We are going camping again this weekend… back to the old homeplace of my mother… Elkmont.  We went up there about two weeks ago with JBoo, Bub & KBug for a long weekend of doing nothing and it was perfect.  Fall camping is the best, make no mistake.  It’s still warm in the daytime but at night it gets nippy and makes you sit up and take note that winter is on it’s way.  And, I know, for everyone who knows me, the idea of me camping, in a tent, cooking over a coleman stove, is simply out of character.  Most people know me as the Ritz Carlton type, 400 tc sheets, room service, lots of butt kissing by a staff of thousands, but that’s really not all there is to me.  I’m a gemini, I have two sides and 40 million opinions, and one of those opinions is that camping rocks!  Even being semi-dirty is okay… Estee Lauder can live without my patronage for a few days… just don’t take away my marshmallow fork and nobody will get hurt!  I like laying awake in the tent at night, listening to the nighttime symphony of bugs, the tinkling creek, and (this last trip) the Bear caught in our closest Bearproof Trash Can!!!  Yep, you read right, A BEAR WAS TRAPPED IN THE TRASH CAN.  Damned amateurs, they’re all over the woods, packing the best stuff Cabela and LL Bean sell, but they can’t tie any good Boy Scout knots, don’t know how to tell north from the moss growing on trees, have no clue that Copperheads smell like cucumber, and they don’t know shit about bears.  Us mountain girls, even the ones that grew up outside of the mountains, we know this stuff!  But the most important rule of camping in the Smokies isn’t that hard, follow the damned instructions.  Put up your food and lock the bear-proof trash cans after you put your trash in them.  Easy, right? Right?  Wrong!  We spent an entire night up there two weeks ago being terrorized by a two yr. old bear, because somebody couldn’t follow that simple instruction.  To rewind, the bear first showed up when we were fixing our Girl Scout Packs for dinner… picture raw meat on the table, two women with no weapons, and two men and an 8 yr old onlooking.  Mr. Bear meanders through the camp, two sites up from us, just prowling for easy pickings.  We kept Kbug and the Bob at the bathroom via lots of shouting and we stood and waited.  After all the idjits around us had their photo op (surprised they didn’t try to put a funny hat on him or ask him to dance)  the bear went off into the woods… with a final “I’ll be back”.  And we knew he would, too many yummy food odors around for him to stay gone for long.  Well, back he came, around 10 that night, with a gigantic crash and a scrape over at the trash can.  We quickly decided that bed would be good for all of us and off we went to the relative safety of our nylon bear shelters!  He crashed around all night long, we heard him, and finally with daylight came the news that he was trapped, in the trash can right behind our tents.  He fell in trying to get to the trash, because some idjit didn’t lock the can after they threw their stuff away!  The rangers were standing guard so we felt safe and they told us that they would tranquilize him and remove him to high country, after they got all of us out of the immediate area.  We got ready to evacuate, still watching the bear and his posse carefully, but no evacuation order ever came.  Nothing.  The only thing that came was another ranger, in a Toyota truck, equipped with a long stick.  He talked to the others, they quickly played Rock Paper Scissors and came up with a loser, and then he started beating on the trash can with his Whacking Stick.  Bam Bam Bam, apparently that was the bear’s wakeup call, then the nominated member of the other ranger group carefully lifted the lid on the trashcan and out pops the bear!  Really pissed off, moving really fast, and thank God running the opposite direction from our tent.  The whacking stick was used to hit him on the ass a few times, some yelling was done, and the bear was removed.  Wildlife management at it’s finest I tell you!  Who needs that fancy shit?  We got a whacking stick, no more bears!  Surprised they aren’t selling those on Infomercials, aren’t you?  He wasn’t seen again all weekend, thank God, but just to be sure, we kept a broken axe handle and our broom ready so we could do our own whacking, just in case. 

So, the answer to that question in the title, no.  A bear does not poop in the woods, unless he has to.  For maximum comfort he uses a bearproof trashcan.  And we’re going back so we can watch him do it again.  Have whacking stick will camp!  Mabel and Lulu are so excited!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 18th, 2007 at 9:36 am and is filed under Family, Food, Likes & Dislikes, Travel.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.