The Bear Necessities

I bet you stayed all night wondering about the bears, right? Haha...

If I had the pictures of the bears, I'd post them here. But my dad got them on his camera and I don't have access to them right now.

Our campground has a slight problem. I named them Yogi and BooBoo. Yogi is a 600+ pound Black Bear and BooBoo is about 450. They live in the swamp in the middle of our campground. Between the two of them, they've caused quite a bit of trouble.

The problem with the bears is the temporary residents, or pull-ins, or as I my friends and I liked to call them, Mental Rentals. The temps have been warned we have bear problems and they cannot keep any food outside at all. But they don't listen. Now the bears know that when the temps are in, the eating is good. Yogi got a 20lb turkey, a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread from one of the temps last week. It was all left in their cooler outside. So they got bad that their turkey had been eaten (they were going to deep-fry it) that they left. What a bunch of idiots! It was their own fault the bear ate the turkey. And turkeys are cheap, they could have bought a new one.

So Friday night my parents were out walking around the campground, and they ran into Yogi. He was just lazily wondering the campground, looking for food. My dad had his video camera so he followed Yogi for some distance. Yogi has a very distinctive mark, besides the fact that he's huge. If you've ever seen The Great Outdoors with John Candy...Yogi has a bald butt.

Yeah, you heard right. I didn't mis-type. Bald Butted Bear. If he also had a bald head, I would really be freaking out. I was laughing hysterically as it was. I'm assuming that Yogi has a run-in with a less than amused resident with a shot gun.

Other sightings of Yogi include: a couple who was watching t.v. in their trailer with their dog, only the screen door closed, to look out and see Yogi climbing onto their deck. You can bet they were panicing because it takes about as much effort for a 600 lb bear to go through a screen door as for a kitten to push a ball. If you know anything about trailers, you know that in order to close the main door when the screen door is open, you literally have to go outside to do it. So they were in trouble. Luckily he left without bothering them.

The second story of Yogi is a woman who was up late doing some work alone. She wanted a soda and their cooler was on the deck. She was about to open the door to go outside when she happened to look out the window next to the door and saw Yogi starring right back at her. I'm assuming she probably messed herself.

And then Sunday night some little girls had been down fishing by the pier when it got dark. They attempted to walk back, but when they passed a stand of trees, the trees growled at them. Yup, Yogi again. They had to call their grandfather to come get them.