The Bear Story

My bear story is the first thing I ever wrote on line (August 2, 2006), and indeed it was writ in a fit of pique. I wlll post it here in its original form, , typos included. So then…
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My Karma is Unbearable

So yesterday at one in the afternoon, zipping along the 250 bypass just prior to, fittingly, the Barracks road off ramp, I hit a 150 lb black bear at 55 miles per hour. I didn’t even have a chance to break. I knocked the poor beast probably eighty feet, went into a good long fishtail skid amidst airbag smoke and confusion. I managed to get over to the side of the road about ten feet from whee the bear ended up. And there we were. The bear was still alive, but clearly fucked up bad. I felt HORRIBLE. I have been waiting to see a bear since I moved to Virginia, just not this close. So what to do? Well I didn’t know if the bear was just stunned or what, but it kept trying to get to its feet. So I went over to the side of the road and tried to get oncoming traffic to slow down and/or move over to the fast lane. I was also waving my arms like mad trying to get someone to stop and let me use their cell phone. A good five minutes passed. Probably a hundred cars passed. No one slowed . No one stopped… the bear was making these horrific noises and flailing about. Finally this old man stopped in a tiny car, handed me his cell without asking anything and proceeded to try to get traffic to slow down while I dialed 911. I know, I know, I should have a cell phone to call help. But I have always preferred calling for help the old fashioned way… by flapping my arms and yelling. I guess that doen’t work so well anymore.

Another five minutes, the bear is still wailing and flailing, and here comes the fire truck. Fire men pull up and hop up on their truck on the bumpers and shit, all looking all around. Im thinking what the hell, and I ask them as much. They say that maybe momma bear is probably around and pissed. I am thinking, if there is a reason for three burly firemen in big ass outfits to be up on a truck, then maybe you guys could, oh I don’t know, invite me and this old guy up on the truck? I told them I’d been there a while and hadn’t seen any signs of momma (as if I had even really considered that being mauled by momma was an additional option in this cavalcade of tragedy). So they got down an started putting up traffic cones.

Then the Ablemarle PD shows up. Nice guy. Heavily armed. Lots of equipment. And after a brief overview I start to kind of ask him if he might “put the bear down”. It was making the most awful sounds. He looked at me and told me that “this gun wouldn’t kill that bear”. Now Im no gun fetishist, but Im pretty sure that a 9mm would kill the already mortally wounded animal. And if it really wouldn’t, then Im pretty sure the shotgun in the trunk would. But what do I know? I figured he was avoiding some sort of weapons discharge paperwork. Won’t someone think of the paperwork!

Then a landscaping crew showed up, decked out in hunting cammo and such. They started to tell tales of bears they’ve killed hunting and habits of black bears and on and on. At this point the bear is trying to flop itself down the embankment. I can’t stand to listen to its cries anymore and I start to walk up the road to check the place of impact, maybe find my hood ornament, and also just to put some distance on the whole circus of death. I also didn’t wanna be right there if it got ‘put down’.

That is when two animal control jeeps pulled up from opposite directions. One guy pulls up on the medium and wanders down into the “woods” to deal with the bear. But the other woman pulls over way back up the road, where I am. We ended up walking back towards the circus that was ensuing by my broken car. I casually mentioned that the last thing I expected to pop out of the bushes behind a shopping mall was a bear. She said that bears use this part of the bypass to cross “all the time” and that it must be part of their “migration route”. Again, Im no animal behaviorist, but Im not sure if bears do ‘migrate’ per say. And even if they did, and this stretch of 250 was some sort of orsine artery (which I have driven four times every day nearly every day, for six years, miraculously missing the flocks of bears crossing the road) don’tcha think you’d put some sort of ‘bear crossing’ sign, or some such? I am pretty sure that this woman had just seen march of the penguins the night before or something. All the time. Migration. Yep. Sounds good.

As we then passed my beloved, crumpled honda she stopped looked at it and said ” I thought these cars were supposed to be safe.” Safe? Safe for what? I just hit a 150 lb animal at 55mph and Im here talking with you about it. I loved that car and it had done its job, and here “March of the Bear Cubs” was casting posthumous aspersions. Oh the humanity.

Well the bear finally died on its own, with one last painful moan and then it was paperwork time for everyone. The clipboards were brandished, the numbers jotted, the boxes ticked – heck, the cop who was drawing out the accident diagram even had a litle stencil for animals, which he carefully etched onto the front of the little car diagram. It looked kind of like a tapir riding a golfcart. I asked if he had different stencils for different critters, but no, he said, he didn’t. Damn budget cuts, I thought.

So in this flourish of proto-beauracracy the landscapers came over and were chatting with me, all casual like. ‘I reckon’ this and ‘I can tell you what’ that. Then one finally asked “so… you want that” casually gesturing towards the dead bear, as if it were the last portion of mashed potatoes. I wasn’t sure if I understood him correctly. I glanced at the officer who volunteered that, as the driver, I had “the first rights to the carcass”. First rights to the carcass? You know, if they have made up rules about this, then that can only mean that there have, in the past, been fights over such things. “You may have knocked that bunny into the fast lane, but Im pretty sure it was my grill that killed him.” Tune in next week on RoadKill Court”. Carcass rights, eh? Well at least I know I have them should I ever hit something that I would really treasure. And what exactly did anyone there think I was going to do with the carcass anyway? I had no more car. Was I to sling it over my shoulder in the 100 degree weather and mosey off down the bypass into the horizon like the end of some western feel good movie? Yes, I said. I waive my rights to the carcass. You can have the bear. May has well have been early christmas as they tossed on the back of their trailer and drove off, thanking me. Upon reflection I have wondered what their intentions were. Food? Decorations? One of my coworkers has since told me that I could have sold the “gall bladder to the chinese for thousands”. Oh yeah? And how exactly does that work – ebay? “Winning bidder pays shipping and provides removal of the gall bladder?” Whatever.

So then it was done. I caught a ride with the sixty year old tow truck guy with profound psoriasis who proceeded to point out every female human that we passed with some qualitative observations (mmm look at those nice thick legs!). In between the rounds of pornographic pageant judging he told me that yes, bears are something, but when you’re driving what you really got to look out for is turkies. Turkies? Yes. Turkies. “They’ll come through the windshield and really fuck you up, fuck you up bad”. So I guess now when my post traumatic stress disorder abates slightly I will, while driving, be greeted by phantom suicide turkies popping into my peripheral vision. I tell you one thing, next thanksgiving, Im not leaving the fucking house.

So here I sit, waiting to see if my car is indeed totalled officially, wading through paperwork, and wondering if I will ever pull myself out of debt. I had just paid it off and just changed the oil! I am trying to shake the thought that, if there is a god, that somewhere along my life’s path I must have done something so terribly wrong that now he is throwing bears at my car. It has come to that, has it? I can’t for the life of me figure what my transgression might be, but believe me, if I do, I’ll stop. Please, just no more flinging wildlife. And by the time I finally figure that out, maybe all my coworkers will have stopped calling me “Grizzly Adams”.

So. How was your day?