You are hiking in bear country one fine day and unexpectedly come upon a bear (grizzly or other). Unfortunately your bells didn't do anything, you dropped your bear spray down a gorge and you absentmindedly left your elephant gun at home. Your only defence left is the Bear-B-Gone vest.
Inspired by the commentary for the "Hiking Umbrella". The vest is incredibly simple to operate and merely contains a few canisters of compressed gas and a 15-foot tall life like inflatable bear complete with huge claws and teeth. All you have to do is pull the ripcord. There is a terrible roaring sound generated by the compressed gas during inflation. The inflatable bear then floats towards the flummoxed real bear, giving you time to run away or wet your pants or whatever you really want to do.-- Colonel Panic, Oct 21 2003 (?) Hiking Umbrella http://www.halfbake...a/Hiking_20Umbrella [Colonel Panic, Oct 04 2004] (?) Behind the bear is a little scared person running away http://www.whatacha...om/p-s/s0299114.jpg [k_sra, Oct 04 2004] (?) This one might work but... http://www.wackyplanet.com/chinbech.html [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] (?) I think it would need to be bigger, and... http://www.bigevent.../Images/Panda_H.jpg [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2004] (?) what if it's real cold out? http://www.landmark...le&title=polar+bear [2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] Scare dem bulls! http://www.lightnin...ead_Cows_Fence1.jpgfor [squeak] [k_sra, Oct 04 2004] Project Grizzly http://www.nfb.ca/grizzly/suit.htmlI'm sure most of you know of this guy. Everyone needs to see the movie (Project Grizzly, Canadian Film Board). The suit's inventor won an ignoble prize several years ago. [oxen crossing, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004] Maybe it could come with self-propelled inflatable salmon as an extra decoy? +-- Fishrat, Oct 21 2003 I really like this. I want one. Would be fun to use in a board meeting, too, just to get a rise out of people. +-- k_sra, Oct 21 2003 In the u.k. a 'vest' is usually worn under the shirt and is often prefixed by the word 'string' illustrating its flimsy and hole-ridden nature. This could be problematic when wearing a stretchy overgarment as the user could find themselves locked in an embrace with an inflatable bear under their jumper - not to mention the embarassment of the roaring compressed gas exploding from beneath the jumper. I still want one though.-- dobtabulous, Oct 21 2003 //canisters of compressed gas and a 15-foot tall life like inflatable bear//
How much does this weigh? I'm just asking because I think my hiking partner should be the one to carry it all.By the way, it would definitely be a gas. +-- Amos Kito, Oct 21 2003 I really have no idea what this would weigh. Would the same thing that they use to inflate airbags in cars work? Although if it inflated with the ferocity of an airbag you would probably not need to run away as you would be: a) unconcious or b) thrown (or should I say blasted) clear of the area.
Perhaps the (inflatable) bear could be made of latex and thus be able to expand to many times it's deflated size.-- Colonel Panic, Oct 21 2003 For the look of the vest, you should picture the vest that Marty McFly wears in Back to the Future.-- Colonel Panic, Oct 21 2003 And to save on weight, you can also use the compressed air to pump up your air-mattress.
Only to later realize that you don't have enough air for the bear!
And this doesn't actually reduce the weight, but makes you think it does since you're carrying it for more than one purpose.
Do you think a bear would really be fooled by this? Would you be fooled into thinking it was a real bear? If so, then, you could have a park get waaaay out of hand as one person inflates a bear, which scares another person who inflates their bear, which scares another..... nice visual image.... and a bear on a hill looking down and having a good chuckle. Bears do chuckle, right?
Or, what if there's other escalation where the bear is wearing a human-b-gone jacket that, with a pull of a cord, inflates into a 15-foot Carrot-top effigy. Scary.-- sophocles, Oct 21 2003 and if a vest explodes in the woods and there's no one to hear it? .. there's an exploding koan in here somewhere..-- aquamarine, Oct 21 2003 HA! Yes exactly, [UB]. I thought the bear should explode from the back as well so the hiker/camper could run away while still looking fierce.-- k_sra, Oct 22 2003 Would it be possible to inflate it with helium so that as well as startling the bear, you could subsequently float away from the danger?-- Fishrat, Oct 22 2003 //you are hiking in bear country one fine day....//
I'm seeing a multitude of uses here.
"you are a little old lady walking through a rough part of town....""you are a small boy tired of being picked on at school...""It's headache night again and you want to make your position clear...."-- lintkeeper2, Oct 22 2003 What about Koala bears? Aside from urinating on people when they try to get their photo taken with them, they are (unless you are a eucalyptus tree) relatively harmless I guess) Tourist-b-dri vest. What are bears scared of (like elephants with mice?) perhaps that would be the better thing to have explode from the vest? What about a Pickernick Basket ehhhhh BoBo???-- Peticelli, Oct 22 2003 On a similar theme, does anyone know what bulls are scared of? Big ones. I had an uncomfortably close encounter with one on a recent walking trip.-- squeak, Oct 23 2003 You're not supposed to pee on the other side of the fence without having a good look around first. Next time, try running away in a zig-zag pattern.-- lintkeeper2, Oct 23 2003 //does anyone know what bulls are scared of? //
You take a pen and write, "WHERE'S THE BEEF" on their forehead. Then they have to go hide from shame. Lightning also works. See [link].-- k_sra, Oct 23 2003 thanks, toe - my education continues..-- po, Oct 23 2003 Koalas are not really bears, but marsupials, I believe.
Old Advice for Travelling in Grizzly Bear Country: Always carry a 45 pistol in bear country. Nine times out of ten, when a Grizzly charges you, it is just trying to intimidate you, and will veer away in the last second. So when a Grizzly charges, get out your gun, but hold your fire until you know the bear's decision. If it doesn't veer away, shoot yourself with the pistol, because no gun you can carry will stop 1200+ pounds of bear at 35 miles an hour in 10 feet.-- oxen crossing, Oct 23 2003 // The inflatable bear then floats...//
Up, up and away. Heh.
"There goes my beautiful, sooo beautiful, bearlooooooon..."-- Tiger Lily, Oct 23 2003 do people have the right to bear vests? This is all getting a little hard to bear...... Yowie-be-gone now there's an idea.-- Peticelli, Oct 23 2003 but if people have the right to bear vests and they do so, does that not leave them with bare arms?-- lintkeeper2, Oct 23 2003 Bear in mind that vested bears bear rank over both, airy bears bearing vests, and unbearably boring younger boars bearing hairier chests, and will sometimes bear down, boring one or both to death, leaving behind barely enough bored vest beneath berry bushes to bear an investigation, let alone bear fruit.-- Tiger Lily, Oct 24 2003 <<Tigerlilly- great response, I could barely bear it and feel you have bared my inner bear and I am grizzly and bare beneath the sun (barely)..........>> why do I bother????
I believe a single shot LAW which you could carry (albeit illegally) would stop a bear at 10 feet. But would it stop a 1200 pound beer at 35mph?-- Peticelli, Oct 24 2003 If one would be in the business of bothering bears I would suspect a reconfigured tasar would work.-- Zimmy, Oct 24 2003 //I believe a single shot LAW which you could carry (albeit illegally) would stop a bear at 10 feet. But would it stop a 1200 pound beer at 35mph?// It should stop most of it and the other bits shouldn't pose a threat. But at that range, I doubt you would anymore either. Although the warhead may not have travelled far enough to have armed.-- oneoffdave, Oct 24 2003 I keep reading this is the Beer-be-gone vest, some sort of bib for men.-- RayfordSteele, Oct 24 2003 I keep thinking that this is going to be an idea for donning a Palestinian-style suicide bomber vest and then running into a cave full of bears. This seems so wrong, so very very wrong.-- Laughs Last, Oct 24 2003 Class.
Could the inflatable bear be made to double as a tent? Then you could be made safe while you sleep as well. Assuming it was a male bear, however. Else, you would run the risk of being “mounted.”-- Godot, Oct 24 2003 Oh, [Godot]! I was waiting for you.-- k_sra, Oct 24 2003 Rope + Coffee can with hole in bottom cut for rope to pass through (albeit, tightly) + (a little) Soap + Summer Camp = Sound of Bear roaring outside girl's cabin, Girls screaming inside.-- thumbwax, Oct 24 2003 Hilarious, [thumbwax]. I read that as "outside girls 'bathroom'" -no idea why. So how could you make the chuckling sound of a bear shitting in the woods?-- Tiger Lily, Oct 24 2003 Or the sound of the Pope being Catholic...-- Godot, Oct 24 2003 Why 15 feet tall? That's not really life-like (grizzlies max about 7 feet and Kodiaks about 10ft). If it's to scare the bear, maybe the question should be why not 30 (or 50) feet tall? Or why not a custom blow up human, made to look just like you, to fool the bear? Or maybe 30 one foot tall bright yellow ducks that would explode out of the jacket like confetti... I bet that'd freak the bear out.-- politely, Oct 24 2003 Maybe it would make the bear eat you MORE .. huh huh-- Letsbuildafort, Oct 24 2003 Does the Pope shit in the woods?-- Godot, Oct 24 2003 Subtlety is a rare commodity these days, Rods_. It's almost Pavlovian.-- waugsqueke, Oct 24 2003 random, halfbakery