I was at RiteAid this evening picking up some cold and flu medicine for Chey, and the woman at the register warned me to be on the lookout for a bear.

Yes, a bear. It turns out there was a bear down by Saginaw and Creyts Rd., which is not all that far from the RiteAid I was at. (Read about the bear sightings on the Lansing State Journal web site.)

The woman was very excited about it, and put on a pretense of being afraid about a bear running around Lansing. I say “pretense” because I think she was actually delighted that something so unusual had happened near where she lives.

Because she was so enthusiastic, I took a moment to share a bear story with her.

I remember reading a story in the Daily Mining Gazette about ten years ago about an incident when a black bear got into trouble while roaming the City of Houghton (up in the U.P.) the night before.

This bear climbed up onto the porch of a house owned by an elderly widow and cornered a small dog. The dog began barking fiercely at this bear, but the bear began advancing on the dog.

Meanwhile, the elderly woman came to the rescue. She opened the door to find a black bear menacing her pet. So, she grabbed a nearby broom and began beating the bear with it.

The bear was no doubt scared witless by this broom-brandishing old woman and lumbered off the porch and made haste down the road.