So tonight while reading Little House in the Big Woods, we were reading the chapter about Pa and the Bear – and Donovan was surprised to find that the book is based on a true story.
I followed up the conversation telling Donovan about my bear story.
Back when we were kids we lived in a trailer that my father had bought, and he had used a chainsaw to cut some doors out of the trailer. One such door went into a wood shed that dad had built onto the side of the trailer, and then out into the “tool shed”.
Because the trailer was up on cinderblocks, you had to step down into the woodshed before opening the door to go out into the toolshed. Once in the toolshed, you had to walk through the shed, out into the night, up the hill and around “the path” to get to the outhouse.
One summer evening my mother had went out to go to the bathroom and when she walked down into the woodshed, she heard scratching and growling in the toolshed. She immediately ran back into the “house” down the hall, and jumped into bed waking my father up telling him there was a bear stuck in the toolshed.
Dad grabbed his gun, went down the hall, down into the woodshed, and opened the door to the toolshed, at which time his pure white german Shepard named “Sam” came bounding into the house. Apparently Sam had been left outside, and really wanted to get back in.
As I was wrapping up this story, Donovan turned and looked at me in bewilderment, and said: “I don’t get it, didn’t your dad have to disable the house alarm first”. 🙂