Chad & the Black Bear

Ok, I deliberatly left this story out until I came to the picture, just because it made more sense to tell it with the picture in your mind. The morning of the Seakayaking and Ms.Moose, while I was still sleeping in the tent, Chad got up and sat on a picnic bench overlooking the beach and ocean. Staring out at all the beauty he was having some quiet time when he heard a whistle and turned around to find the park ranger whistling at him while a black bear was running towards him. Immediatly he wished for his camera and then quickly wondered what to do, should he jump under the picnic table and have the bear claw him to pieces, throw himself off the cliff into the ocean and the rocky beach below?...not sure, he waited. What had happened was as the park ranger was doing his rounds and headed out of our campground, he gave a wave at a family cooking up a big breakfast in their campstie. The family waved back, but there was obvious alarm and uncertainty on their faces. As he pulled up to their site to see what was going on, the bear darted off their site and started running towards Chad. While the family was cooking up breakfast, the bear came out on their property. They managed to get the kids quickly and quietly into the car and then were wondering what to do when the ranger passed through. So this brings us back to Chad, for whatever reason, I figure Sharon was praying at the time, the bear vered off towards the woods at the last moment and ran to the shelter, knocked over a garbage can and began munching down. Cue me crawling out of the tent, "morning babe!"--oblivious. Reminds me of that commercial, I missed it all cleaning my glasses. I missed it all sleeping. Anyway, Chad filled me in on the events of the morning and we heard the garbage can being mulled around, followed byshots over in the distance. We figured they must be tranqualizing him. We started up our breakfast and the ranger came over. He asked us if we were leaving that night and we said, actually we had another night's stay. He told us how the bear didn't seem afraid of humans at all and that this was strange and really dangerous. Suposidly it was really rare to see a black bear around the area too.no They had shot at him with rubber bullets trying to tick him off and out of the area. Later, while we were finishing up breakfast they pulled in this massive bear trap with the word DANGER on the top of it. They watched us pretty closely when we went over to get Chad's picture taken with it and the sign. Crazy tourists! but as Chad always says "What a story!"