And now for something completely different...

A post having nothing at all to do with France!

I have a pretty (un)healthy affection for Agatha Christie-penned books. It is probably not one of my better features. Usually they leave me feeling warm and fuzzy about the quaintness of England, and even murder. They are also an insane ego boost to charge through as they are written essentially for slightly slow fifth graders, and I make no qualms about small victories. Anyway. The only exception to this rule is, in fact, And Then There Were None, a book I read when I actually was, rather approximately, a slightly slow fifth grader*.

It scared the proverbial bejeezus out of me, as books about mulitple suicides will tend to do, mid-family-vacation-slash-camping trip. We wandered around Yosemite, which was very lovely, and ate Dinty Moore beef stew cooked over a campfire, which was also lovely, though probably only for me as it was my favorite camping food, but not actually good. Less lovely was when I noticed all the bear signage. Usually this wouldn't bother me, but post-mystery scare, I couldn't sleep. I became convinced I heard bear noises outside the tent. Just exactly what constitutes a bear noise, I could not tell you.

Within a few minutes, my paranoia had built and I became pretty well convinced that the bear had made it into our permanent tent platform thingy, and was, in fact, engaged in eating my little brother on the bunk below me.

I'm not sure exactly what the point to this story is other than that I was totally unconcerned by Chris' demise. Not that I don't love him, but I'm fairly certain all of my energy went into playing dead for my imaginary attacker for the rest of the night. Perhaps the moral of the story is that I am self-centered and not all that awesome of a person. Perhaps the moral of the story is that bears really are a threat. No wonder Stephen Colbert has them at number one.

EDIT: This picture is acutally an old Smokey the Bear anti-forest fire ad. How entirely terrifying! Smokey is much more cuddly.



*I was actually so slow I was put in a special remedial pencil holding class. I failed. But at that point in time it was just too depressing to let me down further, so they gave me stickers anyway and doomed me to illegibility forever.