Oh, boy.
(SR) I was screaming out one door and he went right through the big window with four panes in it. And he went right through that window.
(DR) Slashed and blasted a hole through the window.
(SR) And I went out that front door screaming. That was so close.
And one day Doug went to town, to Chiloquin, for the park. It was late when he came home, dark, and I thought I heard the door handles going off and he’s got an armful and can’t open the door. So I ran and said, “Just a minute, dear.” I opened the door and that bear was sitting there.
(DR) Sitting on his haunches playing with the doorknob. She was a little shaky when I did get home.
(SR) I think you probably heard the story about the bear at the Hedgpeth’s. It dismantled their house. It went upstairs and knocked everything over.
(DR) It tore the cupboards off the kitchen wall.
(SR) We went in to clean it up, and flower, sugar molasses and everything were all on the floor. They went to town and left some candy next to the window. The bear smelled it.
(DR) We had a bear break a window in our kitchen at the end of the house. It didn’t get in. I slept downstairs for two or three days.
(SR) I had made pickles and they smelled them.
(DR) We didn’t leave anything around, but he was prowling around.
(SR) That was in the fall when 12 bears were sleeping in our yard.
12?
(DR) We had a circle out here of 11 bears.
Right in front of the house?
(SR) Yes. And they would just wake up and smell.
(DR) Great big dogs. They’d get up and sniff, and then they’d drop down. It was just before they went to hibernate. As Sadie said, she was making pickles, and you know the aroma of pickles. I came home for lunch this one day and there were 11 of them out there, yearlings and two-year olds, and three or four or fix adults, all lying in a semi-circle. You had to be pretty careful. We had, in those days; too, they used a lot of double, 14 x 16 tents for temporary- rated people like rangers on the rim.
