>From: Jerry Hawkins <jhawkins_at_cisco.com> > >And definitely do not carefully store away all your food, except one little bag of peanuts which get left on your table. Not unless you want a grizzly bear to smell them from all the way across a lake and come into your campsite sniffing around your tent like a 600 pound dog. I speak from experience on this one. Just try to clean bear snot off a nylon tent. Just try. < When we were at Ross lake we had arrived at our campsite and were hauling gear up from the kayaks. I was hungry and had snagged a bag of peanuts out of the bear cannister and was happily munching away. Julie yelled that she needed help. I set the bag of nuts on the picnic table and walked down to the kayaks helped her and we walked back up. Total elapsed time: 5 minutes tops. My bag was missing. Julie laughed and pointed under the table. A ground squirrel had dragged the plastic bag off the table, gnawed through it and was eating nuts. He promptly ran, but he had succeeded in getting a few nuts. Lesson learned, _never_ leave food unattended. Personally I like bear cannisters. I don't have to worry about finding a suitable hanging spot, spending time hoisting and lowering, and worrying that I have it right. Mel --- There are three types of people, those who can count and those who can't. --== Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ ==-- Share what you know. Learn what you don't. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
At 06:07 AM 11/23/99 -0800, Mel Grindol wrote: >>From: Jerry Hawkins <jhawkins_at_cisco.com> >> >When we were at Ross lake we had arrived at our campsite and were hauling >gear up from the kayaks. I was hungry and had snagged a bag of peanuts out >of the bear cannister and was happily munching away. Julie yelled that she >needed help. I set the bag of nuts on the picnic table and walked down to >the kayaks helped her and we walked back up. Total elapsed time: 5 minutes >tops. > >My bag was missing. Julie laughed and pointed under the table. A ground >squirrel had dragged the plastic bag off the table, gnawed through it and >was eating nuts. He promptly ran, but he had succeeded in getting a few nuts. Several people have mentioned racoons but there are is also a very similar looking creature that I've encountered a few times while backpacking in the Sierra Nevada mountains. It's a ring-tail cat and looks very similar to a racoon. On one trip in Sequoia National park a couple of friends of mine went for a weekend and brought along a backpacking newbie. We had been telling bear stories (some of them were even true) all day during the first day there for the "benefit" of the newbie. That night, just a bit after we had retired to our tents, I heard "John! I think there's a bear out there". I'm thinking, "sure, sure, how go to sleep" when I heard some noise myself. I grabbed my flashlight and took a peek and and there was a fuzzy creature with a ringed tail with it's head in my backpack. I unzipped the tent and yelled at him and he looked up and I could see that he had found my hostess fruit pie because there was berries on his face. When I started to climb out of the tent he started to back away from my sleeping bad but it didn't let go of that fruit pie. It was one of the funniest things I've ever seen in the woods. A week later I was staying in an A-frame cabin on the eastern slope (in the June Lake area) when another ringtail cat came up onto the deck and looked into the sliding glass door. I had some leftover trout from a really good day of fishing so I tossed one onto the deck. He grabbed it and ran off the deck but was back a few minutes later standing on his hind feet with both paws on the sliding glass door begging for more. *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************
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