"Holy. Shit!"

[Lauren Johnson]

I understand the safe thing to do is to suspend food up over a high branch by rope tied off lower down the tree.

In some places, there is not safe thing when the bears have had multiple generations to adapt. Bears are rather amazing. These bears can figure out and defeating the best attempts at tying up food -- which I still do if I am still in a treed area. So people now resort to packing in bear canisters which are strong and tightly sealed.

True story. When my family and I were camping in the Yosemite Valley some 50 years ago, we returned to our camp site only to find that a bear had gotten into our ice chest which we had left out on the ground. We found a jar of mayonnaise was open scooped out. Our neighbors in the next campsite said they saw it all. The bear came into the camp, found our ice chest, sat down and bounced the ice chest on his legs. It quickly popped open as they all do of course. The bear rummaged around and found what it wanted -- the never opened jar of mayo. It pressed the jar against its chest and twisted off the cap! It then held the jar to its mouth with both paws and scooped out most of it. I looked in the jar and saw the long skinny marks from its tongue. Amazing.

Nevertheless, I don't ever want a curious bear to come sniffing up close to me! They can quickly become un-curious.