A Grizzly Discovery

1

The lab puppy in front of me was definitely not having a good day.

Keegan was seven months old, pure black, and right now, his face was swollen to about three times its normal size. He looked at me with his sad, deep brown eyes.

“Everything feels funny,” he whined at me.

“Yeah, you’re not feeling that great today, are you little guy?” I asked in a sing-song voice. My name is Angela Martin, and I’m a witch who can talk to animals. It comes in pretty handy in my profession, as I’m the resident vet in Willow Bay, a small town on the Oregon coast. Unfortunately, when the dog’s owner is standing three feet away from me, it’s harder for me to have an actual conversation with the patient.

I stood up and looked at Anne Peters, Keegan’s owner. She was in her mid-forties, with brown hair and a friendly—if worried—face. “He’s going to be fine,” I told her. “At this time of year, when the weather starts to get a bit cooler, the bees start trying to find warmer places to stay. A bee likely got into your home, and I imagine Keegan found him. I don’t see anything to indicate this could be an infection or anything of the sort. We can give him a Benadryl and he’ll sleep away the afternoon and be fine by tomorrow morning.”

“I didn’t mean to eat it,” Keegan whined. “It was just… buzzing. And moving. I couldn’t resist.”

“You’ll feel better in a few hours little guy, don’t worry,” I told him. “In the future, try to avoid eating bees. They’re important to the planet, and that way your face won’t look like a soccer ball.”

Anne thanked me and took Keegan back into the reception area. I made my way there a few minutes later to find Karen, the receptionist, laughing with Sophie, my best friend and vet technician.

“I can’t believe that poor little dog’s face swelled up just from trying to eat a bee!” Karen told me when I came out, and I smiled.

“Yeah, it’s amazing how common allergic reactions to bee and wasp stings are in dogs. Hopefully he’ll think twice before trying to eat another one.”

“That’s because dogs are morons,” Bee, my black cat, said from her curled position on her bed that rested on top of the reception counter. She didn’t even bother opening her eyes to make the statement, and I glared at her. Bee could be a bit of a drama queen. Luckily, she tended to think of herself as being superior to the animals that came to the vet’s office, and made her superiority known by pretending none of the animals existed when they were in the clinic.

“If I know lab puppies, that’s definitely not the last time we’re going to see Keegan in here because he ate something ridiculous,” Sophie replied, and I laughed. Labs were, in general, what I liked to call “adventurous eaters”, in the sense that if it looked like it would fit in their mouth, they would try to eat it. Half the time, even if it didn’t look like it would fit in their mouths they would try anyway.

“We have a bit of a break until the next patient, right Karen?” I asked her. It was the Thursday of the first week of September; all the kids were going back to school, the weather that had been so warm and sunny just a few days earlier had now turned cool and overcast, and the clouds threatened to unleash their anger in the form of torrents of rain every minute of every day. As a result, business was slower than usual at the vet clinic.

“Yes,” Karen said, looking at the schedule. “You’ve got a break now until one this afternoon, when Strawberry is coming in. Something about him being less active than usual.”

“Well, that’ll probably turn out to be that his owner decided to take up running again,” I said. A few months earlier Strawberry had been in for the same reason; the white schnauzer/poodle cross told me that his owner had recently taken up running, and was making the lazy, rather round Strawberry join him, and that was the reason Strawberry was so tired all the time. Apparently the running phase lasted about two weeks before his owner decided it was too hot to run in the summer.

Just then, the phone rang. I was thinking maybe I’d actually get a chance to catch up on some long-overdue paperwork during the slow afternoon when Karen handed me the receiver.

“Hey, do you want to take this? It’s Chief Gary.”

Chief Gary was the local head of police in town. A nice man and a good cop, over the past few months he’d had a bit of fame over his handling of a few different murder cases here in town. I knew he hated the attention; apparently the FBI had offered him a job. All Chief Gary wanted to do, though, was run his small town the way he was used to doing it. I took the receiver and hoped nothing was the matter.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Angela. It’s Chief Gary here.”

“What can I do for you?”

“How busy are things with you at the clinic right now?”

“Not busy at all, actually.”

“Would you mind coming by this crime scene I’ve got here? I’m looking for some expertise from someone with animals.”

“Uh, yeah, of course,” I said, fearing the worst. Willow Bay didn’t have any dogs that I’d consider dangerous in any way. There were three people who owned pit bulls in town, but they were the absolute nicest dogs. I sincerely hoped none of them had attacked anyone. “Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“We’ve found a body in the woods, and it looks like it’s been mauled by a bear.”

Well, that certainly wasn’t what I was expecting to hear. “Oh. Wow, yeah, I’ll come down and look. I have to tell you though, I don’t have any special training in bear attacks or anything like that.”

“I know, but you’re the closest thing we do have to an expert. The medical examiner in Portland requested that I get someone to come look at the body. If you park at Railworkers’ Memorial Park and take the trail leading from behind the gazebo you’ll come across us pretty quickly; we’re about a quarter of a mile down the path.”

“Sure. Yeah, I’ll come by,” I said. “I can be there in about fifteen minutes.”

I hung up the phone and looked at Karen and Sophie. “Someone’s been killed in the woods behind the park. Chief Gary thinks it might have been a bear attack.”

Sophie’s eyebrows rose while Karen brought a hand to her mouth. “Seriously?” she asked, and I nodded.

“Yup. Chief Gary wants me to go have a look and see if I can confirm. It does seem really weird though.”

“Yeah, we don’t have any grizzlies in this area,” Sophie said. “And I can’t imagine a black bear actually attacking anyone. I’ve never heard of it happening, ever.”

Despite the common conceptions, bears actually very rarely attack people. In general, a bear will only attack if it feels provoked. Mothers with cubs are the most likely to attack a human, as they feel the protection of their young is the most important thing. However, even then a black bear mother is more likely to bluff charge (pretend to attack, then stop at the last second) a person she sees as a threat and run away than actually attack. A grizzly bear is more likely to attack than to run away, but the Willow Bay area hasn’t had a grizzly bear spotting in over fifty years. Most of the grizzlies moved to the woods deeper inland, further from human contact.

I’ve spent my whole life living in Willow Bay, and I had never heard of a bear attacking a human.

“It’s weird,” I agreed.

“I mean, remember in high school when I was dating that guy, Brodie or something?”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re going to have to be way more specific than that.” Sophie had been, well, a little bit on the promiscuous side in high school, and through most of adulthood. In fact, her current relationship with Taylor Shaw, a local policeman, was currently at an all-time record for Sophie of five months.

“Oh shut up,” Sophie replied, sticking her tongue out at me. “There was only one guy named Brodie at our high school. Tall, football player, brown hair. You’re just jealous because you didn’t get any back then.”

“One of us had to care about their grades instead of chasing boys.”

“And look where it’s gotten you; you spend your days being peed on by cats and puked on by dogs.”

“I think it’s worked out really well, I’m your boss so I get to make you do all the gross stuff!”

“I’m going to pee and puke on both of you if you don’t stop arguing,” Bee muttered from her bed. I rolled my eyes at her; with Karen in the room I couldn’t actually reply.

“Anyway,” Sophie emphasized, “there was that one time when Brodie and I got drunk and decided to streak through the woods, naked. It was like, four in the afternoon or something, so the sun was still out. I came across a bear, and I was so drunk that I had no idea what to do, so I just started screaming. It bluff charged me, and I ran away as fast as I could.”

“I remember that; we made fun of you for days because you totally panicked and didn’t listen to the rule that you’re just supposed to back away slowly.”

“Yeah, well, if a two-hundred-pound bear came charging toward you at top speed, I’d like to see you walk calmly backwards with your eyes on the ground.”

Karen laughed. “That’s true, though picturing Sophie getting bluff charged by a bear while streaking through the woods certainly is something.”

“Well, as entertaining as this conversation has been, I’m going to go to the crime scene,” I said. “Sophie, do you want to come with? Karen, we should be back before one, but in case we’re not I’ll text you to let Strawberry’s owner know, ok?”

“All good,” Karen told me. “I have a whole bunch of paperwork I can catch up on, and if not, there’s always Netflix.”

I waved goodbye to Karen, gave Bee a quick pat on the head, then headed out to the crime scene where my presence had been requested.