Chaos at Brooks

Do you know what you get when you have one salmon, and seven hungry bears? Chaos, thats what you have. A young female subadult caught a fish in the river. She was chased by a little bigger subadult who wanted the fish. The chase started down the beach where our fish carrying bear ran into a courting couple. The female of the courting couple also wanted the fish. So bear number 1 was now being chased by bear number two and the female of the courting couple. The male from the couple of course followed his female. The fish carrying bear decided that the safest place to go was into camp. As she tore up the camp trail bringing three bears on her tail she happened across another bear who we were trying to get out of camp. Now even our ten year veteran wasn't going to try to stop five bears from chasing each other through camp. So our jobs were to get everyone into buildings until they all left camp or the fish was eaten. The first bear ran around the dining hall so all the visitors could see the chase. She ran down the trail till she was just about out of camp then turned around and headed back in the other direction this time around though two more bears were in the chase. No one knows where the last two bears came from. The bears circled around the cabins, down to the beach and back around the visitor center. My partner and I just tried to keep everyone in a building. Finally the first bear disappeared in to the woods. By the time the other bears reached the woods boundary you could no longer see the first bear. So the other bears decided that they would each go their own way. Two followed the scent of the first bear into the woods, the courting couple decided that they just couldn't wait to mate again and were doing their thing behind one of the cabins, one bear headed to the beach and the last bear headed to the river. By the time all seven bears had left camp the visitors had quite a story to tell, the staff let people out of buildings. We had people who were in the restrooms and storage sheds, along with people in the ranger station, the visitor center and the gear cache buildings. Last of all, us bear managers stop to take a couple of well deserved minutes of relaxation before the first bear returned, this time without the fishand the chaos.