Black Bears that hate Sharpie art

So.. there are a lot of different creatures that could have ransacked the tent where I live yesterday.  There are thousands of black bears in North Carolina, and around this time of year some of them wander through central NC.  For the most part, they don't live around here year 'round.  But I'll be honest, when I first saw the door of my tent wide open last night, a wandering bear was one thought that came to mind.  But a quick look inside proved that my "home" was NOT trashed by a bear, raccoons, 'possums, or a pack of really angry squirrels.

My tent is a big one, and the main door has a broken zipper, and is held kind of shut by safety pins.  But the other half of the tent is separated by zippers that do work.  That's where I sleep, you can ask any of the many people who've walked out to my campsite at night, since I've apparently become a local tourist attraction.  I might have to start buying snacks and beverages if so many people keep wandering around there at night.

When I looked inside last night, I realized that humans, or maybe a sub-human species, like a crackhead, did the deed.  Like I said in the earlier post, my clothes had been pulled out of the garbage bags I keep them in, and everything was thrashed about.

So, this afternoon, after a pop-up rainstorm I didn't expect, I went back to my campsite to clean up the mess.  Of course, that sucked.  I just cleaned up quite a bit yesterday, which I hadn't done in a while.  Last night, and even this morning, I didn't think anything had been stolen.  Today I found out different.  I had a couple of bags of my used Sharpies, that I would use once in a while, in with my clean clothes.  They were gone.  In addition, I had my two partially used sketch pads with some partially done artwork and other stuff I use to make my drawings.  The two sketch pads were wrapped in two garbage bags to keep the rain out.  That seemed to be the one thing that wasn't fucked with.  But it was.  When I turned the big sketchpad pack over, someone had ripped big holes in both bags, and then, put it back, hole down, so water would soak through the floor of the tent over time and ruin both pads.  That means, that if, somehow, it was a wandering bear that did the damage, it was a bear that hated Sharpie art.

This is just the latest attempt to terrorize me as I work to make a decent living from my artwork and writing, and get a decent place to live.  There have been, shit, a couple dozen incidents(?) like this in the past several months.  And that's not including the people wandering around making noise on a regular basis.  This is so ridiculous.  All of us who grew up outside of  The South, have bad stereotypes of the region from movies and TV shows like the Dukes of Hazard.  But try as I do to get away from bad stereotypes, some of them keep getting re-enforced by actual events.

It seems like not being able to make a living in North Carolina for 9 1/2 years isn't enough.  It seems the guys behind the scenes are trying to "teach me a lesson," as they seem to motivated to do here in the Piedmont Triad area.  But the only lesson I keep learning, is that the people behind the scenes are largely a bunch of assholes.

But at least I can't blame the bears for hating my Sharpie art.  So don't hate the bears.