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.
19 Jan 07
9:29 am
After many years of hearing those bells jingle do you really think that the bears are now scared of the little bell. It is probably now part of their daily lives just like a birds song.
19 Jan 07
7:00 pm
You know how to identify bear scat? It smells like pepper spray jingles when you kick at it.