PART I: PREDATOR SHIELD™

The other night, on the cable television (which is mine as of three weeks ago! Three magical weeks!), I took a break from Degrassi: The Next Generation (one can only go there for so many consecutive hours) to watch a Discovery Channel program entitled Bear Feeding Frenzy. Bear Feeding Frenzy is about a man who, for the purposes of science, fashions a tent out of smoked salmon, dunks it in sexy she-bear urine, puts a peanut-butter-smeared humannequin inside, then leaves the whole thing in the middle of a heavily populated bear sanctuary, thus irrefutably proving that bears have an insatiable appetite for human flesh. It's science! As the bears devour the tent, the man sits several feet away in a small plastic cube (or, as it's known in science, PREDATOR SHIELD™), yelling things like, "BOY, BEARS SURE DO WANT TO EAT HUMAN FLESH," and "THE ONLY WAY OUT OF HERE IS THROUGH A GRIZZLY'S COLON!" and "IF IT WEREN'T FOR THE PREDATOR SHIELD™ AND THE FACT THAT I AM NOT MADE OF PEANUT BUTTER AND FISH INNARDS, THESE BEARS WOULD WASTE NO TIME IN GOBBLING ME FOR SURE." He also discovers that bears, unlike himself, do not enjoy trail mix.

That whole experience led me to hunger for real knowledge about bear attacks (is my family safe!!!??!?!?!?!?!), which led me to the life-changing Wikipedia page List of fatal bear attacks in North America (by decade). Oh. Oh. Ohhhhhhh. Make your way to this page posthaste. (IF YOU ARE NOT A COWARD AND/OR MADE OF FISH INNARDS!)

It is a sad place, and horrific, and fascinating.

As far as I can discern, contrary to what Bear Feeding Frenzy would have me believe, a bear will only eat you if: 1. You get too close to its baybay, 2. You get too close to its moose carcass, 3. You keep it in a concrete pen and throw dog food at it. Do not do these things, and you will not experience the sinking feeling that comes with a bear's hot mouth closing on your face.

(Stand by later today for Part II: Kesagake!)