Wildberries are in season.
Due to global warming they're growing more plentifully at the sides of roads where people gather. Rather than high up in the mountains where they should be.
Bears eat 20,000 calories a day. They eat wildberries. Only occasionally will they knaw on a human should they smell a feast.
All this is to say that when my Brewster Tour bus rounded the corner to drop me at the Banff Rocky Mountain Resort, tour guide Alan was telling us a riveting bear story.
A single woman jogged on an abandoned road by nearby Lake Louise when she was attacked by a black bear.
She played dead but that didn't work.
The bear attacked her.
Apparently, playing dead like a filet mignon isn't what you're supposed to do when a hungry black bear appears.
You're supposed to make subtle noise and back away slowly.
Show that you're neither a threat nor today's entree.
I can't recall the rest of Alan's story because like an illustrated book, a black bear appeared, eating wildberries on the side of the road.
At that moment our bus jerked.
We were turning into the Banff Rocky Mountain Resort.
"And the woman is out of the hospital and the bear was tracked down and put down," Alan said.
"Here we have a black bear enjoying wildberries where we will drop Donna now."
20,000 calories a day, I thought.
The black bear stopped eating wildberries and turned his head toward the laughter rising from the back of the bus where twenty-five potential filet mignons shook their heads and cameras.
Only one of us would be getting off the bus.
