Travel Schlepp's Birthday

Here's the story of how Little Schlepp aka Travel Schlepp aka TS came to be part of our family.

---------------

Travel Schlepp 

I was born and mostly raised in the Bear’s Cookie Den in the tiny seaside village of Seal Rock, Oregon.  Big Schlepp and I enjoyed the company of hundreds of other bears.  Together we watched the people come and go through the little bakery and coffee shop.  We’d see all kinds of tourists and wonder where they came from and where they were going.  Sometimes they’d buy a bear, usually for an obnoxious child who pestered them until he or she got what they wanted. Big Schlepp and I were lucky that we didn’t fall into their clutches. 

Often it was cold and foggy with hardly any people at all.  But in September it could be gloriously sunny and warm.  Yet it was on an unusually foggy morning in September that Big Schlepp almost was taken away. 

On that day two humans came in to the Cookie Den. The lady really like us a lot.  I could tell. Actually, she liked Big Schlepp.  The man said she should buy him, but she said something like, “I can’t buy everything I like.” And she placed Big Schlepp back beside me on the shelf. 

I could feel his disappointment but was secretly relieved he wasn’t leaving me.  I had never given this much thought before and felt disturbed by it for days.  I realized the day would most likely come when one of us would be left behind.  Being so alike and having the same aspiration and goal to be loved and cared for in a nice home had given us a deep bond in our long hours of silence. 

As I had so dreaded, that day came, a damp, dreary, and cold day the next December.  It didn’t happen as I had expected.  I thought I would see who took Big Schlepp and paid for him and hoped it would be an adult.  Instead, the store keeper took Big Schlepp from my side and I watched as she placed him in a big box, tucked a bag of chocolate chip cookies in beside him, and sealed it. 

Oh God, how I wondered and worried back then what his fate had been.  We were both alone and I didn’t know where Big Schlepp had gone. 

It seemed an eternity passed that I sat on my shelf alone and only occasionally would someone show a slight interest in me. 

Then one day about a month later, the storekeeper came to my shelf holding a small box and then she put me inside and closed the box.  I was frightened.  Where was I being sent and to whom?  After being jostled about for days, someone opened the lid to my box.  Suddenly, I was looking up into the face of a man.  My first reaction was relief–to be out of that box..  Then I recognized him as the man who had been with the lady that day in the store, when she almost bought Big  Schlepp.  I was so confused.  That day in September he had hardly noticed me at all nor had the lady for that matter. 

After the man gently picked me up with an expression of surprise and appreciation, I could look around at my surroundings.  [Editor's note:  This was January 22, 1999, so we celebrate this as TS's birthday.]

It was then that I saw the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.  Big Schlepp was sitting across the room looking contented as could be. 

You see, the man, whose name was Karl, had remembered Big Schlepp from September and bought him for Christmas for his lady.  Then the lady, whose name was Caro, bought me for Karl’s birthday.  I had really underestimated her.  She had remembered me all that time. 

I looked around for her but she wasn’t around.  She was taking care of her mother who was sick in someplace called South Carolina.  Caro wanted me to be there for his birthday even if she couldn’t.  I felt very important and took my new responsibility very seriously. 

Karl set me up next to Big Schlepp and we talked long into the night.  We had a lot of catching up to do. 

I didn't know it then, but adventure was waiting for me right around the corner.