I told him about wearing a bell and/or making noise when you’re running around in the woods. I told him that this is one of nuggets of knowledge we were given as children in the great white north – right before crawling under a table during an earthquake and right after not licking the flagpole in the winter.

He looked at me as if I’d mak something like this up, so I defended “it’s for the bears. If they hear you coming, they’ll scurry away.”

“No,” he said. “No, they hear the jingle and think it’s a dinner bell. It’s not a deterrent, it’s a beacon.”

Hmm. He makes an excellent point.