Papa Bear

 In today’s edition of “Things My Husband Hates To Know” we have “Kimberly, Eric, and Papa Bear.”

As many of you know, last week, I went to Alaska to visit my friend Eric and my husband was inordinately concerned about potential animal encounters, I can't imagine why.

And for the majority of the trip, Opie got his wish. I saw LOTS of wildlife in Alaska: Sitka deer, otters, all kinds of birds, eagles and porcupines galore!

But only one bear, and that one was too far away to get a good picture. So, the last night, Eric mentioned that the locals say a bunch of bears have been hanging out at the dump, eating leftover garbage. And because we apparently lose all common sense when we're hanging out, we decided that the best thing to do was zip on over and check this out.

We drove over in the pitch dark (I was 100% singing Going On A Bear Hunt from my Girl Scout days to myself!), pulled up to the ledge/drop off where people throw their trash, and jumped out of the car. Planning, of course, to saunter confidently up to the drop off and peer down at a veritable cornucopia of bears.

At which point the biggest bear I’ve ever seen in my life, pops up from behind the ledge literally about 10 feet in front of us.

It is interesting to note that Girl Scouts did absolutely NOTHING to prepare me for the size of a bear known locally as Papa Bear.

Anyway, we've been friends for a really long time so I'm not sure Eric was surprised by the number of curse words I know but I think he might have been impressed with how fast I could say them all.

His reaction, though, was slightly more helpful “Don’t panic," he said. "Don’t panic, get in the car, don’t panic but GET IN THE CAR NOW.”

And we scrambled backwards, absolutely not panicking, jumping into the car with the speed and agility of our younger, wilder days when we often felt the need to run for our lives...at which point I couldn't get the door shut, I'm not really sure why.

Which is when Eric proved that he is no slouch in the curse word department.

I finally got the door closed and the two of us collapsed in our seats, laughing hysterically while the bear looked at us like we were the biggest idiots he'd ever seen in his life before going back to the garbage smorgasbord.

A look, I should mention, that was remarkably similar to the one on Opie's face when I relayed this story to him last night.

I any case, I'm home safe. The trip was less supernatural than usual but no less fun and Opie does NOT think I should explore further opportunities as a bear trainer.