Beets, Bears, Battlestar Galactica!

Day 15:

I had a very interesting experience today while knocking. This man opens his door. His door steps are much higher than my level, his stance takes up the door frame, and he is more or less towering over me. His cute dogs come out. Of course I reach down to pet them, but think twice about it, as he commands them harshly to go back inside. I give the pitch. He says he’s been out of work for a while and would not be interested due to lack of funds. In fact, he was working on his resume just then. Fine. No big deal to me. I notice a huge black bear mount in his living room and before any real relationship has been established say, “whoah! Is that your bear?” At first, he doesn’t want to share anything else about himself, so we talk bugs again.

After a few minutes, I asked if he shot that bear himself (of course I’m bored and hot and haven’t had a real conversation in about… 30 minutes). He relents and says, “You know, come on in”.

Jackpot! AC!

I’m in there for 30 minutes with his kids running around us and him telling me all about this bear that he shot. It was actually pretty interesting. Apparently it was ¼ inch shorter than the biggest black bear caught on record. He went up to Canada to shoot it. They couldn’t eat the meat because it had parasites in it. The hide alone weighed 100 pounds, he said. There was a photo album resting on the bear stand. He thumbed through it. We talked about all of the pictures. It took four men to lift the thing onto the UTV.

He talked about how male bears and female bears differ. Apparently, it’s not in the same way that male and female humans differ. Ok.

ANYWAY, the next thing he said was that he’s going to stuff is the swan in his downstairs freezer. It’s been there a year. His son shot it. His son was 11 years old at the time.

The thing about these types of situations is, I ask myself so many questions once I leave the house.

Why did I stay so long?

Why did I keep asking follow-up questions to encourage conversation?

Was I really that interested in hunting black bears/swans/geese/ducks/elk?

Did I really want to know if shooting cubs was legal (actually I really did want to know about this)?

I think that I like hearing people talk about what they’re interested in because I think people like talking about what they’re interested in. People like to talk about what they’re good at. They like to teach others. I think it gives that person some validity and worth in knowing they helped someone know more about what they do. This man, for instance, seemed rough on the edges and unwelcoming at first. Quite frankly, I don’t like leaving the door that way. I don’t want to feel like I made their day worse. But by the time we parted with a firm handshake, we were friends. He had taught me 30 minutes worth of bear hunting stories/strategies, and I had mostly listened. And I figured, if he’s that good at bear hunting, polishing his resume for a job hunt may be a lot easier.

His actual bear, right in the front room. Awesome!