Going Down?

Let me preface this particular story by stating that as far as sexual preferences go, I am straight. I like girls. A lot.

Anyway, this afternoon, I was up in the helicopter with my Australian pilot, Pete. We were having a busy afternoon, and I had just gotten into the machine with him and taken off. When I had been getting in, he grabbed my hard hat for me, and put it on the dash. At that point, we both forgot about it, until after we had been airborne.

Unfortunately, the hard hat fell off the dash, and somehow landed on the forward floor, behind Pete's foot controls. Now, if you have never been in a helicopter, let me just summarize by saying that the foot controls are pretty essential. Anyway, my hard hat was down there, kind of similar to what would happen if you had a sneaker stuck behind the brake pedal of your car and you were going too fast, but couldn't press the brake to do anything about it.

For the short time that I've known Pete, I've never seen him look worried. But at this turn of events, he suddenly looked like someone had stuck their finger up his bum. He looked at me with a half smiling, half worried face, and said, "Oy. That's no good." He paused for a minute and said, "What do we do now?" I looked at him and said, "I don't know, you're the pilot, what DO we do now?"

He said that he was going to try to bend over and reach it himself. But as soon as he did, the helicopter went into a sideways dive, so he gave up on that plan. He thought for a few more seconds, then suggested, "You're going to have to get down there and fish that out, mate."

The front seat of a helicopter (a Jet Ranger) is no place for calisthetics, so it was a bit awkward getting over the control panel without hitting anything, while he was trying to fly. I did manage to fish the hard hat out after a few moments, but as I was doing so, I was thinking to myself that the only thing worse than the fact that I was probably about to end up in a helicopter crash was the fact that people would find our wreckage, and think it was because I was on my knees between the pilot's legs ...

More About Bears

... And speaking about Bears.

Yesterday we were working on a block and this black bear just wouldn't go away. It got to the point where some of the planters were nervous about working in one particular corner of the block, because the bear was just hanging out there all day.

We have a fellow named Dallas helping us out right now, driving our Unimog (a big German truck which has tires about up to my chest and which goes through some pretty muddy stuff). Dallas is quite the character. All of my planters love him, and he's been great to work with. And of course, he is the ultimate BC redneck - comfortable in the woods, a genius with mechanical stuff, and so on. Here's a photo of Dallas:





Anyway, Dallas decided that he'd bring his rifle over and stand guard while we planted the bear's corner of the block, just in case the bear caused any problems. We definitely don't like to kill animals, but it's better to be safe than sorry, so he was prepared to act as a sniper if needed.

Luckily, the planting went without incident. The bear was sitting about 20 feet away from us for a while, but it didn't make any moves to threaten us. A few minutes later, I saw a tree which had been all dug away at the base. I mentioned to Dallas that I wondered if it was the bear's den. I didn't think much more about it, and went working down the hill.

Anyway, I came back up the hill about half an hour later, and was quite amused by Dallas' story. He said, "I've figured out why the bear wouldn't leave. It's a she, not a he. She's got two cubs, and they're about as big as kewpie dolls. And that hole IS her den - I know because I stuck my head in it!"

Only in Canada, eh? Pity.

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.