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I feel the need to lessen or worsen the current dearth of whatever it is that we're low on.

Normally, when I hear "bear repellent" at Yellowstone the speaker is referring to some variation of bear spray, a pepper spray that is similar in intensity to that used for self-defense and by the police to subdue people. It turns out bears don't like it either, so it is heavily and officially recommended as a backcountry deterrent for just about anything bigger than you are.

In addition to successful uses on bears, I've heard of it getting used on elk, bison, and of course, anything else that moves. Legendary tales are passed around about the tourist who used bear spray on a mouse in their room in the Old Faithful Inn (a dirty secret here is that animals don't respect our boundaries, and can be found anywhere they can get into which is anywhere), clearing out the wing for a night. No word on whether they got the mouse or not.

Then there's my mental understanding of how the tragic term "bear repellent" came to be. Apparently, a mom heard bear spray and thought "just like mosquito repellent". Two (or was it three?) kids in the emergency room later, I bet she changed her mind on that.

Anyway, I was visiting one of the sites I monitor beans at when I overheard someone talking about repelling bears with ABBA. I asked for details.

They (three female coworkers) took a simple trail loop, but got off it by accidentally following one of the many phantom trails that veer off any trail in the park. It took a couple of hours to find their way back (they went way off) and the night was falling. They were rightly concerned about bears and decided to make a lot of noise to scare them off.

This involved singing which might have sounded worse than it sounds. The designated singer, whom I was speaking with, started with Bohemian Rhapsody. After that was nixed, she sang American Pie. The committee then decided that Dancing Queen had the necessary combination of bear repelling factor and listenability.

Since the group wasn't eaten by bears and hadn't gone mad from earworms, it clearly worked.