Nothing to fear but fear itself

 

Welcome back after a bit of a hiatus, during which Stacey actually went through with becoming Mrs Potts, for reasons best known to herself. It was a wonderful day but I won’t go into it in too much detail here, because, well, there are other things to talk about.

Getting the cabin ready for the wedding was bloody hard work. Much of it was done by other people, but I will admit to waving a duster around half-heartedly myself. As a reward for this strenuous labour Stacey persuaded me to take a day off and go with the redoubtable Morgan and Sam to Yosemite National Park. I’m frankly surprised she could spare the pair of them. Earlier in the week they competed in a local triathlon; 400m through the lake, freshly topped up with mountain snowmelt, then 12 miles up hill and down dale on a bike, and just in case they survived that they finished with a three mile run. All this at some ungodly hour of the morning. They finished competitively, and then Sam, either because the exertion had unbalanced him mentally or perhaps he just hadn’t hurt himself enough that day, spent the afternoon chopping wood with an axe, like a real man.

Now, were I to put my finely-honed machine of a body through a similar level of pain it would surely make me pay dearly for such hubris the next day. If either Sam or Morgan were feeling it, they didn’t show it. They got up and scraped several inches of leaves and pine needles off a few dozen yards of driveway, again, before the dew was off the grass. By this time I was suffering from some sort of inverted smugness at not having, say, built a small log cabin on the beach using only a paperclip and a jar of raspberry jam.

So come the next day they had thoroughly earned their day off. They took Iain and I, who hadn’t. Iain is my old mate from England, who had come to do his bit as best man at the wedding, and had never visited the States before. I must say, it was a lot of fun to see him go through new experiences. The look on his face when he was confronted by the menu in Taco Bell was particularly special.

So was his reaction to encountering Black Widow spiders. No spiders in the UK are even vaguely dangerous to humans, whereas a bite from a Black Widow (left) can be quite painful, and the desperately unlucky can encounter more serious problems. Iain was- how to put this- somewhat jumpy. In his defence, he got within a few inches of a Black Widow sitting in the shed, in order to film it on his iPhone. But thereafter, every log, every bush, plank, every crack in the pavement was inhabited, in his mind, by legions of spiders determined to take a chunk out of his leg. I found this rather funny until I remembered how I’d been when I found out that such things are a fact of life here. When I visited Stacey two years ago her mom squished six Black Widows she found hiding as she hosed off the patio furniture. I remember getting nervy every time I sat down outside. I would offer the fervent prayer “If I get bitten I’m going to have to tell people about it. Please, God make it the leg, and not the arse.”

When really, this was more than a little bit silly, because by all accounts you have to be trying quite hard to make a Black Widow bite you. Same goes for the Brown Recluse Spiders. Although a serious Brown Recluse bite will kill your flesh and make it rot (!!) (as graphically illustrated by slides 17 to 21 here- not for those who are squeamish, or eating, or a big girl’s blouse) you have to really, really provoke it to persuade it that you’re worth a nibble.

What I hadn’t known back then- and this is what Iain was going through now- is the answer to the question “How scared am I supposed to be?”. Are people going to laugh if I’m stupid enough to let a spider bite me, or could it happen to anyone? Will they try to poke the spot where it bit me just for laughs, or are they going to call 911 and ask me which church I go to so the can call a priest, just in case? What is an appropriate level of terror? If this is squeaky bum time, at exactly what pitch is one expected to squeak?

In Yosemite, when we got there, it was fantastically beautiful. Even by the park’s own ridiculously high standards, it was on top form. This year has been colder than usual, so the snow has waited until the last possible moment to melt, and it’s all coming down the mountain at once. You can see in the picture on the right, taken two weeks ago, the massive, roaring column of white water which is Bridal Veil Falls, which is barely visible on the 2009 photo on the left, which was, admittedly, taken a little later in the year. There are at the moment, we were told, waterfalls which haven’t been seen for thirty years, and which would likely be gone again in a matter of weeks. The valley was lush and green. Iain and Sam hadn’t seen Yosemite before, and were suitably impressed. In a meadow (below) surrounded on all sides by the most spectacular mountain scenery, Iain pointed out that  if the view available in any particular direction had been available in Britain people would have travelled across the country to see it, as they do to see Snowdonia, Glencoe or the Lake District. And here we were, in one small, relatively unremarkable area of the Yosemite valley, once again awe-struck by the panorama.

But the threat of being bitten in the bum by anything which might wish to oblige was never far from Iain’s mind. Yes, Morgan said, she had seen rattlesnakes before, but never in Yosemite. Which isn’t to say they aren’t there. They are, in fact the only venomous species of the 13 separate snake species which inhabit the park. Isn’t that nice? The National Park Service has this to offer:

“Fortunately, the likelihood of encountering one is relatively low. Pay attention when hiking or climbing in dry, rocky places. Avoid putting your hands in holes or on ledges where snakes may be sunning themselves. If you do see or hear one, simply detour around it or let the snake crawl away. Rattlesnakes are an important part of Yosemite’s ecosystem, as they help keep the park’s rodent numbers in check.”

Basically, if you’re bitten by a rattler, it seems to imply, it’s no more than you deserve for disturbing the sunbathing of an edgy and sociopathic loner armed with deadly venom. Also, if you’re a rabbit or a gopher, you’ve got it coming too, so consider yourself warned. However, Iain didn’t have this piece of helpful advice to hand, and was considerably reassured as a result, I’m sure.

I should say, at this point, that the attitude of the National Park Service towards the wildlife of the United States is a completely correct one. I only mock it from the point of view of a couple of urban foreigners whose experience with dangerous wildlife is limited to close encounters with frankly psychotic Gateshead pigeons. But then, as Iain put it, when we started on a trail towards Mirror Lake, he’s never before been on a walk where the landowner warned him about the dangers of being eaten by a big cat:

Iain took a photograph of the sign, and failed to be eaten by a mountain lion. Somewhat to his own disappointment, I feel. I got the distinct impression that as long as it made YouTube, Iain was prepared to lose anything up to and including half a hand or foot in the cause of seeing cool stuff.

Bears present their own set of problems to the human who encounters them. Spiders and snakes almost have to be forced to bite a human. You have to disturb them or touch them. Mountain lions, too, although unpredictable, are relatively shy. Loud noises along the trail will tend to (usually, not always) make them avoid you, so you don’t have to avoid them. Bears are different.

Anyone who has read Winnie the Pooh (and if you’ve only seen the Disney version, I can’t tell you how much you’re missing out- it’s like only ever having drunk decaf coffee- read the books) knows, because it is a carefully-observed treatise on ursine behaviour, that bears like their food, and have even been known to become stuck in rabbit holes having gorged themselves on too much condensed milk.

So it follows, that most real-life human-bear conflict starts as a confrontation over food. The rubbish bins at the cabin have been known to undergo the odd inspection by bears looking for food. There are bear-proof containers all over Yosemite for the use of visitors; some are for waste, others are for food. You don’t, ever, ever keep your food in your tent when you’re camping. Keep it in your car, or a bear proof container. Because bears are opportunist omnivores. It goes completely against their nature to pass up the opportunity of harvesting readily-available food. A tent is only so much fabric to a bear: they’ll rip the bark off a tree to collect grubs. Imagine what they’d do to a tent to get an ice box full of ham sandwiches. Suddenly they’re in your tent, and you’re in the way of what are indubitably now THEIR sandwiches, and we’re off to the races, and now it’s time for your mauling.

Bears, therefore, will sometimes come and find you. But they are the most amazing things to see. We were exactly that lucky. Doing research for this post I found out that the NPS ask you to report all bear sightings, no matter what they’re doing or where they are, so I emailed them, and said the following:

“Hi,

I was researching bears for my blog having seen two in Yosemite National Park on Wednesday last week (8th June). Your Bear Facts page (you didn't call it Bear Essentials? So disappointed) asks readers to let you know about bear sightings. So I am. It was about 4.30pm and we were on the road towards Glacier Point. Downhill from the road, cub was scraping bark from a tree to eat insect larvae from beneath it, under the careful supervision of an adult bear, presumably its parent or cubsitter, who kept itself between the cub and the numerous park visitors who'd stopped to take photos. You might already know about this but if everyone thought that way, you'd never find out about any bears at all, and that would be sad.

Regards,

Richard”

There were thirty or so people taking photos of these bears. They, despite their colour, are American Black Bears; all the bears in California are Black Bears, despite the Brown Bear appearing on the state flag. According to Gary Brown, 91% of the Black Bears in Yosemite are brown or blond in colour.  The mother bear was watching the cub, and every now and then turning a casual eye upon us just to make sure that we were maintaining the safe distance between them and us, before returning her attention to what was clearly a practical lesson in grub harvesting. She- they- were about twenty yards away down the hill from the road. Nobody there was in the slightest bit scared or apprehensive. Iain’s camera wouldn’t focus on them properly, but if a crack team of Mountain Lions and Western Rattlesnakes, backed up by the 2nd battalion of the 13th Black Widow regiment had rushed our position, I doubt his attention would have been drawn away from the scene before us.

I sent my mam the pictures. She posed a question, and although her point was a moot one it was nevertheless relevant, three days before I was due to get married: “What if you’d been eaten?” I thought the question a bit daft at the time, but it could have happened. Black Bears can run at 35mph. Even uphill for the bear, with our car 60 yards away on the flat, it might have been a near-run thing; one I certainly wouldn’t have wished to bet my life on. But, quite honestly, the thought never entered our heads. I am fairly sure that that was true of everyone there. It was as if the mother bear had the situation under control for all of us. She wasn’t anxious or nervous, so we weren’t either. She was comfortable with her own cub there, and none of us were trying to get any closer- and how often can you say that about a crowd of snap-happy tourists. It was a perfectly harmonious moment.

A week later, we went back to the coast. We never really got onto the subject of sharks.