Beary Exciting

“There’s a bear in the house!” is a phrase you never want to hear in the middle of the night or anytime.
Yup, I’ve heard it.
At 2 am.
On vacation.
The trip was not the same after that.
We were staying at my family’s vacation house in Colorado when the invasion happened.
Bear sightings were a daily thing within the town limits and the animals remained outside of residences and businesses, so they were tolerated. Some townspeople celebrated the abundance of animals by forming as society called “Friends of the Bears” and selling t-shirts.
 Mostly they were a nuisance.
 The town bakery sustained damage when a large brown bear tried to rip its back door off one night in search of food. (No fresh bread for customers the next day.) The single screen movie theater had damage to its trash containers and building several nights later. Wildlife experts were warning campers to store their food inside vehicles away from tents. (The local auto glass guy had a booming business that year because bears would break car windows to get to any food they could smell. Bears have a great sense of smell.)
  It was exciting to be so enveloped in wildlife, and we enjoyed seeing the bears wander over our property from the safety of our house. We would drive around at dusk to watch bears emerge from the forest and plod down roads and into the trash of unsuspecting tourist who left the cans outside. (We were smart. Our trash cans were locked in our utility room inside our house. No way for a bear to get them there!) It was going great.
 Until the night a bear decided our house was a great place for eats.
 We left a small window open in the family room at the bottom of the stairs that night for air circulation throughout the house.  (It was hot that summer and the house had no air conditioner.) The opening wasn’t large at all, approximately four inches. The window worked like a sliding glass door and moved silently on a track. We felt safe leaving it open because none of us thought a bear would be smart enough to open it.
 Wrong.
  A small brown bear used his paw to slide the window open, crawled right into our house and made his way to our kitchen.
 My father heard the animal first as his room was closest to the kitchen.  Dad got up to investigate, thinking my nephew's fishing trip preparations were responsible for the racket. Since dad was going to berate my nephew (the only other male in our cabin) he didn’t bother putting on a robe; he just marched into the kitchen in his tighty whities.
 It wasn’t my nephew that Dad saw when he turned on the light.
 The bear was standing on our kitchen counter licking grease out of the collection container I used for bacon drippings. (I’m southern, we were on vacation, everything was cooked in  bacon grease, don’t judge!) It froze when the light came on and took one brief look at Dad, then sailed over the counter onto the dining table - promptly knocking it over.
 As soon as the table went thud my dad yelled, “There’s a bear in the house!”
 I was in the bunk room upstairs sleeping soundly until Dad’s hollerin' woke my little dog. Stinky quickly jumped into action by barking as loud as he could and bolting downstairs.
 Between Dad’s announcement and Stinky’s barking I awoke thinking, “What the heck?” So I grabbed my glasses and chased after Stinky.
  I found Stinky on the stairway landing yapping his head off at the bear. The bear was across the room and Stinky knew better than to get too close. I, however, thought across the room was still too close for my dog, so I swooped Stinky up and headed back upstairs.
 Like in every bad horror movie, I slipped halfway up the stairs and face planted into the carpet. I could hear some ruckus behind me over Stinky’s barking but I wasn’t about to stop and look back. It was save my baby time and this mama was on a mission.
 After clamoring  up the rest of the stairs I finally made it into the bunk room and slammed the door behind me. Thinking quickly, I shoved my daughters onto the top of a bunk bed and ordered my niece to help me push the dresser against the door. (In retrospect, throwing the kids under the bed might have been a smarter move.)
 By the time the dresser was in place, downstairs was buzzing.
 While I was saving the dog, my dad was running through the house opening doors so the bear could get out. My nephew had awoken and was out of  his room brandishing his fishing knife and a stick, in case things got ugly. (He didn’t bother with pants either, just boxer briefs.) My mother was yelling at my dad, my nephew was running around trying to help Dad and the bear finally had enough of us and went out the same way he came in.
 The whole event lasted about three minutes.
 We were up till 4 am from the adrenaline rush.
 The next day the game warden came out and set up a trap. The little beast was caught and relocated far away from town. The window was kept shut and the bacon grease was thrown away from that point on.
   I couldn’t sleep well for the rest of the vacation. Not because I was scared of another invasion, but because with the window shut, it was too hot and kept having horrible flash backs. Of my dad, running around in his undies. Gack!