Nothing good seems to happen when I see a bear (Day 34)

Day 34
Date: July 23rd, 2008
Current Location: Wawa

Today is the third time that I’ve seen a bear on this trip. Like the other two times, I really wish that I hadn’t. About an hour after I woke up, I saw, the Australian biker, Rob point to something that was walking along the street. At first I couldn’t recognize what it was. All I saw at first was an OPP police car. Then I noticed a black bear walking along the street. The officer in the OPP police car then in front of the bear and honked at it in at an attempt to scare the bear. After the honking the bear left. Rob and I then went to the officer and asked him what was going on. He told us that he was trying to scare the bear away and that it was becoming more and more common for bears to enter the city.

About twenty minutes later Rob noticed that the bear had come back and was rummaging thru the dumpster. Moments later the OPP officer came back. As I was talking to Kelly I noticed that the officer had pulled out a rifle. After pulling out the rifle he shot at the bear multiple times. I wasn’t really sure what happened to the bear but I assume that the officer was using lead bullets rather than rubber ones based on what we heard from townsfolk. It’s kind of weird to see a bear get shot in the birthplace of Winnie the Pooh.

Following the bear incident we went out for lunch and then we began the cycling for the day. The weather was fairly hospitable and the biking for the day went rather smoothly. At the end of the day we ended up finding a pretty nice campsite in Wawa.