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The Daily Post: Ha Ha Ha – Bear Tales

Today’s The Daily Post prompt was “Tell us a joke! Knock-knock joke, long story with a unexpected punchline, great zinger — all jokes are welcome!”

I’m horrible at telling jokes but I do have a couple of cute bear stories.  I thought of writing this post because Judy over at lifelessons – a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown wrote a post called This Bear Walks into a Bar in Alaska.  Anyhow in her post Judy gave you the punch line and you can come up with the joke.  Check out her post and have some fun.

Most of you know that I used to live at Forest Service Ranger Station in Northern Minnesota on the shore of Lake Superior in a little town called Tofte.  The town today only 250 residents.  Anyhow, here are my real life bear stories.

screenshot_69Story one

I had just turned six years old. My family had just moved to Tofte and we knew there were bears but we had no idea how much to be concerned about them.

My mother was making Thanksgiving dinner and all of a sudden we heard a knock on the door.  My dad opened the door and there was a black bear standing at the door.  Both Dad and bear were startled and my dad quickly slammed the door shut.  I ran to the window and the bear just paced around the house trying to find a way in.  He never did.  Guess the bear wanted one last meal before hibernation.

Needless to say from that point on we always looked who was at the door when we heard a knock.

Brown Bear in garbage dump, Yakatat, AlaskaStory Two

Once again in Tofte but this time it was summer.  One of our favorite things to do was go to the local trash dump and watch the bear scrounge around looking for food.  It was our little towns claim to fame.  People would drive from all around to watch the bear.  Every time we took our trash to the dump, we had to have two people.  One to keep an eye out for bear and the other to through our trash into the dump.  If a bear came, the trash can stayed at the dump we just left.

Anyhow on this particular night, my father, the Forest Ranger, noticed a guy outside his vehicle with a two year old child on his shoulders walking over to bear with a bag of marshmallows.  My dad jumped out the car so fast and told that guy to throw the bag of marshmallows at the bear and get back inside his car.

black-bear-pawFortunately the “city slicker” (that’s what we called people like him) followed directions and did get back into his car.  Even one little friendly swipe of a bears paw would cause lots of damage to a person especially a little toddler.

NOTE:  Photos were all found on the web.

Qi (energy) hugs

Cee

 

45 replies »

  2. These are really amazing true stories, Cee! I think opening the door to a bear must be absolutely terrifying. The guy with the marshmallows was obviously very naive. 😯

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  3. Cool stories. We grew up on opposite sides of the state. I lived in Crookston. We had no bears, no forests, no lakes. 🙂 I envy you your bears.

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  7. One of my biggest fears in life is bears. I did see them at the dump in Ashland, Oregon, though–from a good distance. I loved your stories. Better than any old joke any old day…Thanks for responding. Judy

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    • Bears yes, I’m sure you can still see them. Although the dump, I can’t locate it on google maps. Who knows if it is still even there. It could have been moved elsewhere. That is nearly 50 (yikes) years ago.

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  14. Oh, I love your bear stories, Cee! 🙂
    Tofte sounds so familiar. My family name is Tofteberg and there is a place Tofte as well as Tofteberg in our county in Norway. Small world! 🙂
    Best regards, Dina

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  15. I did NOT know your father was a Forest Ranger! That’s so cool. My brother wanted to be a forest ranger, but it never quite happened for him. Pity, because it would have made him happy. Great bear story. When we were traveling through Georgia, we saw a lot of people standing around feeding peaches to the bears. I thought they were stupid. Bears are strong, even the small black bears are a lot stronger than a person. But the bears really loved those peaches and it was the end of the season, so they were going to be thrown away if the bears didn’t get to eat them. So all’s well that ends well, I guess.

    I love bears. I also respect them enough to keep my distance!

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  18. The polar bear is what I’d call a ‘cold caller’.

    I think if I opened the door to a bear, or even saw one out of the window, I’d be very worried and think I was dreaming. On the one side I’m envious, on the other I’m pretty glad we don’t have to deal with such surprises!
    (Although I’ve no experience of bears, I definitely would not behave as your ‘city slicker did!)

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