Bears

Aside from the occasional mud wrestling (fortunately I was only wearing a pair of old chinos), the only sign of bears were their footprints, impressed in the mountain snow next to our own as a kind of ominous greeting upon finally reaching the top (nb: only one part of that sentence was factual.) Now then, two interesting habits of the Siberian Bear (both factual): 1. above almost every man-made marking on trees along the trail, a bear had left his own pawprint in order to lay to rest the issue of whose land it indeed was, and; 2, bears like to play this game called Stupid Squirrel, so named because it involves digging a ditch where squirrels might be inclined to deposit their latest batches of nuts and thus walk into a trap whereupon they are eaten along with their nuts.