Michael Friis Johansen

No accounting for taste
by MICHAEL FRIIS JOHANSEN

 

   Come spring if a groggy black bear shows up at a local take-out window to demand a double-double, it might be a little my fault. That's to say, I may bear some responsibility for introducing this animal to the wonders of caffeine.
   This bear and I have been acquainted for about four years now, ever since I started living at the lakeside camp that was first to become a construction zone and then a cabin site. He's been a regular and somewhat frequent visitor. Over the years we've taught each other a few things. He's learned from me that if he visits while I'm around I'll subject him to highly annoying noises until he goes away. I learned from him that if I'm not around he'll help himself to any food he can find, but there seems to be one thing in particular he wants: coffee. I think he acquired the taste for it on his very first visit, during which he flattened and shredded the tent, snapping the poles like twigs. But the tent had merely been in his way - he went right over it to step on a propane cookstove and reach my well-used French press coffee pot. I could never keep that pot clean, no matter how hard I scoured the coffee stains, but I never had a bear help me before. He'd licked the pot so clean it looked new, or at least it would have if he hadn't broken it in his eagerness to get at the last faint caffeine traces.
   Later that year I found him with his whole head stuck deep into my food barrel. I'm not sure how long he'd been digging his way down, but I noticed (after I scared him away by banging some pots and pans together) that he'd completely ignored the food at the top of the barrel in order to reach something closer to the bottom. Of course, I can't know for sure what desires were driving the beast, but I do know the Folger's medium roast was down further than he could reach.
   This past spring he came back, again while I was away. He fished the sealed food barrel out of the storage tent, dragged it into the woods to a comfortable hummock by the lake and, after considerable chewing and rending, cracked the tough plastic barrel open like it was a tough plastic egg. He ate lots, but not everything. He seems to have liked the dried fruit and the salted nut mixes, the cherry-flavoured Tang crystals, and most of the pungent powdery spices, but he had little interest in any of the rice or oats. Naturally, he left not a trace of coffee behind. Not only did he open and empty a jar of instant, but he found and devoured two vacuum packs of Italian espresso and a tin of Continental dark roast. He must have departed the scene at a fast trot and afterwards stayed awake for days.
   Fortunately, the bear left me alone all summer, maybe thinking he cleaned me out. He's been in the area, but I've only seen signs of him outside of the campsite, always on the footpath that leads to the road. Do bears crap in the woods? Yes, copiously. This one left many loads as if to say hi, but the fresh signs stopped appearing a few weeks ago. Since the weather's getting colder I assumed the bear had gone higher into the hills to find a nice comfortable den for the winter.
   I was surprised, then, to discover he'd paid me another visit while was away for a night - and doubly surprised to see what had attracted him. He'd left the cabin alone and hadn't gone near the storage tent. What he'd done instead was overturn the rusty sheets of metal covering the privy pit. I'd always known he could smell it, but never imagined he'd want to get at it. As a friend said when I told him the story: "Bears have no taste."
   So, come spring if a bear shows up and orders a double-double, just give it to him - but whatever you do, don't let him use the washrooms.

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