Caution Bears?!

As a continuation of my Journey’s of a Professional Truck Driver series, this story entitled “Caution Bears?! happened last month. I hope everyone finds it entertaining as well as informative.

Have you ever seen a bear? I don’t mean at the zoo, or on TV, but a bear in the wild. Unless you are a hunter, outdoorsman or very unlucky I would have assumed 99.9% of people haven’t. 

Let me back up a minute. Back in the day there was this great British car show called Top Gear with three of the funniest blokes on TV. There was an episode where they decided to review the #1 selling vehicle in the world which was the Ford F150. The hosts of the show, being British, were dishing a lot of disrespect both to Americans and American truck culture (or Lories as they call them).

So these guys are having a go at the old USA and I’m going to have to paraphrase, but they said they assumed anyone in the United States of America was endanger, on any given day, of being eaten by bears. How silly, right? This notion was so outrageous I remember this comment roughly 20 years later. I was born, raised and lived most of my life in this country and outside of the zoo or TV I had never seen a bear. I didn’t even feel I knew anyone who had ever seen a bear. What a strange notion about our country… Or was it.

Okay, fast forward to October 2025. I’m a truck driver and I typically drive nights while my husband drives days. I was driving east on I40 through eastern Oklahoma and on the side of the road watching the occasional vehicle go by was the biggest dog I had ever seen, solid midnight black in color, he looked like a wraith or other some other nightmare creature. Were Halloween ghouls coming out early? The next day I was trying to describe this crazy dog to my husband, who I’m pretty sure heard, blah blah blah dog blah blah. Boys, am I right ladies?

Anyway, a week later I’m driving the same route through Oklahoma when I see a “caution bears” sign. What?! Then I flashed back to that dog. He was skinny, but thick legs and tall even though he was standing on all four. Well, I’ll be damned, that was a bear. I can honestly say I would never have thought I’d see a bear in the wild. I immediately thought of those 3 guys on Top Gear. Maybe they weren’t as far off the mark as I thought.

If you’ll allow me to digress a minute… Driving the country as much as I have, I see caution signs all the time. I have a strange love of caution signs, but my favorites are the signs where some one has added something to make them humorous. I believe I mentioned one such sign I saw in my blog about my first night as a truck driver. The thing is that even though these signs are up and down our roadways, you almost never see the animal, person or situation you are being warned about, which don’t get me wrong, is a good thing.

I’m not saying you should generally ignore these signs, our roadways are sadly littered with dead animals and especially dear. Look out for dear ALL of the time and everywhere. I’ve seen them from one end of the country to the other. But… if you find yourself driving through Oklahoma at night, keep your eyes peeled, because if you hit a bear with a car my guess is you are just going to make him angry.

If you enjoyed this article, please check out our other articles and stories in our blog.