Night of the Grizzly
I had already met one grizzly in my life. Would I meet another?
The only reason I agreed to go moose hunting was that there would be five heavily armed Alaskans between me and the grizzly bears.
Grizzlies, my new friend Marc assured me, roamed Alaska’s Matanuska Valley as commonly as squirrels back in Buffalo, where I’d moved from just weeks before.
Everything I knew about animals I learned on Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom,” and I didn’t remember Marlin Perkins sending Jim Fowler out to interact with grizzlies. Jim probably would have done it, if Marlin asked. He was under contract, remember.
“Jim, go fetch me one of those cute little cubs. Don’t worry about that momma bear.” This would have been a good example to viewers of why they needed a Mutual of Omaha life insurance policy.
Fortunately, I had Marc to teach me about bears, and much more. In fact, Marc’s wise advice had, in the few short weeks I’d known him, begun to extend into many other areas of my life as well. Personal appearance, for example. I’d started to dip Kodiak chew at Marc’s suggestion.
It was hard at first — little pieces of my lower gum kept falling off. And I’m not sure it did much for my chances with the ladies, although Marc assured me that Alaskan women found a mouth full of chew attractive. As evidence, I needed only to look at his wife Vikki, who was (and is) remarkably beautiful.
Some might have wondered if Marc was untrustworthy, and that this native Alaskan might have been having fun at a naive Easterner’s expense. A fellow former Buffalonian, Mark Twain, had written of such behavior, but I could hardly be called naïve. I had previously traveled as far west as Fredonia.
Eventually, my so-called protectors left me alone at camp and went to hunt without me. Basically, they ditched me, which they probably figured was a better plan than having me with a rifle mistake them for a moose. So I spent the night on an isolated Alaskan ridge, alone but for the many grizzlies I knew to be lurking nearby, waiting for suppertime before they introduced themselves to me.
The mind plays tricks on a man when he’s alone for too long in the wild, in my case, about 10 seconds or so.
I began to think how, thanks to the Kodiak dip habit, I’d be unable to outrun even an elderly bear. How ironic if I died because of a tobacco product named after the creature that killed me. Yeah, they would all have a good laugh about that back in Buffalo at my wake — closed casket, of course.
I did hold out one hope if I did encounter a griz. You see, I’d once held one in my arms. It was in the 2nd grade at Smallwood Drive School. The Kodiak cub came for a visit from the zoo, and they let me hold it. A beautiful, cuddly baby bear. A teddy bear, really. Up on the ridge, I prayed that if a griz did come after me, it would be that griz, somehow released back into the wild. Just before his great gaping maw would descend upon my face, he’d stop, remembering the smell of the little city boy who once cradled him so lovingly. OK, I was grasping at straws! You would have been too if you had been me.
After several hours passed and I still hadn’t been eaten, I began to reconsider my situation. There in the dark Alaskan night, with a .357 magnum clenched tightly in my hand and wad of chew under my lip, I realized I wasn’t in Snyder anymore. I could yell “Mommy!” as loud as I wanted, and she wouldn’t be able to hear me. I know. I tried.
The North Star above me blazed as invitingly as the neon sign outside Duff’s; the air had the crisp freshness of a menthol cigarette ad; and I had Marc, Virgil to my Dante, to train me in the curious ways of the North. If I lived, I decided I might even stay a while.
And if I didn’t survive, well, I’d taken out a big Mutual of Omaha policy for my loved ones back in Snyder.
I hadn’t watched “Wild Kingdom” all those years without learning something.
