But they’re also scavengers, predators. When the honey pots run dry and the juniper berry crop fails, they range around looking for picnic baskets to raid. They get narrow-minded and mean. A bear can turn on you in a flash, charge from zero to thirty in a matter of seconds, knock you sprawling, claw you to ribbons.

What to do when attacked by a bear: roll into a ball and pray.

The biblical prophet Elisha—a praying man of some renown—was hiking in the wilderness near Bethel when he was waylaid by a gang of forty-two kids. They jeered him, as kids will jeer anything old and strange. Elisha cursed them and—so the story goes—God sent two she-bears from the woods to rip the kids to bloody scraps.

Elizabeth Smart was rescued from her predatory “prophet” and reunited with her sobbing parents mere hours after police received the tip-off. If there’s any justice in Utah, and I suspect that there is, the delusional wingnut who abducted her will still be in prison when Smart’s granddaughters are grown.

But if there was any justice near Bethel the day Elisha trekked through, I’m sure the sobbing parents of those forty-two kids had harsh words for it. I like to think the story about the prophet and the bears is metaphorical or even mis-translated. I like to think the God who said “suffer the little children to come unto me” and “better for him that a millstone should be hung about his neck than he should offend one of these little ones” isn’t a God who sends bears to kill children.

When I see my daughter playing with her teddy bear I’m surprised by the ferocity of my own love for her. Get this: somewhere out there is a two year-old boy who’s going to break her heart in fifteen or twenty years. Where is the little varmint? I’ll scalp him right now. I’m her dad; I’m supposed to keep her safe.

To protect the public the Forest Service has shut down the Chilhowee Recreation Area for a while. Trappers and trackers are out there. Dead bears can’t kill little girls, so there’s a hunt on.

I’ve heard bullets only make bears madder, and I seldom hike with a gun these days. The keeping and bearing of arms is prohibited in the Cherokee National Forest, save during hunting season. Even then, I could no more pass my Ruger P-89 off as a hunting weapon than I could pass my daughter off as Goldilocks. So what can I do?

For one thing, I can take back my anger at that little boy who’s going to break my daughter’s heart someday. I can’t protect her from everything. I don’t want to; that’s not how a good father plays it. She’s going to have to learn a few things the hard way. Probably more than a few things. Don’t believe cartoons are real. Tread carefully around weirdness. Give wild animals a wide berth. Fight when you have to.

How to fight off an attacking bear: scream and yell and hit him with anything you have.

Reports say Susan Cenkus waded in swinging on the bear that was mauling her son. Imagine this woman lighting after a fanged, clawed beast three times her size. Mama Bear versus Mama Bear. And saving her son’s life. I’ll always admire her for that. She’s Mother of the Century material.

Sitting here, as I hear my daughter waking up, I wonder if I could do that. I hope I could, even if it was someone else’s child being mauled.

But other possibilities occur to me. There’s always one more delusional wingnut out there in the wilderness that’s today’s America. Perhaps he’s going to invade my home someday, maybe to snatch my daughter and make her one of his wives. Or worse.

I guess I keep this Ruger handy so my daughter can sleep in peace.

Instead of resting in it.

There’s only one more thing I can say, and that’s to Susan Cenkus. Susan: I mourn your daughter. I aspire to your courage. I celebrate your strength. And I congratulate you on the life of your son.