Not backing down on fate of "the bear"

It seemed we had everything but a helicopter hovering overhead when our bear friend settled in a tree in north Morris. It turns out all sorts of agencies were represented in attending to the scene.
The University of Minnesota police? They were there, according to the online writing of our city manager. I asked a friend with whom I had breakfast Friday why the University police would have to be involved.

"Maybe the bear was drunk," he said. Rimshot.

With all these law enforcement brains coming together, I'm sure there was no risk to be allowed in how this episode came to an end. The only way to prevent something bad happening was to dispose of the bear.

Sarah Palin might have suggested shooting the bear from a helicopter. Evidently she has been known to go after wolves that way, or to endorse the practice. Her endorsements these days don't have the imprimatur of the Alaska governor's office. I guess they're on Facebook.

Seriously, the Alaskan would no doubt be fully aware of the danger bears present.
Lest you think this is an unserious and rambling blog post, I would argue to the contrary, as I would eschew the kind of levity that has been evident in some official statements. The city manager wrote that "the bear did leave on his own, probably back to where he came from."

That's a pretty imprecise statement. Our manager, Mr. Hill, seems to just want us to think the bear is out of our hair now and went to somewhere where he can find contentment in an element where he poses no danger.

Again, all those law enforcement brains put together would never agree to such an assumption. Can you imagine their embarrassment, shame and fear of losing their jobs if that bear had made its way into town again and caused trouble? Or gone onto the highway and caused a motorist to swerve off the road and roll over his vehicle?

If we accept the official story, we might wonder: Did the officials coax the bear in a manner to leave town to the north as opposed to any other route? There are people living out there. Like me. Cimaroc Kennels are out there. And senior citizens.

At that late hour (essentially middle of the night), it's unlikely anyone would be outside, but you can never assume anything. I've been known to have the dog outside in the middle of the night so he can take care of his business. Everyone acknowledges this bear had been hurt through being struck by a car, the question was how badly.

No, I don't think the bear went "back to where he came from" (a curious existential type of statement). And I don't think we need to be concerned about what route he may have chosen on his way out of town.

I think the Sarah Palin solution was enacted sans helicopter.

The law enforcement people couldn't find it within themselves to tell the public (and especially the children) that. Why? It's partly because we don't understand the true reality of bears. They have been practically nonexistent here.

You might want to talk to people who live in the wild country around Duluth. I doubt that any of them would suggest you should approach a bear like it's a big, fluffy friend. The bear in Morris was given the name "Fluffy."

It got a Facebook page, although I confess I'm not into the Facebook culture so I'm not certain of what all is entailed by that. I only belatedly started this blog.

The final nudge for starting the blog came with the Morris newspaper becoming once a week instead of twice. The obvious retreat of the legacy media, to the point where its only mission seems to be to extract as many ad dollars as it can while it's still on its feet, has opened a void that online journalists such as myself can fill. Our city manager, perhaps unwittingly, is doing that himself through his blog.

Blaine Hill's blog, incidentally, is linked on the site you're reading now. Look on the right hand side.

Am I overreacting to the bear episode? In answering no, let me illustrate by pointing out that notorious incident where a chimpanzee pet chewed a person's face off. There has been more than one chimp incident like this.
Wildlife experts will say that chimpanzees (and the hippopotamus) are among the most dangerous animals to confront if they're in an ornery mood.

The animal handlers in Hollywood know all this, of course, but they shape a make-believe world in which animals are given human-like qualities and become the object of our affection. Aren't chimps charming? You might think so if you consume popular media. Didn't Ronald Reagan - RIP - star with a chimp in the movie "Bedtime for Bonzo?"

I have read that chimps in entertainment are young, neutered and drugged. I wouldn't doubt that Reagan as a precaution wore an athletic cup type of protector (for the genitals), based on what I've read about how chimps attack people.

Chimps are intelligent only by comparison to other animals, although sometimes I think they might be the ones running the political "tea party" movement. After writing that, Palin might direct her helicopter pilot to track me down.

Elephants are cute and fascinating in the circus, right? And then we have bears. . .

Oh my, the entertainment industry has made bears into the most charming creatures. When I was a kid I watched "Captain Kangaroo" which included "Dancing Bear." We had the Muppet Show with Fozzie Bear. Pooh Bear is a much-loved figure from children's literature.

Who can forget the story of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears?" The name "Goldilocks" was revived in the 1990s as, of all things, a term related to the U.S. economy. So often when the stock market shot upward (common then), we were told it was the result of the "Goldilocks effect." The economy was neither too hot nor too cold, it was "just right."

On Thursday of this past week, given the quake of sorts in the stock market, maybe we could coin the term "yo yo economy."

Maybe chimpanzees would do the best job picking stocks now. I'll have to ask my old boss Jim Morrison about that.

Wild bears are strangers to us out here on the prairie. Given our unfamiliarity, it's easy to think we might let our guard down and smile at the knowledge of our new "visitor." Our city manager reported daycare providers bringing their kids to the vicinity of the treed bear, hoping to get a glimpse.

At some point our very competent Police Chief Beauregard probably winced and said "why me? Why did this bear come into our lives here and create this predicament? Where on earth did he come from."

Officials who were on the scene know there is virtually no chance "Fluffy" will re-visit Morris. I'm quite certain the DNR made sure of that. The DNR took a cold, hard look at the situation here and knew there were no alternatives.

Perhaps they asked the other officials to leave the scene at the time the drastic action was taken. Jim Beauregard wouldn't have to be an eyewitness. This would make it easier for him later to spin that little tale of the bear "moving on," as if some bum who wasn't able to stay.

Was any damage done to the car that had the encounter with the bear? If so, the driver must have had an interesting subsequent conversation with her car insurance rep. I imagine that insurance companies wouldn't be too accepting of a bear making its rounds in the community.

Most of us were just plain amazed when we heard about this black bear. There are too many benign images of bears from entertainment in our head. The bear is stereotyped as a friendly, passive, dim-witted oaf. Just as chimps are "cute."

The person so horribly attacked by the chimp may have let her guard down because of the popular images. Professional wildlife managers (like at the DNR) and wildlife handlers in entertainment know the cold, hard truth. Remember the Sigfried and Roy incident in Las Vegas involving the tiger?
Animals follow their instincts and can be unpredictable. I once had to get medical attention because of a dog bite, applied by an animal that I treasured dearly (and still do). The doctor was perturbed at how long I waited to come in. I felt bad about the dog being in a position of having a finger pointed at him.

If this 40-pound animal can send someone to the clinic, I wonder what a big, wild and wounded bear might do.
So would all these committed public servants monitoring our bear visitor just allow him to mosey along? You don't believe fairy tales, do you? Well, apparently many people do.

There are skeptics in Morris about the official story but they seem to be the minority. On Friday morning at McDonald's I discovered some support for my position as we perused the house newspaper (Star Tribune) and came upon the headline about a bear that was shot at a Twin Cities area golf course.

It was a large headline: "DNR: Bear had to be killed." And the subhead: "The male black bear that wandered onto the Manitou Ridge Golf Course posed a threat because it was too close to too many people."
I doubt that our venerable DNR would want to put Morris area people at any more risk than in the Twin Cities.
"Police had no choice" but to kill the golf course bear, the article stated.
I feel that was the bottom line here too. I'm not sure why a cover story of the bear's escape was necessary. I would be infuriated if this was a wink-wink, nod-nod agreement between local officials and the local corporate news media. It would be very inconsiderate. But I wouldn't rule it out.
Media people are the self-appointed guardians of public morale. It's good for ad sales. No one wants to read about this supposedly lovable bear, "Fluffy," being shot. So let's have a happy, fairy tale type of ending.
"Fluffy went back to where he came from."
Maybe it would be more constructive to have a teachable moment for young people. It would be a good lesson on nature, mortality and danger.
And on the chance that the official story is actually true (the odds of which are the same as for the cow jumping over the moon, I feel), kids shouldn't be any more inclined to approach wild animals or judge them friendly.

Nature has its perils. We like being surrounded by plenty of it.

But we need to acknowledge all the realities.
-Brian Williams - morris mn Minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com