My Roommate Is A 400-Pound Fat Bitch...And She's Hungry

Bears suck as roommates.  They eat all the food.  Especially the really yummy junk food.  They leave the refrigerator door open.  And they never pay rent. 

The first time it happened I blamed it on the dog.  I thought Maverick had gotten into the trash. Hamburger buns were awry.  Peaches were akimbo.  Sugar was askew. 

“I think there was a bear in the house last night.”  Trent is from Texas.  And nothing against Texans, but they tend to exaggerate.  Everything’s bigger in Texas.  Including the stories.  I decided leave the mess for Maverick’s mom Sarah.

The next night I woke up to Sarah pounding on our connecting wall.  Rolling over to check my phone – it was just past 3 AM - I did the I’m-drunk-from-sleep stumble over to her room. 

“Are you crazy?  Shut the door.  The bear is upstairs.”

Maverick, guard dog that he is, seemed oblivious to the fact that a 400-pound bear was making short work of our food upstairs in the kitchen.

“I called the police.  They are sending a game warden.”

Shotgun-toting Kevin the game warden showed up. He was everything I’d ever hoped a game warden would be.  He looked like the Brawny man before he got old and started wearing flannel.  He was all broad shoulders, rippling pecs and mountain man swagger. Bear season was probably the most exciting part of working for the Aspen Police Department.  Unless Charlie Sheen shows up for a good, old-fashioned domestic dispute, things are pretty quiet. Kevin seemed stoked to be dealing with something besides drunk Argentineans at Eric’s stealing bottles of vodka from behind the bar.

“Damn bear got away.”  He seemed genuinely disappointed not to have gotten a round of rubber bullets off.  “It was a mom and two cubs though.”  Bear 1.  Kevin 0.

This is bad shit.  Never fuck with a mother bear and her cubs.  The world knows no fury like a pissed of mom.  Kevin gave us his card and told us to lock our doors.  This would be great advice if our doors had locks. Unfortunately, our pad was a refurbed meth house that was built by a bunch of stoned out ski patrollers from Aspen Mountain.  It was straight out of How To Be A Ski Bum 101.  Step 1: procure ramshackle house of questionable structural stability with no locks.  If the Big Bad Wolf huffed and puffed our house would be toast.   Besides, no in Aspen locks their doors.

And so the next night rolled around.  I heard some shuffling upstairs and decided that the cooking of drunk food had commenced.  And then there was the crash.  Knives this time I think.  Bolt upright and very alert now I started shaking the boyfriend in the bed next to me.

“Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  Get up.  There’s a bear in the house.”

I had explained the previous night already but I’m not sure he really believed me.  He believed me now.  We set off the car alarms, set the dog to barking and started shouting at the bear to go away.  Get the fuck out. 

We stacked the porch furniture, living room furniture, old furniture we found in the storage space and the terracotta planters in the front of the door is discourage further bear entry.  Or at least, we hoped, the crashing of said furniture would alert us to the bear’s impending entry and allow us ample time to remove the bear from the kitchen before she and her greedy, fat-kid cubs ate the rest of our Ben and Jerrys Cherry Garcia. 

It didn’t work.  How a 400-pound, hungry, fat bitch had the patience or dexterity to maneuver around the furniture maze without knocking down a single item continues to baffle me to this day. 

The casualties continued to mount in this war against Hungry Fat Bitch.  She and her snot-faced cubs visited twice a night for four nights. That’s eight times, five hundred dollars worth of food, one destroyed dog door, and a gnarly scratch on the wall. It was cute for awhile.  Then it stopped being cute.  To this day we find souvenirs.  While icing an ACL injury with a bag of frozen corn, my roommate picked bear drool and black hairs off of the bag six months later.  There is a muddy bear print that hangs out on the back of our sofa.  Grocery store exchanges for the next four months went something like this.

“Do we have hamburger buns?”

“Well we did.  But I think the bear ate ‘em.”  

Next summer Trent is bringing his big guns back from Texas.  Loaded down with rubber bullets to, “Fuck some bear’s shit up.”  Watch out bear.  The world knows no fury like a pissed off Texan with big guns.

Words of wisdom living on our refrigerator...

Rules For Sleeping in Your Car

Since we are on the topic of sleeping in cars…

1. Never sleep naked.  I don’t care if you are hot.  I don’t care if you want to have wild sex.  You never know when a cop, ranger, grizzly or a shotgun-toting Montanan will come a-knocking.  It’s always better to be clothed in these situations.    Nudity makes it really awkward.

2. Always lock you car.  It deters psychopaths and bears from breaking and entering.  And it gives you a chance to start the engine and make a quick getaway if such an intruder should surface.

3. Don’t fuck with the US Government.  Park Rangers love nothing more than ousting car-sleepers parked in inappropriate camping spots.  Obey all signs in National and State Parks.  Or at least be able to explain why you didn’t.  Note: National/State Parks are different than National/State Forests and require a fee.  Should you choose to ignore this, beware that a Ranger will sniff you out like a bloodhound on a coon’s trail.  Public lands and BLM lands are ideal.  Especially in the wiles of Northeastern Idaho. 

4. If you don’t obey said signage, play nice with the ranger, cop or shotgun-toting Montanan who is mad at you.  Playing dumb usually works best for the female variety of car-sleeper.  Bonus points for nice tits and pretty smile.

5. Crack a window so you don’t suffocate.

6. Keep all of your shit in the car.  Rangers, vagabonds and animals tend to collect it if it’s left outside the vehicle.

7. Leave the driver’s seat clear in case you need to make a quick getaway.

8. Don’t let your fear get the best of you. 

9. Face east.  There is nothing better than watching the sun come up.

Stuff People In Mountain Towns Like

Perhaps the fine publishers of Stuff White People Like would consider a spinoff – Stuff People From Mountain Towns Like.  Included on this list would be face shots, Patagonia, making fun of Vail, making fun of Aspen, being burlier than your friends, sleeping in teepees in the summer, PBR, Subaru, beards, REI, 14ers, not owning a TV and (the topic of today) sleeping in your car in National Parks.

And so I found myself sleeping in the back of a Subaru, in a snowstorm, in the Utah desert, in my Patagonia sleeping bag with a guy named Pete who I met ten days prior.  It just doesn’t get much more mountain cliché than that (he didn’t have a beard though, and we had box wine and Tecate, not PBR).  It was May and the desert should have been scalding hot.  Or at least warm.  Instead it was 30-degrees and snowing.  Screw setting up a tent.

The morning rolled in.  The sky was blue.  The birds were signing.  Children were laughing.  Park rangers were knocking on the window of said Subaru, “Mornin’ folks.  Mind stepping out of the car?”  Utah Forest Service Ranger.  So out we stepped.  Wrapped in sleeping bags.  Into the popsicle blueberry sky of the morning Utah dessert.  No worries though.  He let us go with just a warning. And now we are on the Most Wanted For Sleeping in a Car in an Inappropriate Location list of the United States Forest Service.