THE IRREVENANT

Or, How I Survived the World's Cutest Bear Attack

This very small bear attacked me last weekend! I got bit - nipped, really - but thankfully not clawed. Will ya look at those claws???

Soooo, I was attacked by a very small bear this weekend. And as if that weren’t funny enough, a few hours later, I surrendered my pants to a game warden.

These are two things I never, ever expected to happen to me.

I should probably back up.

It’s been a hard year, such a hard year that I had not gone into the mountains to scout for mushrooms yet. Finally, on Sunday, I decided I had the brain space to check things out, so I put my mushroom kit back together and headed up the hill, hoping to get in on the action before all the mushrooms dried up and blew away.

Turns out that wasn’t going to be a problem. We got so much snow in the Sierra Nevada this winter that the melt is WAY behind schedule. Every stop I made turned out to be a pleasant walk through sodden and/or snow-covered forest.

I have to pause on that for a second: It is a treat, in this arid, fire-prone state, to not hear crunching with every footstep. The crunch is the sound of fire danger.

And man, it’s always good for the soul inhaling all those terpenes, the smell of deep forest green.

But my knife remained sheathed, my sacks empty. It was still way too early.

What I really needed to do was head to some of my lower-elevation spots. But there was one last place in this area that I wanted to check - the place I found my first morel of the year last year. It was on the way back down the hill, and it was the warmest place I’d been all day, so maybe...

My first morel of 2022, with cup fungus in the background

The exact location I wanted to check was max 50 yards from the road, so I’d be quick. I just wanted to see if the cup fungus was coming up yet. Where there’s cup fungus, morels follow.

I pulled off the road and left everything but my keys in the car, because I would only be a few minutes. I didn’t even need a jacket.

I was about 20 feet away from my car when I simultaneously caught a flash of something brown at my feet and felt a bite on my calf. FFS, someone camping nearby hadn’t leashed their dog.

My head whipped around until I found it: It was not a dog. It was a bear cub.

A bear cub.

I’m always on the alert for bears in mushroom country. But this was not the sighting I would have ever expected.

I looked at it for a second, perplexed. Then awed, because nature. Then filled with the urge to hug it, because cute.

Then it started walking toward me again. Not launching at me, but coming toward me with a look of intense interest.

Um, I did not want to get bitten again, so I started backing toward my car, looking around for a weapon.

There, a stick! A nice, 4-foot stick.

I picked it up and started whacking the little bear on the snout when it got in range of the stick. This was enough to keep it at a healthy distance, but not enough to make it go away.

Of course I did not have bear spray.

After about two whacks, it occurred to me that if mama bear was anywhere near me, I was screwed. This was actually terrifying. This little bear might be able to draw blood, but it was not going to kill me. An angry mama bear, though, is the thing I NEVER want to encounter in the wild.

I made it back to my car, fumbled for my keys, then got inside before little bear could follow me inside. I looked frantically around the car for signs of mama bear. I did not see mama bear. So I did what every self-respecting modern person does: rolled down my window, whipped out my phone and started filming.

Eventually, the trying-to-climb-into-my-car thing got boring, and I sure wasn’t going to get out of my car (even though I really wanted to check my spot). So I made sure the little guy wasn’t under my car, then pulled out and headed down the road.

I had no cell signal, but I happened to spot a white truck about a mile away, its door ajar, a man unlocking a gate. I pulled in.

“Are you a ranger?”

“Yes, I am!”

“OK. I just got bit by a bear cub!”

“What?”

So I showed him the video (he laughed), and gave him coordinates, my name and my number, then headed to my next spot.

Which also had no mushrooms.

Once I was back at home, I hadn’t even put away all my stuff when I heard a knock at the door. Saw a cop through the peep hole. A game warden.

“Holly Heyser?”

“Yep. Here about the bear?”

“Yep.”

It was all about what I expected: me recounting the details, him photographing the cute little bite and asking questions. Then he said, “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but it would really help if we could have your pants for DNA testing so if we catch the bear we know we have the right bear.”

I was wearing my favorite lightweight BDUs. Plain green, for when I don’t want camo. People always ask me if I work for a prison when I wear them, which makes me laugh. The knees are stained by sap from all the great on-your-knees mushroom-hunting fun. Memories.

Sigh.

“Eh, sure, why not.”

All my friends really hoped that this is where it would turn into a “Dear editor, you won’t believe what happened to me this weekend” story (for all you young people, that means WILD, KINKY SEX - it’s a reference to the old Penthouse magazine “Letters to the Editor” section). But it didn’t. And honestly, ya bunch of pervs, the day had been exciting enough. I went and changed, came out and handed him the pants, and then we talked about bears and mushrooms a bit before calling it a day.

A really weird day.

I’ve thought so much about what happened since then, trying to figure it all out. No one seems to have heard of a baby bear attack before.

Was it rabid? Didn’t act like it. But I just started a series of rabies shots, just in case. Four shots around the wound, one in the arm, and three more in the arm over the next two weeks. And for those who were told the same thing I was told as a kid, no, it was NOT a big injection deep into the abdomen. Yay for that at least.

First they inject this all around your wound. Then they stick you in the shoulder with a regular old rabies vaccine, which you get to do three more times.

Was it just hungry? For sure it was hungry. I’m told it’s probably a year-old bear (probably female, BTW) that came out of longer-than-normal hibernation hungry as hell. (And, yes, I know Cali bears don’t do a true hibernation, more like a long, deep lethargy.)

But why was it SO bold?

Does it have the encephalitis that’s been plaguing bears in Lake Tahoe? Maybe - it makes them weirdly fearless. And this bear was really fearless.

Or was it fed by people in nearby campgrounds last year, teaching it that people are like candy machines? That plus being desperately hungry might make it act this way.

And if that’s what happened - as funny as this was - I’m angry. I mean, I get it. This bear was cute as hell. I wanted to take care of it. But feeding bears is a lesson you can’t un-teach when they’re big enough to become life-threatening.

At this point, though, it’s all just speculation.

As for me, I suppose this is about as innocuous as a bear attack gets, so I count myself lucky. I’ll probably be laughing about it for a long, long time.

And carrying bear spray in the mountains from now on. Little bear or not, I don’t really want to get bitten again.

Barely broke the skin. Just enough to make a series of rabies shots a good idea. Womp womp.