Reading Comprehension Success in 20 Minutes a Day, 3rd Edition

“Bear Story”
Campers Gene and Marie Marsden took pride in being good citizens when in the wild. While driving the three
hundred miles from their home in Colorado to the Green River Lakes area of the Wind River Mountains in
Wyoming, they instructed their children in the protocol they’d learned in the bear safety pamphlet put out by the
Bridger-Teton Forest Service. The number-one rule was “Don’t feed the bears!”—whether intentionally or not.
Warning the kids not to go anywhere near a bear, the Marsdens had no problem with the intentional part, but the
unintentional part was not as easy to avoid as they thought.
Mr. and Mrs. Marsden did their best to keep a tidy camp. While the bear manual had said to hang all food
at least ten feet off the ground and four feet out from the trunk of a tree, they did what all the other people in the
nearby public campground were doing and locked their food in their little utility trailer at night. Afraid that the
scent of the bait might attract a bear, they even locked up Marie’s fishing pole. It was always dark when they went
to bed, but they perused the campsite with flashlights, making sure nothing was left out. Taking the recommended
precaution of sleeping a hundred yards from where they cooked their food, they kept the car near their tents,
unhitched from the trailer, which they left up at the other camp. Before going to bed each night, all of the Mars-
dens took off the clothes they had worn during the day while eating, replacing them with pajamas that they used
only for sleeping. They were also careful to lock the dirty laundry in the trailer. As the pamphlet advised, they took
no snacks into their tents.
Gene says he now regrets not having taken their dog into the tent at night, but they liked having him on guard.
Small animals would often come sniffing around, and the dog would chase them back into the thickets, then return
to the hollow he’d dug for himself in front of the children’s tent. But on the night of the encounter, Spike would
not stop barking, and Marie Marsden knew he must be sounding the alarm on something more dangerous and
dauntless than a raccoon or squirrel. When she unzipped the tent and shined her flashlight in the direction of the
cooking area, she saw Spike attempting to hold a young grizzly bear at bay.
They all managed to pile into the car, and with the kids sitting atop stuffed sacks full of clothes and gear, they
drove quickly down the trail, calling out the window to Spike and abandoning the cargo trailer to whatever fate
the bear might have in store for it. Uncertain whether the bear was following, one of the children opened a door
and loaded Spike up on the run. They drove to a pay phone twenty miles away and called a Fish and Game Depart-
ment ranger, who identified the bear by the white ruff the Marsdens had seen around his neck. The authorities
informed the Marsdens that the bear was a young, recently weaned male that they’d been keeping an eye on.
The next morning, the Marsdens heard helicopters circling over the mountain above them and wondered
if it might have something to do with the bear. After spending the night in the public campground, they drove
back to their site. Wandering the area in search of clues, Marie came to a halt below the tallest spruce. She slapped
her head and shouted, “Oh no!”
“What is it?” Gene asked.
Marie pointed at the ground where Spike’s dog food bowl lay upside down.
A week after their return home, the Marsdens read the headline in their local paper. “Bear Euthanized in Wind
Rivers.” According to the article, the Fish and Game Department had shot the young bear because, having been
rewarded for invading a human campsite, it would likely do so again.
The Marsdens knew they had been lucky in the encounter, yet much to their shame and sadness, they also
knew that the bear had not.