My most interesting bear encounter essay
That year I was in Russia for the first time, and naturally there was a lot of new experience for me there. I’ve been familiar by hearsay with a lot of awkward things in this terrific country, but I felt rather courageous to try them all by my own. My friend Peter lived in Moscow and he invited me to spend a month by his granny’s in the countryside, not far from that outstanding city. Peter persuaded me that the woods around were full of miracles and dangers, and he dinned a good deal of chilling stories into my ears. In fact, I understood that he was just gambled on me being a foreigner and that’s why I did not accept all that stuff blindly. But one case made me reconsider my courage.
That day Peter’s granny asked us to gather some red berries in the forest, and we had a lot walk during which Peter decided to tell me about bears. Actually I did not know much about bears at that time. The only bear I knew well was probably Winnie-the-Pooh, but the predatory monsters my friend was chattering about had nothing in common with that funny teddy character. I was listening with half an ear and thinking my own thoughts, when suddenly heartrending roar ran through the forest. I felt excited, when Peter suddenly stopped as if rooted to the ground and whispered: “That’s about it, man.” We heard a loud crunch of brushwood, and the next moment a huge brown creature came out to the glade we were standing on. That was truly a bear looking just the way it was pictured in the books Peter showed be: tall, massive, with thick dark fur, with huge claws on paws and extremely sharp teeth.
To make a long story short, I felt unwell. I asked Peter whether we should run away, but he just hissed at me and explained that the moment we run the bear will start to chase us. Ad interim the bear went on roaring and, what was even more confusing, approaching us step by step. “These bears are your favorite animals, don’t you know how to behave with them?!” I hissed nervously, and grasped Peter by the sleeve of the shirt. “We know,” Peter responded firmly, “but I don’t have a gun.” My heart was jumping out of my breast; the pieces of stories told by Peter were mixing with the shots from various movies where people were cruelly eaten by predators. “I’m too young, I don’t wanna die,” I moaned. One more thing I was struck by was the enviable composure of my friend, but I thought it was quite normal for the Russian people. What is more, I felt really silly for my not believing Peter’s warnings.
The bear was still approaching us, and I wanted to make off despite all the danger of a chase, I had to do something to save my life, but my legs suddenly became feeble. When the bear was very close, I closed my eyes tight and recollected my home, my sweet home where everything was safe and well-known, I thought about my Mum and Dad and little sister, and felt the bear’s breathing on my cheek. “That’s it,” someone stated inside my head. I felt the fur on my skin and was ready to give up the ghost, but nothing happened. The next thing I heard was energetic laughter of Peter. I opened my eyes and found the bear standing near and drinking water from my bottle.
It turned out that it was a circus bear and therefore he was not afraid of people. Local men made him drunk with vodka and therefore he felt extreme thirst that day. I laughed a lot later at that story, but that encounter with a Russian bear definitely made me older.
