Fiddleheads are delicious, but you have to be careful to pick them at the right time, because the mature fern plant is toxic. As for Grampy -- he could be awesome. But he was not without his flaws and shadows. There is a reason I was old enough to remember meeting him for the first time; my mother wouldn't let me meet him until he'd stopped drinking. But he did seem pretty magical when I was a kid.

I had seen bears before, out west, but they were on the other side of a garbage dump from me, and I was more focused on the dog they had adopted, since he had previously lived with us.