When I moved here 11 years ago, one of the first things my family did was take a road trip to Wyoming. The three day journey was exhausting. My brother, sister, and I passed time by playing games and shoving our faces with candy. Up front, my mom and dad took turns driving  listened to books on tape until they somehow reached the end of the road. Dozens of eye spy games and naps later, we finally reached our destination: a ranch in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. At the ranch lived the owner and her dog. My parents knew the owner, don’t ask me how, because I couldn’t tell you the answer. She welcomed us with open arms and lots of activities. We were surrounded by endless hiking trails and fishing spots in every direction that she was happy to give us a tour of. However, we were also surrounded by wild animals, including bears. I never gave these animals much thought until one tried to get into the cabin I was sharing with my brother and sister.

One morning when we walked out the door to start the day, we were greeted by bear footprints that circled around the cabin. Although there was no bear in sight, I immediately rushed back into the cabin. After finally working up the courage to step outside again, my family was brainstorming about why the bear would come so close to us. They finally came to the conclusion of why the bear decided to pay us a visit; all of the food was being kept in our cabin. It must have smelled the leftover Kit Kat bars. Although I love my midnight snacks, I was happy to move the food out of our home for the week and into an empty cabin. The owner of the ranch was not happy about this incident at all and vowed to catch the bear. So, that night we placed  a bear trap in the middle of all of our cabins. It was a big contraption with food in the middle that was pressure activated so that when the bear would try to get to the treat, gates on both sides would close and lock the bear inside. It took a long time to set up because none of us had ever done it before and we really didn’t know what we were doing. But after everyone gave it their best effort, we figured it out and got it up and running. We placed some chicken in the middle of it and then went to bed in hopes that we would wake up to the beast in the cage instead of in our cabin.

When we woke up the next morning, we threw on our shoes and bolted outside to see if we got our target. I first saw the side of the cage. The door was down meaning that the bear had to be inside. But, to our dismay, it wasn’t in there. What was in the cage, however, was the owners dog. It was scared, cold, and confused. It must have been out and about in the night and smelled the chicken. Since it had not seen the cage before, it didn’t know to avoid it so it seemed to just be free chicken, not a trap. We hurried to open to doors and the dog bolted out. It was excited to be out of jail and able to run around once again. There weren’t any new bear footprints but we set it back up again that night just incase. This time, the owner made sure that her dog stayed inside.

We woke up the next morning emptyhanded. The cage doors were still wide open and the chicken was still sitting in the middle of it. It was disappointing that we didn’t catch it but we also saw it as a good sign that bears were not nearby anymore. This gave us confidence that this road trip would not be our last. However, that confidence dropped just later that day. My dad went out to fish alone because everyone else was wiped out from the hiking we had been doing for the last couple days. He said it would only take around an hour or so but instead, it took an upwards of four hours to return. Instead of shrugging his tardiness off as the probability that he was just fishing more, we feared for the worst- that a bear got him. The beasts must have seen that we were trying to catch them so they wanted to retaliate. They stayed in the shadows plotting their meticulous and well thought out plan until they could finally execute it.

To me, a six year old on his first trip out west, the idea of this all seemed so real. It turned out not to be true. Instead, my dad had brought home dinner for us all to eat. After all of this went down and I was assured that no animal would come for us, the bears stopped being such a burden on my mind and I could go back to vacationing. The only thing I had to fear now was the car ride back home.