Bear ate my lunch.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
No really, it ate my dinner too.According to the Yosemite park ranger, bears in April have just come out of hibernation but their food isn't in season for a few weeks. This means a lot of bears are roaming the campsites for food, and if your locker isn't properly latched, you might wake up at 4am to the sound of a hungry bear scarfing your dinner down about 2ft from you head. With only a piece of flimsy nylon tent to protect you from becoming dessert, you wonder if the seemingly innocuous pineapple-scented sunblock you used would ultimately bring your demise.
Food eaten by bear:
- Loaf of sourdough bread
- 1lb salame
- 1lb cheese
- 8 Cliff bars
- 2lbs trail mix
- Full box of oatmeal
- 2lbs chocolate
- 2 packages dried mangoes, 1 pack cherries, 1 cranberries
- Beef jerky
- 16oz tub hummus
(It left 1 piece of chocolate and some cherry tomatoes. I guess it got full -- it had broken into our neighbor's bear box too.)
Sean and I went out to view the remains once the bear was finished. We put the the saliva-covered plastic wrappers and ripped-open coolers back into the bear box, and went off to the bathroom to pee our fears out. We didn't sleep very well after that.
On the other hand, Shannon (who slept with earplugs) awoke bright and early to discover a properly-sealed bear box with shredded food containers inside. Confused, she approached a park ranger who said that a squirrel might have gotten locked inside the box overnight and consumed the food. Back at the campsite, she tried to scare the squirrel out of the box, but after some thought she started to wonder how many squirrels it would take to consume 20 lbs of food, and if we could possibly have locked an entire army of rodents into our storage box. Amusing.
In the end, Shannon woke us up, and we all had a nice conversation with the park ranger, who said bear boxes get broken into pretty often. Before leaving, he advised us not to eat any leftover food, since bears carry the bubonic plague. Right. Not only was I hungry and had no food, but the expert thought I was going to get Black Death.
(1) Hetch Hetchy (2) Campsite.
So what if it's broken
Sunday, April 12, 2009
My computer, that is. It died about a month ago -- just in time to completely forget about Pi Day (no electronic calendar) and miss my chance to make an April Fool's day post. Altogether a major bummer. With no job and no intention of finding one (current fear: being offered a job that's hard to turn down) I am having a hard time getting back online. Given, Obama did hand us laid-off folks a raise and add medical benefits to our 12pm wake up times, but scrounging up hundreds of laptop dollars is hard after the money has been earmarked Hawaii, Japan, and New York City.
This has resulted in a number of get-rich-quick day dreams (which also occupy time now that I can't surf CL):
- A website that sells ads. The first ad is $1, the second $2, the third $4, then $8, $16, and so on until the numbers get big. Mmmm, $BIG.
- Why aren't there any beer delivery services?!
- I'm jealous of the guy who came up with selling stars. What a brilliant idea. (no pun intended)
Anyway, sounds like beer delivery might have some liability issues, so it's back to the drawing board. For now, I'm lying on the living room floor waiting for my ingenius Pet Rock equivalent idea, and drinking sangria. So even if I never make a penny, at least the sangria is yummy in my tummy.
