I just returned from my trip to grizzly country.  Luckily, I didn’t see any grizzlies.  Not that I have anything against grizzlies.  After all, grizzly bears have many positive attributes. They look cool.  They have nice, warm fur.  They are an important part of the ecosystem.  Really, the only problem is that grizzly bears sometimes kill and consume human beings.

Generally speaking, I really don’t have too much of a problem with this.  There are a lot of people.  And lots of them are highly annoying.  Honestly, I would cheer a grizzly on if it got its paws on a hedge fund manager.

“Eat his head, eat his head,” I would chant.  “Sis, boom, baaaa.”

“Grrrrrrrr,” says the bear as he chomps down on the hedge fund manager’s leg.

“Help meeeeeee,” says the pathetic stock market manipulator.

“Ain’t no way, ain’t no way, all you do is steal money all day.”

Why do my dreams never come true?  Maybe if I pray harder, the Flying Spaghetti Monster will hear my pleas.

Anyway, bear killing fantasies aside, it is a little dangerous to be in grizzly country.  They can’t, unfortunately, tell the difference between a nice human being like myself and, say, a bank CEO.  To grizzly bears, all human beings are assholes.  Given our general behavior, who could blame them?

Regardless, I was on high alert as we hiked through the Beartooth mountains.  In fact, I was on high, high, high alert.  This is because my wife was reading Night of the Grizzly while we were in Montana.  Unfamiliar with this particular tome?  Let me summarize.  This book chronicles grizzly attacks in gory detail.  One after another.  Hiker goes into woods, sees grizzly, tries to fight, gets mauled and eaten.  And then is cached under a tree to be snacked upon at a later date.

Hunters are quartering a recently shot elk.  They aren’t paying attention.  Grizzly ambushes them before they can get to their guns.  Grizzly mauls and partially eats them.  Caches them for later.

A young woman is sleeping in her tent.  A grizzly pokes around the campground.  The grizzly decides to reach in and drag the girl from her tent.  Maul, kill, eat, cache.

Needless to say, I saw no reason to read this book.  Luckily, my wife saved me the trouble by providing a running synopsis of each maul, kill, eat, cache.  As you might imagine, I began to see and hear grizzly bears whenever we walked in the woods.  It didn’t help that every trail head had a stern warning to be “Bear Aware.”  No problem there.  My awareness level was at peak capacity.

As you might have already gathered, we saw no grizzlies.  They were either sleeping or eating someone else.  So long as it wasn’t me.  This is America.  Every man for himself.  I can’t make America Great Again if some grizzly bear is grinding my skull between her teeth.

We did, however, see a rattlesnake on the road.  It slithered away without bothering anyone.  Not before making an impression, however.  While trout fishing the next day, a small garter snake darted from beneath my feet.  It was obviously frightened and wanted to avoid me at all costs.  In these thoughts, we were of one mind.  Unfortunately, I was unable to hide my anxiety from my bride.  This wouldn’t have been too big of an issue, if that would have been our only snake encounter.  But it wasn’t.  In fact, there was pretty much another snake every ten feet.  It did not make for my most courageous day.  At least my wife found the humor in it.

On the walk back, I found myself hoping we would see a grizzly bear.  I wanted to see the fear in my wife’s eyes.  Ridicule me for being scared of snakes.  I can’t wait to see how scared you are when the grizzly comes firing out of the brush.  Then I remembered that the grizzly almost always grabs the husband first.

Even on vacation, life is not fair.

At least we were able to stop in Bismarck on the way back.