Tennessee Bear Scare!

Amy* rushed into my bedroom at our cabin in Tennessee.

“Bears!” she exclaimed, “in the neighbors yard!”

We had arrived at the cabin not an hour earlier and we were already seeing bears? I ran onto the elevated back deck and caught glimpses of several black bears rooting around at the neighboring cabin. This was my first time ever seeing bears in the wild, so I was pretty excited. If only I could see them better… Wait! There was a fully grown black bear lumbering towards us from around the corner of the neighbor’s large shed!

“Hurry!” I called to some of my family coming out of the basement. You could only access the basement from the outside through a door under the back deck.

We watched as three cubs followed mama bear towards our cabin! Whoa, this was cool!!

Suddenly, we realized that my 8-year-old brother, Tom*, was still in the basement! And even worse… the basement door was open! The bears were close enough that we didn’t want to go down the stairs and close the door ourselves.

“Tom!” Mom screamed, “close the door! The bears are coming!”

We heard the door slam, and Mom could see from her view at the top of the stairs that he had closed it. Whew! Just in time.

Now all we had to do was wait for the bears to leave so Tom could get out of the basement. But baby bear had a different idea! One of the cubs marched (as well as a bear can march) right to the door and opened it!! (the handle was one of those up-and-down ones you know)

“Tom!!” we all screamed. We heard the slam of another door as he closed and locked himself in the bathroom. We shouted through the registers inside the cabin to make what sure he was ok.

Now, sitting right inside the basement door were two big bags of trash that the housekeeper had left behind (thumbs down for her housekeeping). So baby bear proceeded to rip the bags to shreds, and his siblings and mama eagerly joined him in rummaging through the trash. They paid no mind to our screaming, but I can only imagine what the neighbors must have been thinking.

Seeing that the bears weren’t going anywhere anytime soon, Mom seized the nearest object—a plastic snow shovel— and proceeded to bang it on the deck railing. Thunderclaps of noise echoed through the trees, and the bears finally got it into their fuzzy heads that they had worn out their welcome. They slowly began to wander off down the hill. The last cub was slowest of all, but a carefully aimed plastic lid to the head sent it scampering away (as well as a bear can scamper).

The bears were still in sight, but far enough away that my parents were able to usher Tom out of the basement and clean up the mess the bears had made. They then locked the trash securely in a closet.

Tom later told us that he couldn’t find the light switch in the bathroom, so he had been in the dark (in more ways than one) the entire time!

Right after the mess was cleaned up, here came the bears back up the hill! Mama bear crossed the road in front of our cabin and headed up the hill to terrorize the next unsuspecting tourist family. The cubs followed leisurely behind, and two even had the audacity to climb up on the deck and exit that way! The last cub stood at the top of the stairs where Mom had stood just a little earlier calling for Tom. It looked in our direction (there was a chair between us) and there was a moment of silence as we stood observing each other.

Then it turned and waddled off after its family. We didn’t see bears again for the rest of our trip.

This is a true blue story, and it only happened a couple weeks ago! Even though we didn’t have the most pleasant of experiences with the bears, it was still cool to see them so close. Their fur looked so fuzzy! I felt like hugging one of the baby bears, but I’m not sure it —or much less mama bear— would have been very pleased.

*my siblings’ names have been changed for their privacy and protection:)