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Thread: Yosemite update

  1. #21
    Drew Wiley
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    SF Bay area, CA
    Posts
    18,657

    Re: Yosemite update

    Yogi bear types are just plain obese. Glad I was padded with a sleeping bag. I was around six at the time. Wild-fed black bears are about half the size, and have much sleeker, blacker, healthier looking fur. Same goes for coyotes - the junk food ones look all scruffy, and are conspicuously lazy.

    Unless they have become accustomed to people, black bears in the West are rather timid. That's because they were never apex predators here - grizzly bears were.

    Yosemite has amended its foolish ways. Last year in Yos Valley I saw a Ranger go after a little black bear cub with a paintball gun. Spectators were appalled, since some of them were hoping to see a bear. But then it was explained to them by that same Ranger that was her job to protect bears themselves from a more dire fate if they got too accustomed to people and their picnic boxes.

    Yellowstone took that approach with grizzlies some time back after several tragic interactions one year. I remember grizzles hanging around all over the place beside the highway.
    My mother rolled down the car window to take a picture of them while she was eating a sandwich. A bear reached right in and deftly removed that sandwich with its huge claws. My mom never made that mistake again. The famous 399 grizzly, the world's most photographed one, was uniquely given a pass around people, along with its cubs, until it was recently hit by a truck near Jackson Hole.

  2. #22

    Join Date
    Sep 2014
    Location
    Montreal, Canada
    Posts
    2,194

    Re: Yosemite update

    I guess it’s like that old joke. Drew’s sister doesn’t have to outrun the bear. She just has to outrun Drew.

  3. #23
    Drew Wiley
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    SF Bay area, CA
    Posts
    18,657

    Re: Yosemite update

    She's still in relatively good shape at 80. Their huge gardens are the reason for that. I won't mention the practical jokes she pulled on Yosemite Rangers when she was a teenager; they'd get one into quite a bit of trouble today. A high school classmate of hers lived way down in the canyon below us and wanted to become a nuclear engineer, so was looking for a summer internship in engineering when he spotted a help-wanted ad for Yosemite. That would really impress the girls - him being chosen to sit at a drafting table in a National Park office. So he accepted the job, and then to his surprise, finally learned what the role of a Sanitary Engineer actually was - cleaning Park restrooms.

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