Feature art by Viv Le

Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, I began my mornings with one thought:

What if a bear came down the road and attacked me right now?

At the bus stop, I would wait for the 87 to come down my street, umbrella in hand, surveilling the road. Usually, there was a pickup truck parked in front of my stop, so I told myself I knew exactly what I would do if a bear were to materialize in front of me.

Step one: drop the bags that weighed me down

Step two: jump into the bed of the truck

Step three: get out my phone and call animal control

To be honest, I wasn’t sure if I was physically capable of hoisting myself into the bed of the truck. You hear so many tales and tricks about what to do when a bear attacks. Scream, make yourself look big, be completely still — and don’t show them your back.

I had this thought every day, Monday through Friday, without fail. I’m not sure what made me so anxious, so ready to entertain a thought that seemed ludicrous and unlikely.

***Sometimes the bear isn’t a bear, but a man with a gun.

I was in a church basement when I got word of a mass shooting a few blocks away at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. A man killed eleven people because of their culture and religion, because he believed every false narrative he had been fed about who was to blame for the state of his own life.

Up until then, I thought, foolishly, mass shootings don’t happen here.

We weren’t a major city, so I thought we were safe from that kind of violence. I was wrong.

That same year, an East Pittsburgh police officer killed an unarmed Black teenager, Antwon Rose Jr., so I knew violence happened, the question was one of scale.

One boy or eleven people. Two white men with guns emboldened by ideology. Both tragedies rocked me and my perception of the safety in the city I lived in.

***I don’t know when the bear thought came to me. I wish I had a distinct memory of when I first had the thought, but it became very prevalent in 2019. Every Monday through Friday I would run through the mental scenario of having to hoist myself into the bed of the truck and lie there until someone with tranquilizer came.

If I couldn’t make it into the truck I would run to the house that stood behind me and hide on their porch if no one came to the door.

If I came face to face with the bear anyway, well, I don’t know, My umbrella wasn’t sharp enough or heavy enough to save me. Would I fight for my own life or give in? For the first time in a long time, I wanted to live. Maybe that was the root of my anxiety, the fact that I wanted to live so badly. I was afraid that anything could happen to me now, I had made myself vulnerable by caring about my life.

Living in this state of mind affected everything about me. I was struggling to sleep. When I woke up to work it took everything in me not to call off. When I walked to the bus stop I cocked one headphone askew and listened for rustling in the hedges. I was always on edge, grinding my teeth in the night, my shoulders rounded up to my ears at all hours of the day.

It didn’t help that I also wasn’t telling anyone about these anxious fears. I was afraid to. Afraid I’d have to be put on more medication, garner another diagnosis, and more stigma to deal with on top of everything else in my world. So I kept quiet.

One day, while I was at work, I pulled out my phone as the day wound down to the final thirty minutes. I immediately saw an email that said “You read that right: bear in Highland Park.”

My neighborhood. I was safe and miles away at work, but I panicked.

It’s true. It’s real. It can happen

My ridiculous completely unfathomable nightmare had manifested itself into the form of a 200 pound bear roaming the streets.

By the time I got home on my bus, the bear had been escorted back to the woods.

I was afraid that anything could happen to me now, I had made myself vulnerable by caring about my life.

What is the worst-case scenario, in any scenario?

For me, it is always a man with a gun.

I go to Target and keep my eyes averted away from a pack of white men stalking around the store, screaming at random intervals, laughing, and sneaking up behind unsuspecting families. I tell my friend I’m scared that they’ll do something. I ask to leave.

In Buffalo in 2022, a man with a gun takes aim at Black shoppers at a grocery store — because they are Black. He is escorted away from the scene of his violence. I don’t leave the house for two weeks.

Months earlier, a man with a gun boards a bus that I’m on and I panic for the whole ride, hoping no one says or does anything to upset him.

I’m always on the lookout for the elusive predator Manwithgun. I stop going grocery shopping, I stop seeing friends for coffee. My world becomes my apartment and the string of bad news on my phone screen.

***Once I stop leaving the house, I take to watching animal attacks and encounters on YouTube.
I’m moving to a state that has more than garter snakes, so I spend hours watching videos about eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, copperheads, and cottonmouths. I watch person after person narrowly escape or succumb to the attacks of bears, crocodiles, and mountain lions.

There is a man with an entire channel dedicated to analyzing snake bite videos; what the person did wrong, how they could have avoided a bite, and what was the aftermath. I learn that snakes are defensive and usually only bite as a last resort when they are stepped on, or touched without warning.

I learn that bears are apex predators. That despite what I imagined of them eating berries and acorns, they often eat meat, chase down fawns, and scavenge for dead animals. When I think about it, I knew that bears ate salmon, but I didn’t know they were blood-hungry enough to chase down a baby deer separated from its mother.

They say learning about what you fear makes you less afraid. This advice works with snakes, but not with bears. Since I don’t leave the house anymore, I imagine a wild bear breaking down the door and climbing up the stairs to my apartment, thirsty.

***On the internet, I see a video of a man with a gun slung across his back trying doors in an apartment complex.

I imagine the same scenario happening in my apartment, and run through my escape plan. When I hear the door open or a gunshot. I grab my keys, my knife, and my phone. I make it look like I’m not home and then climb into my big closet and hide under all the boxes and clothes I have stuffed in there. I call 911 while the man with a gun is making his way toward my room. I hold my breath and slowly unsheath my knife.

I know I’ve brought the wrong weapon to this fight, but I have to try something. I finally have a life I want to protect. I wait until the man with a gun gives up and leaves.

When I hear about the Uvalde mass shooting I lie on my back for hours, staring at the ceiling. I’ve given up on wondering what makes a man do this, in part because I know the answer, and in part because I know that our legislators won’t do anything to protect us.

I think about the mother that ran in to save her own children, how parents tried to run into the school but were stopped by police. I think about fear, danger, and safety.

Who has the right to safety? Not us.

Who has the right to fear? Not us.

Who here is in danger?

***Knowing what I know about danger, the man with a gun scenario should scare me more than the bear, but I always come back to the bear.

I think about the jaws of a bear, of a clip I saw of a bear picking a dog up off the ground in its mouth and slamming the thing into the dirt. I think about the massive paw of the bear, the inches of sharp and decisive claw.

I imagine a bear catching my arm in its mouth and not letting go. The image is so vivid I can feel the pain radiate through my arm, feel the fur and weight of the bear crushing my body, its musk accosting my nose. The curse of a vivid imagination, my body feels the pain of being mauled to death when I’m only writhing alone in bed.

The bear is usually just defending itself, its territory, and its cubs. I know that bears are not intentionally malicious. I can’t say the same for men moved by white supremacy, no matter what kind of badge they wear.

Even the biggest bear can be backed down by a human with a booming voice and a set of clanging pans. Still, I tell myself I’ll never venture out into the woods, no matter how beautiful the natural scenery and the view. I want to tell everyone I know to avoid the wilderness too.

I’m living in fear, and I know it. I can’t remain a shut-in forever.

***I watch a series of videos called “Human Prey” and hear of people being mauled by bears and living to tell the story.

A surprised bear is an angry bear

A man with a gun is a bear with nothing to defend but his own ego.

Whereas bears are equipped with canines to puncture flesh and flat teeth to crush bone, men rely on guns to shatter the bodies of their victims.

In my apartment, the closest I come to a bear attack is the videos I watch. I still imagine that one will find me, no matter where I am, no matter what I do. The bear is not a metaphor. The bear is as real as me, and it is hungry.

What can stop a hungry thing?