Gentle bear and angry wasp terrorize man and wiener dog
A bear wandered into my yard the other day and it wasn’t even the most frightening animal encounter I had that week.
I was sitting on my front porch, scrolling my phone when something caught my eye.
I looked up from the small screen and was shocked to see a real live black bear.
I have not seen many bears in my life. I grew up in Pickering. I hung out at the mall food court a lot. What can I say?
The bear was on my lawn and walking toward my house. I panicked.
Do I play dead? Run? Climb a tree? Just walk in the front door since it was right there beside me? I decided my wife needed to see this, so I tapped on the window and played charades to try to tell her, “Get out here. You have to see this. But don’t let Eddie the Wiener dog out!” She understood. Between my tapping on the window and her walking out the front door, the bear had enough of us. It turned and crossed the road and walked into the woods.
I’d call it a sort of large bear as bears go but I have no point of reference, really. Even from a distance, I would say it was big enough that I would not want to wrestle it. I wouldn’t even want to hug it. But at least the bear seemed somewhat afraid of me.
My scariest animal encounter of the past week occurred in my own kitchen.
I was minding my business… eating Cheerios with brown sugar… for dinner… no judging… when I noticed a wasp on my patio door.
It wasn’t inside so, hey, no big deal.
But it hung around. Cheerios with brown sugar are awesome — and I’m willing to bet that at least one person reading this is going directly to the cupboard to pour a bowl — but it seemed weird that a wasp would be begging for a treat.
That’s Eddie the Wiener dog’s job.
It hung around, crawling on the glass, watching me. I went to confront it… carefully.
Ah. It wasn’t hanging around voluntarily. The wasp was trapped between the glass patio door and the screen door. What a relief.
No! Wait! That means the wasp couldn’t go anywhere unless I freed it and freeing it meant opening the glass patio door then quickly reaching past the wasp and opening the screen doors and praying that it would choose to fly outside and not inside and definitely not directly into my face.
I couldn’t chance it, so I grabbed a wad of paper towel as a weapon. I slid the glass patio door open and smooshed at the wasp against the screen. I had it and I smooshed and I smooshed as hard as I dared while trying not to wreck the screen.
When I was sure it was dead, I released the paper towel. But it wasn’t dead. It landed on the floor, dusted itself off and flew at me.
“Run Eddie!” I yelled as I scrambled backward.
I lost the wasp then saw it again on the wall. This time I grabbed the empty paper towel roll and I Jeff Gillooly-ed that wasp.No kidding the thing got up and flew at me again.
I must have stunned it because now it was on the floor. It looked angry. I summoned my courage and stomped it. Squish. Surely it was dead.
I was in a sweat, Eddie was under the table and compared to that wasp, the black bear was a pussy cat.