The brochure said "bear-proof storage" was available. This is a reality check, a truth that militates against the propaganda of children's literature, an invitation to understand that children's books are more entertainment than exposition. Just as an example, consider the infinite patience of parents in such stories-sufficient evidence that children's literature is significantly skewed. Children's books are especially no good for campers. Read children's storybooks and you are tricked into thinking bears and hippos are benign creatures with no more mal intent than steeling picnic baskets or farting. Floating on the surface of a river, hippos look like a patch of cucumbers soaking in a sink, and from every IKEA shelf between Monterey and Roanoke bears, fuzzy, stuffed buddies just waiting to be hugged, sit on beds, shelves and the very shoulders of children.

But these animals are territorial, temperamental, and given to capricious bouts of narcissism. Indeed, if you ask me, they sound an awful lot like humans, and that really scares me. Bears and hippos are carnivores, eating plants, animals, and humans. Hippos are able to raise and lower themselves at will in the water, and at night they come onto land to sleep, eat, and nurse their young. At Lake Naivasha, Kenya, they dug a trench around the campgrounds to abate the course of hippos coming out of the lake and making their mid-night treks through camp. Before the trench was dug, a man and his son were eaten alive when a hippo approached the tent and the boy couldn't keep from crying out. Hungry, Hungry Hippos indeed!

I'm going camping in the High Sierras. There are no hippos there, but I need to remember to use the bear-proof storage provided in the park. I'm worried about bears-hulking monstrosities searching for food, not companionship. And I've heard, like humans, they are prone to hunt for the mere sport of it, not necessarily from hunger or the establishment of proper inter-mammal boundaries. Again, they are so much like humans that they scare me. I've heard the ruthless mammals are habituated and the thin veil of nylon won't hold them back. For teeth that size, I imagine it might be like eating a mango-there is some initial resistance, but in the end it only remains to pick fibers from the teeth. There's nothing worse, I've heard, than being interrupted in the middle of the night by a bear keen on finding any morsel to satisfy a craving. So I am impelled to use bear-proof storage, to hide the tiniest fragment of food inside. I must be honest: it isn't so much that I am afraid of the bear, but that I am afraid the bear might inadvertently raise one of those insurmountable scenarios where I am left bargaining-"If only I'd left my Cadbury's in a bear-proof container, I might now be eating chocolate with my left hand instead of grieving the loss of both." I don't need these kinds of reminders that life is full of vexing ironies that only alcohol can solve.

I will use bear-proof storage to keep me and my hot dogs safe. And I will stop reading children's books before I go camping. If I come back alive, and with all of my original parts, I'll write a travel piece of surviving a bear attack.

Learn more about this author, Mark Weaver.
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