Does anybody really need bear spray?
Last week, police arrested Tyler Williams, 23, of Waterloo, for firing two shots into the vehicle of Kynesha Harrington, 26, also of Waterloo. Apparently the two had gotten into a heated argument while shopping at the Family Dollar store on 611 Broadway Street shortly before 8 p.m. last Wednesday. Authorities have not disclosed the nature of the argument, but disputations apparently deteriorated beyond the agree-to-disagree stage after Ms. Harrington blasted Williams with a can of bear spray.
One can only speculate why Harrington thought it necessary to carry bear spray with her while looking for bargains at the Family Dollar. I have shopped at the store in Iowa City many times and I have never seen a bear. (Although there was once a very large man in line in front of me who was growling about the flimsiness of a pair of reading glasses. But come on, what did he expect for a dollar! Anyway, I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a real bear.)
I never even knew there was such a thing as bear spray until the insurgents used the stuff on the capitol police on Jan. 6. Since when did standard pepper spray become the decaffeinated coffee of chemical irritants? Now if you want to discourage bad behavior in a person, you have to blast them with a jet of compounds strong enough to stop a 600-pound bear in its tracks.
To my surprise, I have discovered that bear spray is for sale everywhere — in sporting goods stores, on ebay, from Amazon. A can of Grizguard costs $37.99 and has a range of 30 feet. It is equipped with a glow-in-the-dark “safety tip” so, I guess, if you are attacked by a bear at night, you don’t accidently spray yourself. In that case, maybe your screams would frighten the bear away and after a day or so when you recovered, you could grope your way back to the car. For the ecologically minded bear combatant, Grizguard customers can rest assured that, although the aerosol ingredients do cause choking, severe pain and temporary blindness, they will not harm the ozone layer.
You can get a 2-pack of Counter Assault bear spray for $89.99 online in case the first can fails to repel a nine-foot grizzly and you aren’t left defending yourself with a bottle of DEET. Counter Assault has a range of 40 feet and claims to have the “hottest formula allowed by law.” The question remains: is 40 feet really enough? A medium-sized black bear weighs around 500 pounds and can run 35 miles an hour. Olympic 100-meter dash champion Usain Bolt has been clocked at 23.35 miles an hour. What if the spray only made the bear mad and run even faster?
Personally, I think prospective bear spray customers should first have to answer a couple of questions. For instance, “Do you currently have a bear problem?” And, “Have you and your bear considered counseling?” And, “Just in case the spray doesn’t do the trick, do you have a Plan B?”