Leeches, Lovers, Bears, and Chocolate Pudding

This collection of one family's unusual adventures and bizarre encounters in both urban and outdoor settings has a common thread that runs through many of these stories and that is "survival." For example, the title story is about surviving the hundreds of leeches that feasted on our blood and the hungry bear that stole our only food pack in the middle of a long canoeing venture in the remote backwoods of Canada. We also survived three nights alone on top of a Colorado mountain with a stranger who had just killed his wife with the large pistol strapped to his waist. The same is true of our children's "open" beer party that attracted over 400 thirsty friends and strangers to our unsupervised house. And of the sea lion that held my hand (and my life) in her very strong jaws while underwater in the Galapagos. And of our Bassett hound that shredded my new boss's wife's cashmere coat while we ate dinner. And of the 20 or so bighorn sheep sheltering inside an open hiker's bathroom high in the Rockies from the savage weather outside. And of our son's waterbed that he accidentally overfilled until it reached the ceiling. Not to mention driving our own team of huskies for five days and nights in a snowbound Alaska; or canoeing the whitewater rapids of the "Deliverance" river; or bathing with elephants and crocodiles in Nepal; or swimming with dolphins in Belize; or paragliding 5000 feet above the Alps; or hiking through three countries around Mont Blanc with bloody toes.