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Go Big Or Go Home

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An elaborate text came in from the North Woods. Here’s an approximate translation from the original Ursus Textish.

Bart - The Bear Who Found a Cell Phone

Hey, Bart here.

I’ve been hearing that people are doing a victory dance over some guy shooting a great big bear not far from the Twin Cities. There’s lots of “gollees” and “gawrshes” about the bear’s height and weight – almost 650 pounds and taller than 7 feet.

True. Fella was unusually big. But he wasn’t a freak, he was a forecast.

We bears have been watching you, and can see that we’ve fallen behind in a some pretty important contests. All the wild animals have. Yup. You’re winning the temperature contest and calling the shots in the air quality contest (though we just won a small victory). And you’ve been getting bigger physically while we’ve stayed kinda the same.

All that stuff you’ve been saying about how “massive” and “enormous” and “gargantuan” this poor dead bear is – well I’ve got uncomfortable news.

We bears have been saying the same thing about you for years – ever since we woods-dwellers noticed that you two-legged comfort-junkies were having trouble squeezing through the doors of your Winnebagos. It was in the mid-90’s when word got out that an average human wouldn’t fit in a normal sized tent anymore. Talk about making a bear’s job easier! You being bigger meant it was easier to spot you from far away, simpler to hear you coming through the underbrush, and a lot less taxing to chase you down. And surprisingly, the more you ate, the more food you left scattered in your wake.

Here’s a joke we bears tell each other:
Question: How do you find a hunter when he’s downwind?
Answer: Follow the Doritos!

But then it hit us – with an average male bear weighing in at 250 pounds and an average American male human at 190 pounds, it wouldn’t be long before we’d have to run from YOU! Especially if we stumbled across you when you were feeling obsessive about your cubs! (I hear there’s a bunch of Cubs in Chicago who will never grow up!)

Anyway, let this be a notice to you. Black bears are on the move, size-wise. With our habitat shrinking and yours getting bigger, we realize that someday we’re going to stand toe-to-toe. When that day comes, you’d better hope we’re not standing ON your toes, because our only chance for survival is to get bigger, hairier, smellier, and nastier. If humans are gonna respect something, first they gotta learn to fear it.

Moose are disappearing and the bears are bulking up to get ready for a confrontation around our homes and yours. Come December, we’re going to skip the hibernating and launch our own series of protests – Occupy Tool Shed, Occupy Bird Feeder, Occupy Camp Ground, Occupy That Paranoid Place Inside Your Head That Never Ever Sleeps.

There’s a bear in the woods. And he’s HUGE!

Your pal,
Bart

I thanked Bart for giving me a good chill in the lead-up to Halloween. But I don’t think we’re really headed for a showdown with the bears, do you?

62 thoughts on “Go Big Or Go Home”

  1. Good morning to all,

    Bart should rethink his plan for surviving among people. The occupy part is okay if care is used. Remember that people have guns. The large size might not work. He should learn from the coyotes who are now living within cities. Smaller size and better coloration would be best to fit in within the city limits. However, some really big bears to discourage people from over using the the woods might also be good. The thought of confronting a grizzily bear kept us from doing too much hiking in Glacier National Park.

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  2. it is unthinkable to me that bear hunting is allowed. what is the reason? hunters in need of cabin accessories? bear meat tacos at the lodge with the gang? maybe its a fear of wilderness success like that of the wolf reintroduction. i heard the other day we now have 2500 wolves in the state. i would love to see a north country where the bears are accepted as natural inhabitants like they are in yellowstone. people who live near the park complain that the bear, bison, wolf, elk and other critters raise havoc with their homesteads but realize that the call of the wild is part of the beauty of living where they do. if a 7 foot tall 750 pound bear isn’t something you want to deal with there is a loft available in downtown minnepolis where the bears come to town once a year in the mall of america dome.

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    1. The reasons for hunting bear are beyond my capacity to comprehend as well, tim… and baiting bears disgusts me. Whatever happened to trusting mother nature’s ability to keep animal populations in tow? Size of habitat, starvation and disease have always worked well in the past. Nothing irritates me more than when humans think they know better and can do better than nature.

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  3. Black bears are big, shambling, shy creatures. I think of them as the “Boo Radleys” of the northern woods. Bears and people can live side by side comfortably, just so long as bears don’t come to see people as their preferred source of food. A bear that loses its fear of humans is a menace that will cause trouble some day. The phrase up north is “a fed bear is a dead bear,” for as soon as bears see people as a source of food they begin to get aggressive and dangerous. The bears that trashed my cabin were taught by a woman named Abbie that they could find wonderful food inside cabins. That knowledge was ultimately fatal to that bear family (which was not my choice).

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  4. I’m inclined to share tim’s view on this. I’m outraged that snuffing out the life such a magnificent creature is acknowledged with a front page article in the Pioneer Press. Luring a bear to a site with bait so you can shoot it is praiseworthy and sportsmanlike behavior? Something to be proud of? Not in my book. I’m too sad and angered by this to be reasonable or think straight.

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  5. This is all very complicated. The DNR uses bear seasons as one way (the only way they have) of reducing bear numbers in places where they conflict with people. Without hunting, bear numbers would be so high that people and bears would be permanent enemies. There are two bear hunting technologies, and both are disgusting. Bait piles are stinky and unheroic, but that type of bear hunting is far preferable to hunting bears with dogs, which is the other technology. Hunting bears seems disagreeable to me, too, but without hunting there would be constant conflict between people and bears. I don’t expect to convert anyone!

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  6. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    We seem to be encountering more wildlife of all kinds. Where I live in the Twin Cities Metro and suburban area, we take great pride in our parks, the lakes, the streams. All of these features attract people. But they attract wildlife, too.

    I have lived with bears when I lived up North in the middle of nowhere. Steve describes them very accurately. And he is right, a fed bear is a dead bear.

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      4. Clyde, I’ve actually tasted bear several times. You described it well. I never did like the coating of grease that was left in my mouth.

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  7. i’ve thought about this a lot. so far we have managed to live along side the wolves, bears, coyotes, badgers that would happily eat a small goat kid – or even a big goat if possible. we don’t own guns, but i often wonder what i’d do if animals were threatening the goats. we have big fences but i know a hungry wolf could easily leap over. i think bears are more opportunistic, so we try to make it inconvenient to get to the goats. i know i would have courage to shoot any animal that was going to hurt the goats. the farmers here say “shoot, shovel and shut up.” biggest threat are the neighbors’ dogs that run around where they please. and then i say, shoot the neighbor, not the dog. but i don’t think shovel and shut up would keep me outta jail then. 🙂
    good morning, All.
    .

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  8. Morning–

    I’m waiting for the day I see a bear in a field at my place. They’ve been spotted close by so it’s just a matter of chance.
    I don’t hunt anything, but I understand it’s purpose.
    And I’ve killed my share of raccoons and possums in the chicken coop. And have had coyotes run right through the farm yard chasing chickens while the dogs are napping in the garage. Them coyotes; they’re not dumb!

    I’d agree w/ Jim; smaller and better color might help. But I still want to see one.

    Have a good day everyone!

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  9. Greetings, Baboons! We have the same conflict here over cougars. I am a cat lover and can’t see the point of shooting these beautiful creatures, but if one was dragging off my dog or small child or lamb or calf I would probably have a different view. I have been off the trail for a couple of days at Luther Seminary in St. Paul visiting western North Dakota Seminary students there as part of my role as a lay member of our synod’s candidacy committee. It was a quick and busy trip with little time for much fun. We ate at a Finnish Bistro near the seminary. That was terrific.

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      1. I think it is okay to be OT if food is the topic that is OT. My Dad loved to eat at Scandinavian restaurants that served smorgasbord meals. I thought there would be a big selection of these kinds of restaurants in Minnesota and was suprised that I can hardly find any. Why is this? Have I been looking in the wrong places?

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      2. There used to be more smorgasbord-type restaurants around – I remember going to them with my grandparents when I was a kid. I think they have been dying off as Applebee’s and its ilk take over. (The Jolly Troll is a name that comes to mind of one such place…it was a sad day when The Jolly Troll closed.)

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      3. I’m so sorry I missed these smorgasbord places – looks like there are none left in TC, but plenty in Pennsylvania and Australia!

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      4. IKEA actually has a very nice selection of Scandinavian food in their restaurant, and, I might add, at very reasonable prices. I know they have a Scandinavian buffet coming up that sounds pretty spectacular. Not sure of the date, but if memory serves, it’s a one evening affair only. Another place to get excellent Scandinavian food is at the Danish American Center. I’ll try to remember to alert you to their next event.

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  10. This talk about bears reminds me of Helen Hoover and her books about living on the Gun Flint Trail in the Norh Woods at a time when almost no one lived there in the winter. I think her books, where she tells about her many observations of wild life, are outstanding. Many kinds of wild life came close to her cabin in the winter when there weren’t any other people in the woods. The deer were her friends. I don’t remember that she had any observations about bears. I guess they were hibernating in the winter when she was getting a close at the other North Woods animals.

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    1. I read and re-read The Gift of the Deer when I was a child. I loved that book. I wrote her a letter and she wrote back! I was so impressed with her.

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    3. Justine Kerfoot also did some good writing about living on the Gunflint Trail. I think it was “Woman of the Boundary Waters” that I picked up many moons ago where she talks about moving to the Gunflint as a kid and what it was like to build her family’s business/lodge there, the ebb and flow of seasons, and how life on the Gunflint changed over the years (and how it didn’t).

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      2. Also known as Knife Lake Dorothy. Sweet old lady. Met her once on a canoe trip. We brought her some GORP as a treat, she and her sister were hanging laundry at the time. Funky old place out there in the middle of nowhere with parking meters lining one side of the island she lived on.

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      3. I never met her but teenager and I visited the little museum where they moved her home after she passed away. Fascinating. And the root beer was pretty good but probably not as memorable as what she used to make herself.

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  11. I fear that Bart is texting the lions, tigers, and bears that escaped in Ohio putting all in a dangerous situation. Bart, if you see this, tell them to return to the park.

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  13. No bears here, but we had a lot of foxes in “our” nature park here a few years back, because some nut was feeding them dog food, would leave it on the tracks for them. A wave of mange came through and killed most of them, possibly their immune systems were weak from the improper food they’d been eating. They were so cute, but “don’t mess with Mother Nature.”

    I’m not sure how that relates to the question, but when has that been a problem before?

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  14. Since I grew up farming in the woods, I know full well the encounter between human needs/wants and wildlife needs/habits where their shrinking and our expanding ranges meet. It is one of my themes in my work in progress. I have several such events from my childhood in that book. Guess what: we the humans on our farm in the end easily won every encounter. I have little doubt where the battle is going.
    (I would place here the story of the night my father shot the bear which was eating our chickens, but 1) it’s three pages long and 2) I do not want to offend the ursine sensibilities which may be tuned in today.)

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  15. I would like to think most bears are smart enough to keep to themselves. But you never know…Bart may find a newer smartphone and start up a Twitter feed or a Facebook account, and then he’ll forget to hibernate because he’s busy tweeting about his recent food score (lzy cmprs – took their cookies thin mints – my fave), or playing Farmville instead of hunting for berries…

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  16. Morning all!

    I think the coming conflagration will probably be between Mother Nature and human beings, not just bears and human beings. And who knows if the bears will get out of it alive either!

    WOT. I’m feeling a little misty today… the teenager is off on her first college tour today, a bus tour to Madison. 16 years has flown by. Seems like just yesterday I was dressing her up in her first Halloween outfit. Sniff.

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    3. Remember this rule about kids gone off to college–no news is good news. They will call you with worries, fears, problems, failure, etc. They will not tell you how things worked out when they plague you with these calls. We should all be like bears etc. and not even recognize them after they have left the den. 🙂

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    4. 16? at 12 the s&h is rapidly approaching that.
      The child who was never ever going to drive is suddenly paying attention to routes and street names. No serious rebellion, but definitely a much larger sense of independence and a bit of the “don’t worry, I’ll handle that”.

      Tomorrow night, he is participating in the Cardboard Box City event at the Fairgrounds with the group from church. I’ve got a pile of work to get through at home, so no gallivanting for me, but I feel really wrong about being happy to just plow through work without giving a thought to meals or bedtime for people who have school the next day.

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      2. Teenager did a cardboard box night out a couple of years back…also w/ church group. I don’t think she had thought much about the homelessness problem until then. She’s certainly thought about it since then!

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  17. After “Last of the Summer Wine” is done, I will get back to writing a chapter which includes conflicts with chicken hawks. (My father never accepted that red-tailed hawks were not called chicken hawks.)

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    1. i hadn’t registered last day of summer wine as your working title before. i guess i thought it was a pbs show or something. i like the title very much

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  18. Well, I don’t know if we’re headed for a showdown with bears, but to be on the safe side, I think I’ll go on a diet – tomorrow or next week.

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      1. You’re right, I DO need that. Where can I get that picture?

        Or, I could give away all my cookbooks, and replace them with “365 Ways to Fix Bear Meat.” A bear meat diet would probably make me want to eat a lot less than I do now.

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  19. Daughter report: two days at Mayo. They found one small issue, but pending some blood tests, she is close to approved and ready to donate the kidney. Soon.

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