Who knew bears could be such tough critics?
A Vancouver Island music teacher scared off a curious black bear the best way he knew how — by belting on his trombone.
Tristan Clausen, a music teacher at St. John’s Academy in Shawnigan Lake, was teaching his class last Friday, May 27, when he heard another teacher banging on her classroom door.
A student from another class had gone outside and noticed a black bear on top of a wooden structure housing an outdoor garbage bin, which it couldn’t access.
The student retreated inside, and that’s when Clausen went to work.
“I had a peek and thought, well, banging on the door’s not really loud but this guy is,” he said, motioning to his trombone. “So I picked it up and went out to play a little tune.”
So he walked toward the garbage can and started playing loudly.
“He had a lot of attention in my direction and was figuring out what to do, and decided discretion was the better part of valour,” he said. “I’m trying not to take it personally.”
But if he could do it again, Clausen says he might have chosen a different tune than the non-descript notes he played: “I think the A&W theme would’ve been perfect.”
The band teacher said he wasn’t too worried for his safety as a door was nearby.
His students, meanwhile, watched on from inside the class, even though they were somewhat “indifferent” to the excitement, he said.
Makayla Mitchell was using her phone to record an experiment in class when a fellow student spotted the bear. Mitchell turned her camera towards the window and caught the entire incident.
“All of a sudden you hear a trombone and all of us started dying out laughing because who expects it?” the Grade 11 student joked.
School administrators are hailing Clausen a hero.
“He’s a bit of a legend, we’re joking about getting him a t-shirt, ‘the man, the myth, the trombone’,” said Admissions Director Matthew Jonah.
While the bear hasn’t returned to the school grounds it has been spotted in the area in recent days, and the school says it’ll be on alert — and Clausen will be ready with his trombone just in case.
Jeff Lawrence
