Plot Problems in “Bear Illegal”

by Crystalwizard

I’m puzzled about the sequence of events in B.J. Bourg’s “Bear Illegal,” in issue 236.

The story depends on Rebecca and Bill, her lover, weaving a very intricate plot to do away with Curry, Rebecca’s husband.

Two problems:

Rebecca seems to be completely out of the loop concerning the conspiracy.
Both Curry and the bear have an unaccountably intermittent sense of smell.

Rebecca espies a creature in the dark. She has no idea what it is when she first sees it. She tells Curry that it might be a bear, but she doesn’t really know that it is one. If Rebecca is in on Bill’s plan, why would she say it was a bear? Why not a moose or something? And yet we have this exchange:

“How’d you know?” Rebecca’s voice was muffled against his chest.

“Lucky guess.”

Rebecca pushed back and stared up into Bill’s dark eyes. “No, really?”

It appears that Bill had never actually told Rebecca what was going to happen. She goes camping with her husband, Curry, completely in the dark about Bill’s plans, and yet she knows enough to make Curry wear clothing soaked in fish juice and be at just the right spot on the stream at just the right time.

She has no idea, either, why the bear attacked her husband instead of her:

Rebecca was thoughtful for a moment and then cocked her head. “How’d you know it wouldn’t attack me?”

Bill smiled. “You weren’t wearing clothes soaked in fish juice. Besides, I was watching from the trees. Had that bear even spit in your direction I would’ve dropped him on his ass.”

In order for that dialog to take place, Rebecca can’t have any idea that the fish juice had anything to do with the bear’s attack. Evidently Bill somehow talked her into soaking her husband’s clothing with fish juice without telling her why. And Rebecca managed to do so without Curry’s finding out.

Do you have any idea how stinky clothing soaked in fish juice would actually be? I’ve been fishing. I’ve cleaned fish. I’ve wiped my hands on my jeans after cleaning fish. Your clothing doesn’t wind up smelling like fish unless you wallow IN the fish. There’s no way Curry would consider it normal to have clothes that reeked so badly of fish. And yet:

“These clothes smell like crap!” Curry called from inside the tent. “Did you even wash it since my last fishing trip?”

Curry knows what clothing worn on a fishing trip smells like, and these clothes don’t smell right to him. What did he do after the last fishing trip? Drop his clothes into a hamper and not look at them again until he pulled them out to put them on in the morning he gets killed? That’s hardly likely:

Curry stumbled out of the tent and stared down at his loose jeans and oversized fishing jacket.

Curry has a fishing jacket. That means it has pockets with his lures and other items in it. He wouldn’t have dropped it into the laundry and ignored it after the last fishing trip. He would have taken all the items out of the pockets and carefully put them away.

He would also have spent some time getting it ready for the trip he’s on before leaving. He would noticed that the jacket smelled like fish at home. But it obviously didn’t or he would have wanted it washed.

Therefore, Rebecca must managed to soak it and his pants in fish juice after they got to the campsite. And she had to do that without Curry’s noticing her or the smell of fish, which had to be permeating the tent. The clothes were in the tent all night with them. Curry didn’t get them out of his truck after they woke up in the morning.

Now on the subject of the bear:

It’s killed several people already. Evidently the clothes smell so much of fish that they drive the bear into a frenzy while Curry is wearing them.

If the bear can smell the clothes during the day, at the stream, it certainly can smell them at night in the camp. It should have attacked the tent in the same frenzy as it attacked Curry. The bear tears Curry to shreds during the day, yet it runs off afraid because someone yells at it the night before?

That makes less sense than Rebecca’s somehow managing to maneuver her husband into the right spot at the right time without having a clue what she needs to do or even that she needs to do it.