Bear Stories
Are seldom true
Which is a good thing, depending
On whether you are the bear
Or the person in possession of an undeniably bearskin rug

Bear Stories
Are about surprises and breaking the rules
And the boundaries of credulity
Bear Stories are often
Secondhand.

- Uncle Walter goes waltzing with bears

- Aunt Betsy grew up in a summer town, and the year-rounder kids entertained themselves in the winter was by raiding the summer people’s homes. That bearskin rug was part of her booty.

- Grandad had a bearskin rug without a hole in it, ‘cause the bear surprised him in his sleep and before he could wake up, he sat up and shot the bear in the hole it already had, and the bullet went all the way up its spine and lodged in its skull
You can still hear it rattling around in there

- I never knew a man who’d shot and skinned a bear, that would kill another one.
- I knew some.
-You skin a bear, it looks just like a naked human person, except for the head.

- Roy heard over the radio that his fishing boat was sinking, and he was so upset he crashed his airplane into a mountain. He lay there for three days and three nights pinned in the wreckage, beating the bears off with a stick. They had to take his legs off in the end, but he got false ones and got a new boat too. He turns it on its side every morning so’s he can roll out of bed easier.

- Up in Alaska, you can't shoot the polar bears, ‘cause they’re protected. We asked, Who’s gonna protect us from the bears? They gave us cans of pink pepper spray, and called it Bear Mace. We figure the bears called it Cajun Seasoning.
One night the Captain was sleeping on the boat, and the ice was around it. He woke up when the boat bobbed funny, and there was this big black nose looking in the window. One of these bears had reared up on the ice and stuck its paws on the deck, and was standing there stretching its neck up like a giraffe. Those things got a flat skull like a badger, but they get to be mor’n two feet across.
The Captain looked at the bear mace, and then he grabbed the big brass flare gun. Better than nothing! The bear took a look down that 2" barrel, and wandered off. He said he could hear it thinking, “It looks good in the deli case, but I can always come back for it later.”
- We would’a liked to hear about what’d happen if it came back. We got a coupla Coke cans like the bears drink on TV, strung ’em on a line, and put the biggest hooks we could find under it. We gave it to the Captain for a Polar Bear Lure.

- This teddy bear is for you. I got it in England, and not at all because the airport cashier offered me a discount that sounded good in pounds.

- I came to work at this place in Oregon, and they said, Absolutely no guns on the property. So I got myself a crossbow that could shoot through fir trees. The boss said,
-What are you doing with that?
- You said no guns. You got a policy on machinery?
He let it go. Since spending time in grizzly country, I can’t assume that the woods ain’t gonna produce a bear big enough to worry about. And those city folks that come down to camp, got no idea what to do if they see one.
- The only bears I seen there, though, are just the little black ones. One time one was on the porch, sniffing around, and I heard it and went out to shoo it away. The visitors’ eyes got big enough to eat off of, and said, That was a bear! I said, Only a little one. No bigger’n a dog.
-That would have to be a pretty big dog.