In the summer, a mere inch of rainfall can barrage your roof with nearly 1,500 gallons of water. What we’ve been experiencing in the United States over the past week has had us begging for water, shade, or some manner of a brief respite from the oppressive heat that’s had us consistently sizzling. Yep, it’s been hot.
We human beings have the option of staying indoors with air conditioning, traveling in temperature controlled vehicles, and can, most times, hop-skip-and-jump into a pool, lake, or ocean. In fact, we spend 90% of our time indoors. Though the interior pollutants might be two to five times higher inside than outside, when it feels like it’s 1,000 degrees, A/C is key.
Enter the backyard of Californian Mark Hough. It being California, the temperature was hotter than a lot of the United States. Thus, he had his hot tub unheated so it could act as a refreshing pool, rather than the steamy cauldron it usually is. Preparing for a leisurely afternoon of battling the heat and building a good base tan for the holiday week, he fixed himself a margarita and stepped into his backyard.
Whilst sipping his margarita, he heard a rustling from the bushes that he brushed off as his neighbor doing some yard work. Perhaps wondering why someone would be doing yard work on such a stifling afternoon, he went to inspect the second rustling in those same bushes and was met with a surprise. A large brown bear was mid-attempt at scaling his property fence.
“So I got up, looked over in the bushes and lo and behold there’s a bear climbing up over my fence,” Hough said.
Alarmed at the lumbering intruder, he backed away as the bear made it into his yard. Leaving his margarita behind, he wisely stepped indoors to observe and report.
What he found was certainly out of the ordinary. Weird things like metal roofs can lower homeowners insurance by 35%, but fewer stipulations are made regarding mammalian intruders. This particular intruder would make itself right at home over the course of the following few hours.
If it’s hot out for humans, you better believe its hotter for bears. This bear saw the hot tub and, possibly mistaking the jets for stream currents, hopped right in and splashed around for a while. Hough videoed the bear playing with the chlorine floater and thermometer.
“He was playing having a grand old time,” he reported.
After a cooling soak, the bear got out of the tub. Before it left the yard, it spied the margarita that Hough had left outside and “popped out of the bushes, walked right over to the margarita, knocked it over and lapped it.” Later that day, once the bear had finally finished its visit, it was spied napping in a nearby Oak tree. Now that’s a quality afternoon.
The relaxing afternoon that Hough had originally planned for himself was commandeered by a bear with its own plans. After witnessing the bear’s tequila-fueled splash-and-dash and recording a soon-to-be-viral video, Hough reportedly made himself not one, but two margaritas. It’s summertime law that you must make up for lost margs to forget about your worries and your strife. It’s the bear necessities.
