It was the call you hope you'll never have to make. Even as the phone was ringing, I kept thinking to myself "Surely I am mistaken. Surely I have simply failed to search the room properly. Surely by the time they pick up the phone, I'll have found . . ."
My faux-soothing thoughts were interrupted by "Hello, this is Marina at Royal Service, how may I help you today, Ms. Tr . . . Tr . . . [sounds of brain exploding as Marina tries to figure out how to pronounce Katr's vowel-deprived Croatian last name]."
"Well, Marina," I said, "it's like this. I've lost my . . . bear."
The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is a pretty fancy place. It looks like this:
and they take the whole castle thing pretty seriously. Some of the staff wear kilts. A bagpiper announces certain hours of the day. It's so fancy, the bellmen and porters DO NOT ACCEPT TIPS.
The Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel is not the kind of place where you want to admit you travel with stuffed animals. And it's especially not the kind of place where you want to call "Royal Service" to report that Atiqtaq, your Petro-Canada WinterGas-promoting polar bear has gone AWOL. You CAN, because the staff are extremely helpful and friendly. But you don't WANT to.
"She's white," I said, into the Royal Service silence, "a polar bear, with a blue ribbon around her neck. I think she probably just got tangled up in the linens and escaped when housekeeping removed them."
"So the bear was . . . in your bedsheets?"
"Yeah."
More silence. I hoped she was taking notes. I held myself back from crying out "Yes, alright, yes!! We sleep with a bear! A bear and a moose, if you must know! We are nerds, Royal Service!! Nerds!!"
"She IS a bear," I said, "so in this mountain setting, it's not surprising that she'd make a break for it. Ha ha."
Marina laughed weakly.
The truth is, Atiqtaq's always shown a propensity for exploring. She regularly disappears into various corners of our bedroom at home. And when we take her on trips, it's often a struggle to find her when we're getting ready to leave. She'll show up under the bed or in the minibar trying to get at the Coke. But this was the first time she'd actually escaped.
Katr was at a conference, so I was on my own. As Marina consulted with Housekeeping, I decided to go out and have a look for Atiqtaq myself.
Nothing outside. I thought that it would only be right for me to search the spa next - I mean, she could have been in the coldest of the mineral plunge pools or enjoying the eucalyptus inhalation room. Sure, the $60 spa fee wouldn't look great on our room bill, but I knew Katr would understand. I headed back up to the room to retrieve my investigative bathing suit and the phone rang. It was Jessie, from Housekeeping. And she had found the bear.
About twenty minutes later, there was a knock on the door and I beetled over to it to find what looked like the longest-suffering member of the Banff Springs Hotel's housekeeping staff. This man was not in the mood for bear return. He had Atiqtaq gingerly by the foot and he averted his eyes as he held her out to me, like he was handing me my lost foot-long, eight-speed, disco-lit, Donna Summer-playing neon pink vibrator with suction cup base and rotating attachments. "Okayherehaveagoodnight," he muttered and stalked off before I had a chance to thank him. "What was his problem?" laughed Katr, who'd seen the whole thing. I looked down at Atiqtaq. She looked up at me mutely. Keeping her own counsel, as bears do.
We tucked her into our suitcase the next morning for the long drive home, as we couldn't risk her making another bid for freedom in Sicamous or Revelstoke. And when we let her out at home, we told her that she'd better behave if she wanted to accompany us on our next trip to through the mountains in October.
Until then, she'll have to hang out on our balcony. Gazing out towards the distant peaks. Yearning to join her bear brethren.
