More Alaska Bear Tales Pub. 1990 / 285pp Paperback The Outhouse Bear Hank Taylor, an Anchorage attorney, shared a number of interesting stories. After the fact, most are humorous; at the time, none of those involved was amused. There was a logging camp on Montague Island which had a privy--a two-holer complete with a half-moon and a door cut down for ventilation. Four or five guys were stayin' at this camp, and one day they took a few hours off from logging and went out to a ridge to do a little casual shootin' with their .22s. A guy from California decided to take a little break and went down to the outhouse. He walked on down to the toilet, leaving his friends on the ridge. He leaned his rifle outside the door and sat down on one of those holes, naturally leaving the door open to enjoy the scenery, as all good Alaskans do. A few minutes later, the boys on the ridge looked over and saw a pigeon-toed, wobbly shouldered, rollin' boar coming down the beach and headin' for the outhouse. They started yellin', "BearI Bear!" The Californian looked up and said, "Ahhh, go on," not understanding why they wouldn't leave a man in his peace when his pants were half-masted. The guys kept yellin' and he kept ignorin' their joking. Soon the bear had reached the outhouse, and he stuck his big bushel-basket head around the door to see what this feller was doin'. This apparition gave the Californian something of a fright, and he often has said it was fortunate he was sitting where he was sitting at the time. Slam... the rickety outhouse door banged right in that bear's face, and the bear jumped back a little bit, startled by the rudeness of it all. Then, over the top of the toilet door, the bear saw a hand come out, followed by a forearm, followed by a bicep, right up to the armpit. These fingers were stretchin', tryin' to reach the top of the rifle barrel, exactly two inches too far down. The guys on the ridge swore that damned arm grew to an amazing length. And the bear was sitting there like a big dog, just watching that arm strainin' and growin' to reach the rifle barrel. Finally, the old boar just shook his head and wandered off on down the beach. By and by the door opened a crack and the Californian peeped out. The rifle went back inside. The door slammed. The friends on the hill rolled with laughter over that arm that grew. -- Salad Told by Chuck Lewis, Jr., a commercial fisherman living on Washington State's Olympic Peninsula. One summer my dad hired a guy to cook on our fishing boat. He was a college-type know-it-all from the East Coast. Although his attitude was pretty annoying, the biggest problem was that this cook wouldn't fix meat. After a whole summer of vegetables, we all got a little disgusted with him and said, "Look, you fix us some sausage in the morning, and we want a hamburger once in a while." He kept arguing that eating meat made you violent, and whenever I got mad at him about his theories, he said I was just proving his point. This guy also wanted to go ashore all the time. He wanted to get off the boat and go meditate. He would commune with the trees. He'd put his head against the tree and go, "hmmrnmmm... hhmmmm. "Anyway, each time he'd go ashore to meditate, Dad would say, "We've seen bears here earlier. You better take a gun just in case.' But our cook insisted that bears wouldn't bother him because he was a vegetarian. He claimed the reason bears attack was because they sensed people were meat-eaters and felt threatened by carnivores. We would argue and argue about this stupid idea. "Use logic," Dad would say. What about deer and cow. They're grass-eaters, but bears eat them." But he wouldn't listen. Each time he went ashore and came back safely, he returned with a big smirk on his face.., point proven. The year after he worked with us, this cook signed on with Red Netufsky on the Wayward Wind. One time when Red's boat was in Kukak Bay, where the bears are thick, the cook played his same old trick; he went ashore to meditate. Well, sure enough, a bear attacked him and ran him down to the beach. The bear caught up with him fast enough and worked him over, biting him on his butt, back and his legs. He finally got away by taking his day pack off and throwing it to divert the bear. Then he climbed into the skiff and escaped. The crew on the boat called the Coast Guard and got him to the hospital. Soon, the whole fleet heard about this guy getting mauled. When dad and I found out it was the vegetarian, we got a big chuckle out of the story, knowing exactly what had happened. It wasn't too much later when Dad and I bumped into our old cook in the small boat harbor in Kodiak. As we walked up the ramp, he was walking down, hanging his head like he was embarrassed and trying not to notice us. Dad didn't say anything about the incident except, "Hey, chief cook, you don't suppose that bear was in the mood for a salad that day do you?

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