I STRADDLE MY BIKE IN THE MIDDLE OF McKENZIE Street and study the black dog lying unattended in the city playground, only a block away. I’ve been bitten by too many dogs in my life, so I’m extra cautious. But as the dog stands up and ambles into the street, I don’t see the svelte body of a friendly black lab or the blocky head of a gentle Newfoundland. Instead, the animal takes on the distinct shape and gait of a black bear. Not what I was expecting to see this early Sunday morning in urban Anchorage. At that moment, a woman walks out of a nearby house to pick up her Sunday newspaper and the bear charges toward her. Although she is overweight and wearing clogs, she sprints toward her neighbor’s chain-link fence and vaults over it like an Olympian. But the bear’s real target is not the vaulter; it is the dullard bicyclist who has been staring at him for the past minute. Before I know it, he abruptly shifts course away from the vaulter, straight at me. In a split second, I process my entire brain-load of bear information and I decide the bear does not want to eat me, he just wants me to disappear from his kingdom.
