October 6, 2006

Yikes! Last night I woke up to the sounds of something of significant size coming in the tepee. We are used to hearing the occasional scurrying of rodents and sometimes hear them try to come in by running around between the tepee liner and the tepee. Sometimes they succeed but most of the time they don't. We think they must be after the warmth because we don’t keep any food in the tepee since we really aren’t interested in attracting animals into our home. Well, Kirk didn’t hear anything because he had his earplugs in. We sometimes wear earplugs because the wind kicks up in the middle of the night which makes the tepee poles creak loudly. I’ve become used to the wind and the creaking so I don’t wear my earplugs as often anymore. Thankfully I didn't because I was able to hear this animal pawing the canvas and trying to get in. I thought it was probably one of our friendly little ground squirrels. Then I heard a loud thump like something big was knocked over inside the tepee. I freaked out, sat up and shook Kirk screeching, “There’s something inside the tepee!”. Kirk woke up cranky because he thought I was overreacting to a rodent. When I woke Kirk up I must have scared it off because I heard whatever it was thump around outside of the tepee. I figured I could unzip our tent and take a peak through a little slit to make sure the coast was clear. I saw the canvas door to the tepee was open. That’s very unusual. Even in high winds that door never blows open so I knew something had come in the tepee through the door. I told Kirk to take a look and he immediately wasn’t cranky anymore when he realized I wasn’t overreacting. He saw a big rip down the side of the oval door hole. We were hesitant to get out of the safety of our little 3 man tent (even though it’s not really “safe”) but we emerged slowly to take a look. Thankfully whatever it was wasn’t curious enough to come after us in the tent and was scared off by my voice. We keep pepper spray in our tent for just this reason so we had that in hand ready to fire just in case. We were sad to see the tepee was ripped and as we looked it over the thoughts were settling in that whatever it was had big enough claws to puncture the tepee and put a nice 8” rip down the side. Eek! Kirk proceeded to mark his territory around the tepee in the hopes in might help to keep it from coming back. We searched for any reason why it might have come in the tepee. We think it was because I had used a handy wipe on my hands before going to bed that had a lemon scent. I threw it in the trash inside the tepee. Kirk also had his bathroom kit with shampoo and toothpaste hanging inside from the tepee liner. That’s the only thing we had in there that could have possibly smelled like food. We figured it was most likely a bear that was trying to scavenge some last minute food before hibernating. Bears are known to be curious animals so he also could have just been seeing what this crazy cone shaped thing was that was erected on the ground.

We were both a little wigged out so we moved our sleeping bags into the back of the truck and slept there making sure to lock the topper. We had a crappy restless night of sleep, but woke up to an amazing sunrise. We checked out the tepee as the sun was brightening everything around us and saw muddy paw prints on the side of the tepee as well as mud prints on the door. Yep, it sure was a bear. I proceeded to sew up the rip and curse our little friend. Hopefully he won’t come back.

This is the first incident we have had of this nature. So considering that we've been there since early June I guess that's not too bad.