Glimmer of hope
Yesterday morning, Stephane Aucoin, owner of the Flying Pisces fish and chip stand, was seen sprawled out on the pavement under his trailer. At first, we thought he was sneaking a little pull from the used oil reservoir (vegetable, not motor). But then we discovered that he was trying to fix the grey water pipe, which, he said, had been damaged on the trip back from the Atlin Arts & Music Festival.
Suddenly, we told ourselves “The dream is alive.”
Maybe, just maybe, we thought, the weekend’s Grizzly Project efforts weren’t a complete bust after all. Perhaps some intrepid grizzly, realizing that the Pisces had run low on fish in Atlin but would soon be returning to Whitehorse (where huge stocks of fish run wild and free in the freezers of the Wharf on Fourth) had decided to hitch a ride. We all know it’s humanly possible to travel great distances while clinging to the undercarriage of a vehicle; Robert Mitchum, Robert De Niro and Kelsey Grammer all did it in versions of the movie Cape Fear. And we also know that bears are much stronger than humans. So, it doesn’t seem entirely crazy to assume that an ingenious grizzly–whereabouts currently unknown–managed to make the trip back to Whitehorse beneath the trailer. The other option, of course, is that the bruin got bounced off somewhere along the Atlin Road, whose rough condition would then expose the Yukon government to fresh accusations of animal abuse.
At any rate, this experience has taught me never to give up on a dream. We’re now eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Yukon government’s new brochure on “How to Keep Bears Out of Your Yard.” Sure, we’d be a lot more excited if it was a brochure called “How to Keep Bears Away from Your Fish Stand,” but we’ll take what we can get. Assuming this literature arrives in our mailbox as promised, we’ll be reading it very closely–and doing exactly the opposite of everything it recommends for a grizzly-free environment.
