I keep a cannister of bear spray on a shelf by the mudroom door, next to a cakey-capped tube of sunscreen and two mostly empty and partly rusty green aerosol cans of OFF! Deep Woods insect repellent. I’ve never used the bear spray, and most days I forget to bring it with me when I trudge out into the woods, even though, to encourage the habit, I got a nifty little holster for it, with a carabiner for hooking it to a belt loop. Honestly, I’m more scared of the spray than of the bears. A few years ago, a robot in an Amazon warehouse in New Jersey inadvertently burst a cannister of bear spray, and twenty-four humans had to be hospitalized. (The robot was unharmed.) Technically, according to the label on my cannister, which is decorated with a drawing of a grizzly with a gaping red mouth, baring his teeth, it’s not bear spray. It’s “BEAR ATTACK DETERRENT,” and you can see why the clarification is necessary. Last spring, the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation tweeted:
Listen,
bear spray
DOES NOT
work like bug spray.
We would like to not have to say that again.
Bear spray is dangerous, but hardly regulated in the U.S.: you can get it at a gun shop; you can get it at Walmart; in most states you can order it online. If you’re camping in the backcountry in certain national parks, you’re urged to carry it, and you damn well should, but having it on hand is no guarantee that you’ll know what to do if you encounter a bear. Most people are stupid about bears, and I’m one of them. Either they’re too scared (“bearanoia” is, I gather, the term for this) or they’re not scared enough (beardevils?).
Denne historien er fra July 24, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra July 24, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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President for Sale - A survey of today's political ads.
On a mid-October Sunday not long ago sun high, wind cool-I was in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for a book festival, and I took a stroll. There were few people on the streets-like the population of a lot of capital cities, Harrisburg's swells on weekdays with lawyers and lobbyists and legislative staffers, and dwindles on the weekends. But, on the façades of small businesses and in the doorways of private homes, I could see evidence of political activity. Across from the sparkling Susquehanna River, there was a row of Democratic lawn signs: Malcolm Kenyatta for auditor general, Bob Casey for U.S. Senate, and, most important, in white letters atop a periwinkle not unlike that of the sky, Kamala Harris for President.
LIFE ADVICE WITH ANIMAL ANALOGIES
Go with the flow like a dead fish.
CONNOISSEUR OF CHAOS
The masterly musical as mblages of Charles Ives
BEAUTIFUL DREAMERS
How the Brothers Grimm sought to awaken a nation.
THE ARTIFICIAL STATE
A different kind of machine politics.
THE HONEST ISLAND GREG JACKSON
Craint did not know when he had come to the island or why he had come.
THE SHIPWRECK DETECTIVE
Nigel Pickford has spent a lifetime searching for sunken treasure-without leaving dry land.
THE HOME FRONT
Some Americans are preparing for a second civil war.
SYRIA'S EMPIRE OF SPEED
Bashar al-Assad's regime is now a narco-state reliant on sales of amphetamines.
TUCKER EVERLASTING
Trump's favorite pundit takes his show on the road.
