Nature Attack

In my summer line of work, I have a lot of run-in's with various large animals. For example, in the area that I'm working in now, it isn't that uncommon for me to see ten to fifteen black bears every hour while I'm driving around. The closest that I got to one today while on the cut-block was about 30 meters. Being alone and on foot, I'd prefer not to get any closer than that, although there have been three different incidents over the past decade where I have been within touching distance of a bear (not by my own choice).

Last night, I was driving home and there was a huge bear in the road. When it was standing normally on four feet, its back was about the same height as the hood of my truck, and I don't have a small truck (it's a one-ton pickup). I slowed down so I didn't hit it, since it didn't appear to be in a real rush to get out of the way. Afterwards, I was thinking that it's a good thing that I've never been attacked by any wildlife out here. Just as I was thinking that, a ruffed grouse flew in through the driver's window of the truck and smashed into me. Wow, was I ever startled, considering that I didn't see it coming and I was going sixty kilometers an hour.

I keep regular diaries of my planting adventures on my Replant.ca website (www.replant.ca/diaries.html), and things are detailed a lot more thoroughly there, but I thought this little incident was worthy of a blog entry.