The land of malls and maulings.

I really should be making dinner, or doing laundry, or packing--the big move is the day after tomorrow, but I just got home and I need a few minutes before "the move" starts taking over my life again.

Speaking of the move (oops, there it goes...taking over again), I've recently discovered something rather distressing about my new residence of choice. Oh, I knew that life in Port Moody would be different than life in the West Side of Vancouver--more gardening, more strip malls, more overweight smokers in track suits--but what I hadn't counted on was the possibility of being killed by a large, hairy, angry beast. No, I'm not referring to the suburban males trolling around the local Home Depot, I'm talking about bears. Not burly gay men or animated picnic-basket thieves either. Real life, honest-to-goodness, giant-clawed, giant-toothed, tear-your-skull-open bears.

We went out to sign some papers and pay our co-op shares the other night, and the woman who was showing us around casually mentioned that a mother bear and two cubs had been spotted around the co-op lately. She mentioned this in the same breath as "keep your garbage in the garbage area, because we've had some raccoons in the area". Raccoons and bears do not get to share the same breath, in my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I'm not fond of raccoons--I' think they're creepy and diseased--but I'd rather run into a raccoon while I was leaving for work at 6:30 am than to surprise a mother bear and her cubs.

After hearing the bear news, I took the next logical step. I googled "Port Moody bear." Turns out, this is not a rarity. In fact, on the official Port Moody website, they refer to themselves as "Bear Country." How did I not know this? Sure, I knew there were lots of trees, and the place had a quaint foresty atmosphere--but it never occurred to me that it was a part of an actual, functional bear-filled forest.

Now, granted, there are loads of bear sightings and not many bear attacks. Although I did come across a couple of mentions. But that does little to ease my paranoia. And it is paranoia--based on a lifetime of recurring bear-fuelled dreams. When we were kids we used to camp at a national park in Saskatchewan, it was beautiful. And there were bears. I saw a few--always from the safety of our car or trailer--and I thought they were cool. But something must have seeped into my subconscious, because for as long as I can remember I've had dreams about bears. I don't usually get full-on accosted by the massive creatures, it's more like I see a bunch of them and I have to somehow get past them and it's very frightening and disturbing. I figured I'd never have to really worry about a real-life encounter though, as long as I stayed out of the woods. I stopped going camping in tents--I'll only venture into the great outdoors if there is a trailer or cabin involved. But now, I'm moving to bear country. Time to dig out the suit of armor and vats of bear spray.