Episode 109: Close Encounters of the Wild Kind IV

Josh and his friends enjoying the views at Death Canyon Shelf along the Teton Crest Trail in Wyoming.

Credit: Josh King

It’s back! This week we are doing another installment of our fan favorite series “Close Encounters of the Wild Kind.” This week we will bring you two stories from listeners who have gotten a little too close for comfort with some of nature’s critters while spending time outdoors.

Megan Feighery: From Wyoming Public Media, this is HumaNature, real stories where humans and our habitat meet Megan Feighery. This time we're bringing you a Close Encounters of the Wild Kind episode. So you're here to stories today from listeners who have been up close and personal with some of nature's critters while spending time outdoors. So without further ado, let's kick things off with our first story. In this tale, a man finds himself in a prickly situation.

Jared Felicetti: And I hear someone that sounded like my brother yell, oh, God, watch out, get away. I remember thinking, I wonder if I should help. And then I thought it was pretty warm in my sleeping bag.

MF: Jared Felicetti isn't from Jackson Hole, Wyoming. But he's lived here long enough to feel like a local, most of the time. 

JF: I do say I'm a local now, even though I quite often feel new. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe I live here.

MF: In August 2020, the pandemic was in full swing. Jared and his family were stuck inside, like a lot of folks, but he could still head outdoors as long as he was careful. Jared has a group of friends. He takes a yearly trip with guys from college and his younger brother. But they thought they might have to skip this one, even though nobody wanted to. Everyone is scattered across the country and they don't see each other much. So their annual trip means a lot.

JF: This was at a time when you know, we were still practicing social distancing. And you were okay to spend time outside, but there was still sort of questions about proximity.

MF: After some discussion, they decided to go for it. The group settled on a backpacking trip in Grand Teton National Park, and they got creative.

JF: No one's going to share tents. Typically, we would have been like I've got to double or triple like let's share gear, we would have typically shared meals. We didn't do any of that. We were all completely self contained on the trip. Sort of a strange backpacking trip in that sense that everyone was going solo even though we were doing a group trip.

MF: Six guys, including Jared decided to go. Everyone made their way to Wyoming and it was clear from the beginning, this trip would be different. Nevertheless, they headed to the Teton Crest Trail. It's a popular 40 mile hike in the southern end of the Grand Tetons. It's considered challenging and takes an average of three to five days to finish. But it's also stunningly beautiful, panoramic views of the Tetons, turquoise, alpine lakes and fields of wildflowers. Everyone was excited. They set off each with their own separate gear and food supply, making sure to keep at least six feet between them as they hiked. The first day went great and was uneventful. Everything went to plan. They made it to the Death Canyon shelf where they would camp for the night. It's widely known as one of the best camping sites in Grand Teton National Park. The group set up their tents and settled in.

JF: Everyone just spread out at this campsite. And I couldn't see where the other guys were set up from where my tent was set up. There's no fires permitted on the Death Canyon shelf. So you sit around and hang out. We would bring sleeping bags down to the Death Canyon to the shelf itself, and lay out and just look at the stars.

MF: Their campsite was deep in bear country, so they took precautions.

JF: We prepared our dinner we set up and then we went to the shelf itself so that we could sit on the edge of these cliffs to eat our dinner. And while we were on the shelf, we were visited by a park ranger and the park ranger came up and he's like, Who's Who's Jared? I was like, Oh, what did we do? Turns out he wanted to just say hey, thanks so much for having such a bear safe site. Everything looks great. We really appreciate it. So we kind of got high five for a camp setup.

MF: Jared had set his tent up on a higher section of the campsite. His brother and a few others were below him. Jared had a full tent, but a few others including his brother had opted for just a sleeping bag with a tarp over them. It was a warm August, the perfect weather to sleep under the stars. As long as the bears stayed away.

JF: I sleep with my bear spray next to me back probably around one, two o'clock in the morning. It's hard to describe. I hear this noise. It was a shuffling that woke me up. I'm listening. And I remember thinking, not entirely sure what a bear would sound like if it was right next to my tent. Just doesn't sound like one but I immediately grabbed my bear spray and my headlamp. Then I started hearing chewing, funny like the bizarre sound, and disarmed my bear spray. Ready to fend off a bear. I was scared.

I definitely had some adrenaline. And I turn on my headlamp…porcupine on the backpack strap of my backpack. My backpack was sitting next to the tent. No food in the backpack. And this porcupine was sitting just sort of chewing on my backpack strap.

When my light turned on, it kind of just turned around and shuffled off towards my other friends. Like okay, not a bear. That's great. I Turned off my lap and went back to sleep. 

And I hear someone that sounded like my brother yell. Oh, God, watch out. Get away. I remember thinking there's definitely something going on. I wonder if I should help. And then I thought it was pretty warm in my sleeping bag. At least three guys down there. I think they'll be okay. Hopefully it's not a bear. But back to sleep. And then I hear again, help help. It's got me trapped. Ah, I just kicked it. Once again, I decided not to go down. I'm laying there. So I went back to sleep. 

In the morning everyone wakes up, and there's a central location for that campsite, that's kind of around the bear box. There's a log setup for sitting and hanging out. I get up early so I was one of the first ones there. My buddy Keith rolls out of bed and he kind of you know comes over and eventually my buddy Jeremiah comes over and we all kind of come over looking pretty haggard. Start to compare notes. What happened last night? I tell the guys like oh yeah, I woke up and this porcupine is chewing on my backpack and my buddy Matt's like, yeah, this porcupine chewed a hole through my backpack. He showed me the backpack. Definitely frayed and quite a bit of chewing. My brother, the porcupine, had gone under his tarp. And he kicked it. And it had quilled his sleeping bag. And then they jumped out of their sleeping bags. And my buddy Shane, he retreated into his Bibi and the porcupine was sitting near his head sniffing and he was trapped.

Apparently there were two porcupines there was a bigger one that seemed like maybe it was a mother. And then there was the smaller one and that seemed like the mother was like, All right, we found a group of them. Why don't you go and sniff at them and chew on their stuff and I'm going to sit here. The big one was just sitting back watching this. This commotion as the smaller one went through the sleeping bags and went through and got kicked by my brother and trapped. My buddy Shane and his sleeping bag and it was just like this complete mayhem. They came back three or four times and caused this commotion was definitely like this slow progression of ramping up how disturbed these porcupines wanted to make us. 

My brother's sleeping bag had 15 quills where he had kicked the one that had gotten under his tarp. Like I have no idea what porcupine etiquette is. I think you're not supposed to kick them. They seemed very habituated to humans. And they did not act scared and scurry off and maybe that's what porcupines do. I've not had that much experience with porcupines. They just kind of shuffled and waddled off and then would come back.

MF: Jared called the park rangers to let them know what happened.

JF: And I was half expecting them to be like, we've been having trouble. Sorry about that. It's been pretty common up there. They had no idea. It was quite the story for them as well.

MF: Apparently, porcupines love salt. So the Rangers thought that might have attracted them.

JF: Maybe we're just extra sweaty.

MF: Whatever it was, Jared left with a great story and a souvenir.

JF: I still have these quills and definitely came back and showed my kid. Definitely a story that comes up. It's the porcupine raid of 2021. I feel moderately or barely, somewhat guilty for not jumping up to help. But I think they had it under control. Sounds like they did.

MF: I was on mute over here, but I was actually laughing at that part when you woke up. Might have been a bear. But you know, I gotta get some sleep.

JF: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, but it wasn't a bear. It was a bear, I would help Sure.

MF: For our next animal encounter, we move to the wilds of Alaska, where a woman comes face to face with a mother grizzly.

Jessica Hay: It felt like I could see her calculating in her mind what she was going to do behind her or her three cubs.

MF: For Jessica Hay, growing up around wild animals is just a part of living in Alaska. As a kid, she barely thought about it.

JH: Pretty much my only animal talk was don't look an aggressive dog directly in the eyes. I would walk to school through the woods and home. And it wasn't until many years later that my mom was like there could have been bears and just sent me off to school. She just didn't think that in an area where there were homes. There would be bears. There definitely are bears because this was in the 90s. So there wasn't the Next Door app alerting you Hey, there's a bear in the neighborhood. Just you didn't know.

MF: But Jessica says she's far more worried about running into a moose than a bear.

JH: Bears have generally behaved the way I expect them to. And sometimes a moose will just seem totally fine. And then it will change its mind in an instant and just rage.

MF: And Jessica would know she spent a lot of time around bears. About 15 years ago. She was on an archeological survey in Katmai National Park. It's on a peninsula in southern Alaska.

JH: It's really beautiful. It's known for the bears. There is a lot of salmon so the bears are fattening up on salmon. They are well fed, they're big, and there's lots of them.

MF: You may have heard of Fat Bear Week. It's an annual event where the public votes for their favorite fat bear as they prepare to hibernate for the winter. It takes place in Katmai

JH: It's the Alaska that everyone thinks of. That's actually the Alaska that's usually on National Geographic. It's incredible.

MF: Jessica and her team were searching for culturally or historically significant sites. Basically they would be dropped off in the park and look for an area that humans likely occupied places with access to water, shelter and resources. Then they would look for artifacts, bones, anything interesting really. Jessica loved it and spent several summers doing it. The job put her and her team deep in bear country, and there's a lot of them in Katmai. So because of the high number of bears, Jessica and her team received a lot of training.

JH: We had gone through several rounds of bear behavior training and training with bear spray and firearms and how to avoid encounters and how to behave. When we do see bears. I felt very well prepared. Our job was to go out to different places in a boat, and we'd hike in and begin our work. So we were really, really remote

I did feel like I got to know several of the bears in every spot we would camp. And he would get to know their routines, their likes and dislikes and their go to fishing style. I know we're not supposed to think that way. But I kind of can't help identifying with them somehow. We all live in this world together. We all need to eat. We know what salmon tastes like and they know what salmon tastes like. It's really special to share those kinds of moments with animals. There was a bear that fell asleep on our anchor line once and we had to wait for it to move so we could get in our boat and go home and have dinner. And it was raining. It was just really cold and really bad weather and we'd been working out in it all day and soaked and hungry. And I've had this feeling that I am not wild. For me this bear is just snoozing away. Totally content. It's not worried about us hurting it. I'm not worried about the rain. I was not worried about anything at all. It just seemed to have so much more power outside than I did.

MF: Jessica and her team usually stayed about a week in each place surveying the land, and they would frequently see the same bears hanging around the area. Near one campsite. Jessica got to know a mother and her three cubs. She would often see them hanging around in the morning or afternoon.

JH: The bears were on a bit of a routine.

MF: The crew never had any issues with the bear family. But as we all know, nature is unpredictable.

JH: We were on a lunch break. It was a crew of four of us. So there were two of us kind of sitting on a bluff, eating our lunch. And then our other two co-workers decided to fish. They were fishing for salmon. We wanted to have a salmon dinner. So we were just kind of taking a lunch break and our co-workers who were fishing were a couple of minutes late. We tried to be very prompt. My other co worker I was eating lunch with said I wonder what's going on if they're okay and I said I'll go check on him. I went down to check on the co workers who were fishing and they were standing looking very tense. 

And then they started running and they were in the water. I just went around to my coworker I was eating lunch with and just yelled bear! I didn't know for sure. I didn't see a bear at that time. But I thought if there is a bear, we don't have time and likely it's a bear. So I went running back up the bluff to him and I had the bear spray. And he had grabbed the gun. He turned around as I met him. We were going to get up on top of the hill so we had a better viewpoint. And there was a bear. The sow was right on us. It felt like I could touch her. This is a bear that we had encountered a lot of times before. She was not pretty, as bears go. She was really big, even for a big brown bear. And she was a mama bear, which is especially intimidating. She kind of was slack jawed, she just kind of walked around with her mouth slightly loose all the time. And she just looked, I don't know what was unsettling to me.

And I kept thinking about my mom telling me when I was a kid, if you see an aggressive dog, don't look it in the eyes. And I was like looking her in the eyes. So she stood there. My mind must have been going really fast, because I had a lot of thoughts. I thought I could spray her,, but it's going to just take her one step and she's going to be on me. And my coworker did not even raise the gun at her. We just stood there. It felt like I could see her calculating in her mind what she was going to do. And behind her or her three cubs. We had spent a lot of time seeing how she was mothering her cubs. She was going to do whatever it took to keep them safe. It was very vulnerable to be that close to her. But I was also really awestruck. Even in the moment, I thought this is the closest I'll ever be to a bear I hope. And all we could see was willow branches, whipping back and forth violently. It was crazy. But at one point, she just decided to turn around and run off and left us alone. She could have done whatever she wanted to us and she decided to let us go. I feel like she's sized us up. And she kind of knew that it wasn't going to take a lot of energy to deal with us. I felt very just very vulnerable. would not have taken much for her to take me out.

MF: Jessica made her way back to her team. Everyone felt relieved. They knew they got lucky. Eventually they caught their breath. And the reality of what had just happened started to set in. It was a really close call and could have ended much worse. Jessica says For her part, she never wants to be that close to a bear ever again. But she's not scared.

JH: I think a lot of people that don't have bear encounters are very fearful. It makes sense. bears can do so much damage. But in all of the bears that I have encountered, they've all spared me. I've never been attacked. And that's not to say it can't happen but it gives me a certain confidence going out into the woods that I know how I'm going to respond. bears aren't just out to get you and hurt you and eat you. They're just trying to do their best living their life.

MF: In fact, the day after her encounter, Jessica saw the mother bear again.

JH: We had gone actually on the other side of the creek to a bit of a higher bluff. I sat and ate my lunch up there watching her with her cubs. They were just the most unruly bunch. They were being really loud. And I know I'm anthropomorphizing here, but I just saw her kind of as an exasperated mom. Her cubs were fighting each other and just splashing around and not paying attention and it appeared like she was trying to teach them to fish. And she would go and correct them. She'd kind of make these low noises at them. She sent one little cub over. I think she was trying to make it pay attention to her. And it sat on a rock and just kind of looked defeated while the other siblings were off doing their thing. It was so dejected sitting there on the rock. He's just really special watching her as a mom.

MF: Jessica's a mom now with her own cubs to protect, and she often feels a kinship with the animals around her.

JH: I think of a lot of the bears out there, a lot of the Mother Bears and how they, how they mothered, how she's teaching them and how she had patients mostly. And I think about my kids also when I take them out hiking and what I would do if we encountered a bear we went up to this high mountain lake. And I had packed them up there like in the little baby carrier. I was nursing them on the side of the lake just out there, you know, by herself. And there was this mama bird, she was hopping around frantically, she had a bunch of fledglings. She had a mouthful of these bugs in her babies were being loud. She was trying to hurry and feed them all and I really felt like I related to her. Like if your baby's crying and you're trying to feed them there's kind of this instinctual urgency. I was feeding my baby and she was feeding hers. I just feel like motherhood is kind of that universal language. I really noticed that with the animals now that I'm a mom.

MF: Our storytellers today we're Jared Felicetti and Jessica Hay. For what it's worth, no, don't ever kick a porcupine or a bear for that matter. Just give them plenty of space and you should be fine. Though I'd certainly rather take on a mother porcupine than a mother grizzly.