The Extinction Club (15 page)

It all started with a total accident. I was walking in the forest in the fall with my binoculars & motion-sensitive camera (both gifts from Gran), trying to spot a wolverine or lynx — two of my favourite animals because they’re very rare & very beautiful. Gran said she’d seen both animals in the northeast woods around this time last year. Two women hunters shot a lynx in this area, she said, because they thought it would make a
good rug. I’d like to make a good rug out of them. Anyway, on my way home, after not seeing a trace of either a lynx or a wolverine (no footprints, no scat), I took a shortcut that I hardly ever take because it’s rough & dangerous. Hunters & bikers hang out along this path.

They’d probably kill me on the spot if they caught me doing the things I do. For example, not too long ago I found the body of a cottontail rabbit & when I went to bury the poor thing I saw a tube buried in the ground beside it. It’s called an M-44 cartridge & it’s illegal. It’s a spring-loaded device & comes with smelly bait. When an animal tugs on the bait, the spring shoots a pellet of sodium cyanide into its mouth. When cyanide mixes with moisture, it turns into a deadly gas. I showed it to my grandmother & we took it to Inspecteur Déry, who’s a wildlife officer, and he said he’d look after it but he didn’t seem to care & he didn’t do a thing about it. More on him later.

I was following what looked like cougar tracks (?!), which look a bit like a dog’s but are bigger. Obviously. Here’s how to tell the difference:

Nobody has seen a cougar in these parts for years, so I was probably wrong. Along the way, though, I found two things, a leg-hold trap, which I smashed with a rock, and then some “dirty bait” under a birch tree, with a wooden platform nailed to the branches above it. The bait was made of anise seed, gummy bears & chocolate-covered raisins. I buried everything in a dried-up creek bed, scared out of my mind that someone would see me but no one did.

I continued along the path, and sometimes off the path whenever I saw a beer can or a strip of cloth tied to a tree, which are both used as bait pile markers. I found a Vienna sausage tin, an orange Cheezie bag & two rotting wedges of pizza, all-dressed. Plus scat, which was human, a huge pile flagged by a banner of toilet paper. Treats for the forest creatures.

It was near dusk when I passed the old drive-in, where you can still see some of the posts where the speakers used to be, and the old bowling alley, which has been closed for years too. I was surprised to see a light coming from inside. Along with smoke or vapour coming from a vent. I was going to keep walking, but since I’m a total snoop I walked over to see if I could see anything through the back door window. All the other windows were boarded up, except a high one near the roof where the light was coming from.

I couldn’t see anything but I could hear things. And what I heard was these sort of high popping sounds, hard to describe really, and then two or three loud screeches. They were not the kind of sounds made by humans.

I was about to bang on the door but changed my mind at the last second. I walked around to the side of the building & looked
up, at the high window. If I could somehow get up on the roof, which was flat, I might be able to lie on my stomach, swing my head over & look through the top of the window. But I’d need a long ladder to get up on the roof & there weren’t any ladders around. (And if I had one, I wouldn’t need to get to the roof, just to the window!) I didn’t like the idea of going all the way home & back for a ladder, especially since it would be dark by then, so I tried to think of something else.

I walked around to the front entrance. On the crumbling parking lot overgrown with weeds was a black SUV with dark-tinted windows. And next to the SUV was a red maple, which stretched above the roof. Young maples are not the best climbing trees, and even if I managed to climb it, there was a big gap between the roof & the nearest branch — one strong enough to hold me without snapping in two. Assuming I could climb the tree, I would have at least a two-metre jump. And then how would I get down?

I climbed the tree. I won’t describe the perils of the climb, or how agile I was despite being overweight or how I walked right to the end of the branch like a chimpanzee, risking life & limb. Because that would be bragging. There was something about those sounds coming from inside that got my adrenalin going, that pushed me on.

Upside down with my binoculars, a camera dangling from my neck, feeling blood rushing to my head & mountain sickness, I leaned over the edge of the building & peeked through the window.

Here’s what I saw: small metal cages, about twenty of them, on two of the old wooden bowling lanes. There was shadowy
movement in some of them, but from my angle I couldn’t tell what kind of animals were inside. And if I leaned out any farther, I’d fall right off the roof!

So I made my way back to the maple. I didn’t like the look of the jump, so I tried to find another solution. There was a small mound of earth not far from the tree, by the north side of the building, covered with couch grass & laurel shrubs. If I hung from the roof by my fingertips & let myself drop, I might land safely.

It was a surprisingly soft landing. I survived it with only a few scratches on both arms & both legs. I knew I shouldn’t have worn shorts! Now, I thought, I would go around & bang on that door.

But I didn’t have to. Before I got there I heard the creaking sound of the door being opened. When I reached the corner I peeked out & saw a man bend over & stick a piece of wood in the door frame. As a door jamb. Then he lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around it the way gangsters do in old movies. He was short with greased black hair. An Oriental man.

I picked up a rock, stood back from the side of the building & threw it up toward the roof with all my strength. I could hear it bounce off the roof & land in the bushes on the other side.

I went back & snuck another quick look from behind the wall. The man was still standing there, smoking. Was he deaf? I thought of going around to the other side, to the bushes, and shouting out something. But what would that do? I couldn’t think of anything else, so I did the same thing — picked up another rock, a bigger one, and heaved it toward the roof.

This time I heard him shout out something. I watched him walk toward the sound, toward the bushes, his back to me. I tiptoed over to the door, removed the door jamb & closed the door. With me on the other side of it.

What have I done now? I asked myself as my eyes adjusted to the light. “Hello?” I said softly, my voice cracking. “Hello?” I shouted. No answer.

I walked down a small flight of stairs to another door, which I thought would be locked. I pulled on it hard with both hands & it scraped open like it was on a chalkboard. What a smell!! A gross mix of things. So powerful I nearly gagged.

I sidled along a rough concrete wall till I reached what used to be the side lane of the bowling alley. Directly in front of me is where the automatic pinsetter would have been. But now there was just a hole. “Hello?” I called again.

Along two of the middle bowling lanes, which used to be wood but were now mostly cement, I could now see the dim outlines of cages. There were bare light bulbs here & there dangling from the ceiling, but they didn’t give much light. As I walked to the cage nearest to me, after stumbling in one of the gutters, I heard some pounding on the back door.

At first I didn’t understand what I was seeing inside the cage & then it made me sick to my stomach. A bear, a large Black Bear, was trapped inside a cage so small he couldn’t move. There were metal bars all around it & the floor was made of bars too —
he had nothing solid to stand or sit on. He moaned & reached a paw out of his cage. I grabbed the paw & held it, which was not the smartest thing to do. It was then that I saw a metal tube sticking out of a hole in its belly.

There were over a dozen cages, set up over a metal trough that water flowed through into a drain. It smelled awful. There was also a strange contraption that looked like a shower stall with strips of dangling plastic for a curtain. On the floor beside it was a huge silver boom box.

I moved on, quickly. In one of the cages were two cubs, who were making that popping & screeching sound I heard earlier. From the other cages, I began to hear low, deep growls.

I closed my eyes & took a long breath. Then grabbed my camera. I snapped away blindly, at the cages, inside the cages, at the stall, anywhere & everywhere until I heard sounds coming from the front of the building. A door slamming, then footsteps on cement.

I ran toward the back door, along the wall & up the steps. At the door, I paused, afraid there was someone waiting for me on the other side. Should I ditch my camera?

As I was looking around for a place to hide it, I heard clicking noises, like someone was running down one of the bowling lanes with baseball spikes or golf shoes. And then some shouted words that I didn’t understand, neither French nor English. I pushed the door open.

Nobody waiting, no ambush. I sprinted toward the path, the dangerous path that my grandmother said never to take, which I
could now barely see in the half-light. I ran & tripped & got up & ran some more, sobbing for breath, on & on, pushing through the trees. Every time a bird chirped or branch snapped I thought it was some bad guy come to tackle me. I ran with a painful “stitch” in my side, until my lungs nearly exploded, until I thought I was going to die. After a while I could barely make out the path & began to run into branches & bushes & briars. But when I saw a steeple through the branches I knew I was almost there, back home, back with Grand-maman. With a story that was too awful to believe, that I barely had the breath to tell.

Bears are classified into 8 species. The largest is the Brown Bear (Grizzly & Siberian), followed by the Polar Bear, American Black Bear, Asiatic Black Bear, Sloth Bear, Panda, Spectacled Bear, Sun Bear. The Koala is the smallest of all, but it’s not really a bear. All of these species are endangered.

They are hunted for many reasons: trophy hunting (especially North America, Europe), pest control & nuisance bears (Japan,
USA), food & body fat (Canada, Turkey), and medicinal purposes (worldwide). Wild bears caught as cubs are also used for entertainment purposes, either as dancing bears (India, Pakistan, Bulgaria & formerly Greece & Turkey) or in bear-baiting (Pakistan & formerly throughout Europe), where dogs attack a bear chained to a stake.