Bear Down
Springtime is the land awakening. The coho winds were back upon us—bleak easterlies sweeping in like a morning yawn after a night of sour wine, blasting our marrow for signs of life.
Savage squalls swept up the streets, howled around the houses and rattled along the rooftops, menacing hearth flames that struggled against the darkness, and scattering their feeble curls of chimney smoke into invisibility. They roared through the wild dark groves and great bare trees along the seashore of Harbour City, riding harmonic woodwind Valkyries of ephemeral air falling in love with itself. Branches bowed and bent downward in a hypnotic dance of creaking chaos, arms swaying like a stadium swarm. All flying creatures were grounded.
He shuffled down the steps that led to the water at the end of Stephenson Point Road, turning back along the beach toward the Pacific Biological Station. Previous brawls had scarred his head and neck. All his brothers were dead, but he was smart enough to have survived. The trail of the scent she had left, outside her comfort zone, he followed in a hurried frenzy.
The sea was a tumult of giant waves, roaring and crashing and pounding the shore, moaning from the depths of itself, mourning memories of lost men long tossed overboard. Wild gusts of cold sea spray lashed the coastline. The harshness bit bitter and salty into his bones. Ashen clouds scuttled across the sky,
He was a being of Heaven and Earth, of thunder and lightning, of rain and wind, of the galaxies. His eyes glowed luminous in the reflected dawn light.
His sense of smell was seven times greater than any hound, able to detect her scent over twelve hours after she had passed this way. He could smell a dead deer carcass three miles away and go a hundred days without eating, defecating, or urinating, converting his urea back into muscle mass. If you put him next to a wild coyote, he would ignore it; if you put him next to a dog, he would kill it with a single blow.
He was an excellent swimmer and capable of running bursts at fifty kilometres an hour. Fifty metres away, he could still get to you in three heartbeats. He had lost forty per cent of his weight over the winter but was still a 400-pound giant, an agile and powerful and unpredictable and indestructible bloodhound, with claws and teeth and night vision goggles. He shook off his torpor and put his hips and shoulders into his pursuit, his pace never slackening.
Brad Eggleston sat in the cab of his truck, a blue Dodge RAM 2500 equipped with a bull bar and motorized winch in the front, a rack of floodlights and sirens across the top, and a caged flatbed in the back. The logos painted on both doors were simple enough. Conservation Officer Service. He sipped his Tim Hortons Double Double through the flip-backed spout cover below the maple leaf embossed on the lid.
He had lost sight of the bear at the Stephenson Point steps but figured that the animal might walk along the beach toward the Biological Station and waited for him there. Wisdom sails with wind and time.
Brad had parked his truck around the back, under the flapping cotton of the Fisheries and Oceans flag, hanging on to the flagpole above him. He watched the bear lumber from one side to another up the bank and onto the front lawn of the Pacific Biological Station. His eyeshine held no fear.
Upwind from the bear, Brad opened the driver side door of his truck and climbed down from the cab. He moved much slower than he used to. His legs wobbled and he got dizzy if he stood up too fast or chased after something.
Powerful gusts crackled his Gore-Tex rain jacket like a silken sail. The badge on the shoulders of his uniform spoke to his mission. Integrity... Service... Protection. But oaths are but words and words are but wind, and this was an ill one. It flowed between his buttonholes, chilling his skin beneath, swirling his hair around his head, salting his eyelashes, and hitting his face like it intended to go right through it. It caught the brim of his caph and swept it away. Tornados of cold air coiled around his legs. The draft blew him backwards, raced around Mount Benson and returned for another go. Brad drank in the wild air before it was all gone.
His eyes squinted into two more looking back. The big black bruin stood straight up on two hind legs, nose in the air, head nodding in agitation, then came back to the ground broadside.
Brad averted a direct gaze and pulled his 12-gauge pump action shotgun from its sleeve. He put two shells into the breech. The first shot would have to count. Both head and heart began with the same three letters, but Brad knew you had to read all the way to the end, and neither shot was a good idea. The bear’s brain was a small target. A narrow miss might cause a broken jaw, lost eye, or another sort of unpleasant, slow death. The heart was also a small target and is often covered by the upper leg. A discharge too far forward was a non-fatal brisket shot; too low and he’d hit muscle or break a leg. Too far back is a gut-shot animal. The only practical way to kill this bear was to shoot high and take out the lungs.
Brad raised his weapon smooth and slow, concentrating on ensuring his body and clothing didn’t touch or rub against the exterior of his vehicle. He rested the gun barrel in his left arm on the hood of his truck, and in his mind traced the back of the bear’s left front leg up to about one-third of the way into the chest, behind the shoulder. He wondered how the boar couldn’t hear his own heart thumping. His mouth filled with cotton, his knees and hands trembled, and his palms glistened with rain where the sweat should have been. He fought back other calls of nature.
The conservation officer froze in a punishing pose, not blinking, keeping his mouth closed, breathing small and shallow, taking his time, waiting. The bear extended his near foreleg, and Brad saw the perfect angle. He braced his left arm so as not to fall, took in a deep breath, let it out, held it, and squeezed. BRUSUSUHHHHHH!
The bear became the dust in the wind knocked out of him, lost on it, gone with it. He plunged forward in the direction he was facing, through everything in his path, panicked and reckless and noisy, roaring, and growling, twenty metres towards the doors of the Biological Station, before falling on his side less than ten seconds later. It seemed like forever. The scent trail had become a blood trail, and the groans became weaker against the wind.
Brad came around his truck and behind the animal to put the second shell into its neck. SJIKK SJIKK. BRUSUSUHHHHHH! He waited more, and then, turning on his headlamp to illuminate the bear’s face, he leaned out and touched an exposed eye with the end of a stick. No one blinked.
Brad felt drained, limbs heavy and shaking. It took him ten minutes to make it back to his truck, and longer to compose himself and write his report.
Nuisance black bear boar, following a scent trail of a female in estrus, showing signs of being habituated and reluctant to leave the area, was euthanized at Pacific Biological Station at 0700 hours. Suspect a second competing male may still be at large.
He looked through his windshield at the Harbour City skyline, waking from its slumber. The first Vancouver ferry of the morning was entering Departure Bay. It would be one of those spring days when the sun shone hot and the wind blew cold, when it was summer in the light and winter in the shade.