Was out walking the dog today when a friend working in her garden mentioned that a big black bear had just walked by between our place and hers. I was happy to hear it. It’s been some time since we’ve had one in the neighborhood. We’ve always had bears until a couple years ago when we had beautiful male, tall and leggy, with a white butterfly on his chest, who walked around at his leisure. You’d be up on a ladder painting the house or whatever and he’d just amble through the yard. He never hurt anything and was good about staying out of the paint.
One day some new-to-town douchebag (who I’m happy to say no longer lives here), left his garbage out. Leaving garbage out is illegal for just this reason. The butterfly bear went rummaging through the bags and douchebag shot him from the safety of his house with a bad shot, severing his spine. That beautiful animal dragged his paralyzed back legs around for three days before Fish and Game was able to find him and put him out of his misery.
If you’re one of those, “Animals don’t have any rights.” loudmouths who thinks you’re entitled to leave garbage out and shoot bears that get into it, let me say this as nicely as I can. You’re an embarrassment to gun owners in general and hunters in particular. People like you give hunting a bad name. As to the douchebag who shot the bear, he’s not much of a man and justice would have been better served by a punch in his face than by the small fine we heard he got. Anyhow, haven’t seen a bear in the neighborhood since which I’ve felt was our punishment as humans. Like, we didn’t deserve a bear, you know?
Now, though, we’ve got a bruiser in the hood and everyone is more aware, being more careful of what they put in the compost heap, carrying pepper spray when they walk the dog at night and that sort of thing. I haven’t seen him yet, which is fine with me, but judging from the size of what he left on the sidewalk just up the street, he’s a serious animal.
which brings us to the old question,
“Does a bear shit in the woods?”
Answer: A bear that can lay a log this size shits wherever it wants to.
