With warm freshly dried hair, she untucked the end of the towel from between her breasts and flung the cloth over the shower rod to dry. Naked, she proceeded into her bedroom to dress. After a second of debating, she decided on a pair of pink lace underwear and slipped those on before grabbing blue jeans from another drawer. Liana pulled the jeans snuggly over the curve of her hips, put on a bra, and V-neck top. Back in front of the bathroom mirror, she combed through her long red-brown hair until it was shiny and smooth.
She stared at the reflection of her blue eyes, so light in color they were almost gray. Then, she pulled back her hair in a ponytail, put on her steel-toe hiking boots, fastened a belt with gun holster around her hips, and slipped on her official park ranger jacket before leaving the house. Liana climbed up into her silver four-door Jeep Wrangler, and headed into grizzly bear territory.
Her job was simple enough, in theory. She trapped, tagged, and released north american brown bears. She mostly went out into hunting territory to keep track of the populations, but on occasion did receive calls about problem bears invading homes. For a young pretty girl like her, even though she had gone through years of college, getting a job like this and alone-without a macho male body guard-was difficult but she had worked hard and proven herself. She did not live close enough to family for them to be a distraction, and didn't have a husband or kids to take away from her career. Which was good, because her career was an everyday, all day, job with bad pay.
Her parents would never understand, but there was just something about these giant beasts that she was drawn to. She didn't do it for the money. Her GPS lead her to the closest trap, and the Jeep rolled to a stop. She hopped out to go check the trap first before she grabbed her gear from the back. She would either need to re-bait the trap, or grab her other stuff for tagging.
Liana carried a typical defense gun for rangers, a Glock 20, which was a small reliable handgun, but it was faster and easier to use than a rifle if a bear decided to charge. She'd been doing this work for three years, and so far she had never needed to shoot a bear, but walking up on a baited trap was still dangerous. If there wasn't a bear in the trap, one could still be nearby. The metal chord was undisturbed however, the snare trap in the same position she had left it. Vultures and small animals had consumed much of the bait.
The trap being un-sprung was a good sign as well as bad. Not catching a bear meant that they were smart enough to stay away from areas that smelled of humans, and bears that stayed away from humans did not get shot around residential homes and were less likely to be successfully hunted. But if she didn't catch them, she could not keep track of the population, and grizzly bears were listed as a threatened species likely to become endangered-even though they were still legal to hunt.
Liana went back to the Jeep, slung a duffle bag over her shoulder, and lifted one of the five gallon buckets from the back. She hiked the short distance to the trap, still gaining mud on her boots and leaves in her hair, and got out her gloves. The second she popped the lid to the bucket, her senses were assaulted with the smell of blood and meat. Hunting and butcher leftovers as well as road kill were all good bait. She lifted the heap of meat and dangling bones out of the bucket, hurrying to bait the trap with fresher kill, and then slung the soupy bits of blood and guts left in the bottom of the bucket around the trap.
She put the gear back in the Jeep and quickly headed to the next trap before a bear was lured to the smell. As well, she had to check all the traps often to make sure a desperate bear did not harm its leg in the snare traps she set. She had heard of bears struggling so violently that they tore their own limbs off as well as hunters traps that were left unchecked too long only to find the remains of a gnawed off paw from a bear. So far, it had never happened to her, but she had tranquilizers, medical kits, and even a cage set up back at her residence incase a bear did need to be held until wounds healed.
The next trap was sprung, but empty, indicating that whatever had stepped into it was too small to remain caught as the noose had a stopping mechanism as to not cut off blood circulation. A fox, raccoon, or even a hunting dog's paw would be too small. This ensured the safety of the animal, as well as allowed her to choose the size of the animal she wished to catch. The worst situation would be to catch a young cub in a trap, and have to sedate an angry female bear before she could release the cub.
Male grizzlies grew bigger than their female counterparts, at their biggest weighing around eight hundred pounds and standing at a towering 8ft tall. Most did not reach that big, but in her first year on the job she had stumbled across what looked to be a record-sized male grizzly. It had been hovering over a moose carcass, barely gave her a glance, and she was able to back away and make it to the Jeep without having to draw her gun. No matter the size of the males though, it was the females with cubs to protect that she was more worried about.
Liana reset and baited the trap, and moved on. The next several traps were empty as well, some disturbed and some not. She had woken up early, just as the sun was rising, but it wasn't until the afternoon that she finally found a trap with a bear.
By the darker hump on its back, she could tell immediately that it was a grizzly, and by its small size she could tell it was young. Its back leg was held in the snare, and by the claw marks on the tree she knew it had tried to climb up the tree several times at an attempt to escape. Liana went back to the jeep, grabbed her bag of supplies, and came back to the trap. She loaded the gun with the tranquilizer, and stepped closer, just outside the bears reach, indicated by the circle in the ground swept clear of leaves and debri by the pacing animal. As soon as the dart hit, the bear tried to take off, but was only able to hide behind the tree.
She waited for the sedative to kick in, and then cautiously began to examine the animal. Liana poked the bottom of its foot with the muzzle of the tranquilizer rifle, noting there was no reaction. She then set the gun down and checked its eyes. It was definitely sedated, so she unzipped her bag and began to work. A rectal thermometer took its temperature, she checked its teeth, approximated its weight, and guessed at its age. She measured the length of the animal, checked its claws, checked inside its ears, and then gave it a small little metal tag on one ear to keep track of it if she ever trapped it again.
When all of her data was collected, she removed the snare from its leg, and put all of her stuff back in the Jeep. Before she left, she checked its pulse to make sure it was doing fine under the sedative, as some animals reacted badly to the drugs, and then she moved onto the next trap. She would have to come back later to reset the snare when the bear was gone. Unlike some of the other bear species, grizzlies were generally too large to quickly escape a threat by climbing a nearby tree, and instead chose to stand their ground. One waking up from a sedative, wobbly, would certainly be angry and just might chose to attack rather than run. Even though she liked to make sure the animal woke up fine, she wouldn't chance it.
The rest of the traps were just as uneventful, and she finished her work about three hours before sundown as usual. Usually, Liana chose to head back home to type the data into her computer as a backup to her thick notebooks, but this time she decided that she needed a nature hike instead. It wasn't always easy to enjoy the fresh air when you were constantly unloading blood and meat into traps.
She parked the Jeep where she knew she could easily find it again, grabbed her keys and her GPS, and set out into the forest. Liana tried to fill her thoughts will the beauty of the land-the vibrant green moss on the rocks, the fuzzy caterpillars, the colorful mushrooms, and the beautiful sunshine that filtered passed the green leaves of the trees. However, she couldn't help but look at feces on the ground and try to determine what sort of animal it came from. When she spotted a little fruit fly, she couldn't help her minds reaction, immediately rehearsing its scientific name Drosophila melanogaster.
Liana was always doing that. Her mind continued to work even when she just wanted to relax. As a child, she remembered her and her friends finding honeysuckle vines on the edge of the forest and they would pick the flowers off and eat them. It wasn't as sweet as real honey, but it was fun. However, as an adult, whenever Liana found the honeysuckle vine she ripped them out and trampled them, as they were a foreign and invasive species of plant. There was the native species of twining honeysuckle, but the japanese honeysuckle was what was invasive, and what she had eaten when she was young.
As she heard movement ahead of her, her hand hovered over the gun, and she froze. The rustling of brush grew louder before she spotted the mass of brown fur making its way steadily towards her. Liana watched the large grizzly, approximating the height to its shoulders to be about three and a half feet. The fur around its face was a slightly lighter color that its body, and the hump on its back was slightly darker. Liana was entranced.
The large bear walked pretty fast, only stopping briskly to paw at the ground and search the bushes for berries. But, as it grew closer, it sniffed the air and then its eyes locked on her. Liana felt a jolt of adrenaline enter her system, but she remained still. These huge animals were not to be feared; they were not killers at heart.
She held onto that belief, even as it slowly moved closer, still watching her. Liana could not outrun a bear. She could not best a bear at climbing, wrestling, or probably even intimidation. She looked into its dark brown eyes. The bear shifted its weight, smelled the air, and then flopped onto its behind. Its eyes still watched her, seeming as curious about her as she was of him.
The hand that hovered over the gun moved away, and Liana finally felt content in the forest. She watched the heavy rise and fall of its chest, and the way its breath moved the grass in front of its face. Its fur looked so lusciously thick, glossy, and soft. Something about it made her assume it was female. It was a beautiful creature in her eyes.
When it heard something in the forest, its ears perked up and it craned its neck searching around, looking very innocent and goofy. She could have stared at it for hours, yet the sky was beginning to grow dim. Before she could move, the bear seemed to be thinking the same thing and stood back up on all fours. It dared to move closer to her, sniffing and looking at her, then moved on. She watched it pass right beside her, a little more than ten feet away but she felt so close that she might have been able to touch it. Liana kept her eyes on it until it blended in with the surrounding trees and disappeared.
She had been so absorbed with it though, she must not have seen what was encroaching on her from behind. A glimpse of moving shadows out of the corner of her eye caused her to turn around, her hand instinctively going for her gun. Her fingers curled around the weight of it as her eyes lifted up to the dark towering mass ahead of her. Hesitation would get a person killed. When something in the woods that was made out of muscle suddenly stood so close in front of you, at around eight foot tall in grizzly territory-you shot to kill. And that is exactly what she did.
The shots rang out in quick succession, one, two, hitting it at above her eye level. Liana had been so close that she felt the spray of blood hit her face, and she turned away as the animal fell to the ground with a thud. Her chest was already heaving, and her thoughts filled with confusion and guilt. It was not a bear. It had looked like a man.
She wiped the blood off her face though, and stared at the streaks of fluorescent green on her palm.