Hehe, yeah that is a good one. Always makes me laugh!
Funny story, well probably more so if you were actually there but here' goes anyhow...
My wife and I spent a weekend at a B&B in Waterbury, Vermont a couple years ago. While we were there I took her snowshoeing up a mountain trail in an area with a high black bear population; the goal was to reach this cabin at the top of the trail with an awesome view across a valley. Now I know that there are black bears here but I don't tell my wife because she is a little paranoid and I'm confident we would never leave the B&B if she knew.
All the way up we are seeing bear tracks on the trail and piles of bear droppings and I'm convincing her that this is nothing more than someone who hiked up with a large dog. It was easy at first but soon, after the fifth or sixth pile of bear *bleep*, she starts asking questions like "Christ, what in the world is wrong with this dog? Did they feed it laxitives or what?".
So the higher up we go, the less feasible my story becomes as it is getting painfully obvious that this "dog" would have lost half it's damn bodyweight in *bleep* if I was telling the truth. We finally arrive at our destination though and manage to get the door of the cabin open. We walk and find ourselves surrounded with no fewer than six "Black Bear Warning" flyers!
Now, my trying to explain the look she gave me at this point would never do it justice, suffice it to say I knew I was in trouble.
The funniest thing about it though is that every one of these warnings included a recomendation of pepper spray, bells, etc just like that photo HOWEVER there was absolutely nothing of the kind at the base of the mountain, only those at the destination.
At this point, of course, she is all wigged out because we have no pepper spray and she doesn't believe me when I try to explain that we'll be fine; apparently this is my fault because I lied all the way up the mountain. I eventually got her to chill but she no longer was willing to let me go down ahead of her with the Mad River Rocket (basically a bad-ass mountain sled) I had just carried all the way up on my back.
The moral of the story? Some days it just doesn't pay to get out of bed...
XII
