Yes, it appears this is shaping up as a week full of animal stories.

Yo, Bart here.

So, when I look for news about the things “my kind” are doing in human society, I get way too much stuff about shootings and mailings and tranquilizer guns. It’s depressing. Can’t we just all get along?

Then there’s this story from the San Gabriel Mountains near Los Angeles, which I guess is a long ways away from here. A family of bears taking a dip in some guy’s pool. If you’re like me, when you read the story you’ll think “so what”? He lives on four acres on the edge of a National Forest. It was the middle of the afternoon. Why shouldn’t the local bears go for a swim? Things get hot, and if you had to entertain two cubs you’d be desperate for any kind of diversion, especially if it involves splashing and thrashing and maybe, if you’re lucky, salmon.

Or at least some fun pool toys to chew on.

I’m glad the bears were gone by the time the police showed up. Nothing ruins a fun afternoon like another one of those miserable tranquilizer darts. A sharp stinging pain and suddenly you’re waking up in some part of the forest you’ve never seen and you have to learn all over again where it is that people dump their trash. Bummer. Life is too short.

But this is the sentence that really got me.

Black bears were introduced into the San Gabriel Mountains in 1933, the descendants of 11 “troublemakers” transported from Yosemite National Park.

So there’s a whole tribe of bears out there with “troublemaker” in their DNA. Profiled early by the police and destined to be on the wrong side of the law forever! Oh, the romance of being in a group of outcasts – to know that you have a role to play in the world and it’s all about making havoc!

I’m a pretty well behaved bear, but when it comes time to hibernate this year, I’m going to spend those months dreaming about being a San Gabriel Rowdy, skinny dipping in isolated swimming pools and making the suburbanites mad!

Your Buddy,
Bart

If you had to be a criminal, what sort of criminal would you be?

New Brighton, MN – July 10, 2012

In yet another startling example of the threat to personal health and safety posed by careless posting of half-baked opinion and so-called “humor” on the internet, a Minnesota blogger was devoured by a group of angry house cats early Tuesday morning.

Dale Connelly, author of the not-as-popular-as-he-thinks “Trail Baboon” blog, published an entry on Monday that included some disparaging remarks about felines. The entry in the six-days-a-week blog revolved around an earlier story that appeared in mainstream media regarding research that indicates over-exposure to cat litter could lead some people (but especially Danish women), to attempt suicide.

Connelly mocked the research by treating it as a serious threat in the voice of an invented, safety-obsessed character, Bathtub Safety Officer Rafferty.

At one point in his under-researched, overlong, 500 word plus screed, Connelly said:

” … some canine lovers will say it’s the other way around – that a person’s willingness to live with cats is a clear sign of a pre-existing tendency toward self-destruction.”

This was apparently the final insult for local cats, many of whom are notably unimpressed by wordy, obtuse attempts at humor. Witnesses say literally hundreds of quietly purring death-dealers gathered at the Connelly house and ambushed the 56 year old community radio news director as he was dragging his family’s garbage to the curb in the early darkness.

Trash haulers, notably a hardy bunch, were being treated for shock and despair after finding smeared remains of the lifelong government-subsidy addict spread casually around the front yard of his New Brighton home.

Blog readers wondered throughout the day what might have happened to Connelly, who is notoriously reliable in posting his unremarkable thoughts at roughly 6 am Monday through Saturday. Online concern about Connelly’s fate turned to alarm, shock, grief, acceptance and finally, disinterest by late afternoon.

“So much of what he wrote was tongue-in-cheek,” said one reader. “Little did he guess the last tongue to taste his cheek would have the texture of sandpaper.”

If you suddenly disappeared, who would complain, and why?  

Dear Dr. Babooner,

This is something like the fifth day in a row that it’s been unbearably hot and humid and my nerves are beginning to fray.

And I don’t even have to suffer in the weather!

I’m lucky enough to have enough money to live the kind of life that protects me from discomfort on 100 degree days. In fact, I feel trapped inside all my air-conditioned spaces. My home, my car and my office all provide plentiful false, frigid comfort.

The outside seems very remote.

Even the health club is air-conditioned. While I’m flailing away on the elliptical trainer I think about the huge coal burning power plants that worsen global warming in order to make electricity so huge fans can blow cold air into a giant room so people will have to do intense workouts to break a sweat while they could just as easily get totally soaked merely waiting for a bus.

The desk attendant says “stay cool”, as I leave. Everybody says that when you’re about to head out into the weather during a heat wave. Whenever someone tells me to “stay cool”, I want to lose mine. What’s wrong with feeling the heat? Why are we so afraid of what’s really happening in the weather? How did people survive before we figured out how to refrigerate our spaces? Didn’t they wear heavy wool clothes then? We’ve become sissies. The world is insane.

Would I feel less mad if I tried living without air conditioning?

Quizzically,
Seething Over Summer

I told S.O.S. he (she?) would not find relief in a world without air conditioning, but rather a different kind of madness. Though you may feel cooped up and isolated from reality in your cool, dry bubble, those who have no choice but to endure the sauna also feel enclosed and unable to escape. How did people survive without air-conditioning? A lot of them didn’t. So stop whining and enjoy your good fortune!

Sorry about my tone, but the weather has made me short tempered and intolerant.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Clearly the summer is off to a slow start for perennial Sophomore Bubby Spamden, a boy with too much time on his hands.

Hey Mr. C.,

I’ve got a question for you.

What is it with you old people anyway? You’re supposed to be easy to figure out, but me and my friends have been kinda stumped. We’re not been getting the attention we expect … and DESERVE … from the geezer contingent in our town. Part of being young in summertime is to go out at night and have lots of loud fun in public places – fun that makes wrinkly folks mad.

We’ve been trying and trying, hanging out on streets downtown and in parks and even at the mall, laughing and messing with each other and acting goofy, but nobody even looked at us! So we upped the ante and started cursing loudly, because that’s always been a good way to get a rise out of cranky oldsters. We waited until a little clump of creaky blue hairs walked by and then my buddy Doug let rip with some #$%’s, and a few *&#!’s, and even a *#&*@!#-#%*$. I was expecting a lot of finger wagging and lecturing, but nobody said anything. At first I thought their hearing aids were turned off, but I finally decided they just didn’t care! What’s wrong with our society that it’s so hard to shock people?

Finally I asked my dad and he said “there’s been a cultural shift in language that started with Lenny Bruce and now has reached its full fruition with the Internet and the current level of discourse.” (He talks like that all the time – it’s boring).

His argument – there are no more dirty four letter words left in the language that have the power to shock large numbers of people – except one.

And he says that word is “Taxes”.

He said if we go around shouting about raising taxes and drop the word into every sentence we can at every chance we get, it would sound taxing brilliant and every old person within earshot will go out of their taxing minds telling us to shut up and then we can tell them it’s too taxing bad and they can just tax off because this is the way we taxing talk, and then we can feel like real honest-to-tax teenagers again.

I’m thinking it might work. Or he might be messing with us. Which is it?

Your friend,

Bubby

It shouldn’t be so hard for a young person to draw a little scorn from older people in the summertime, but I tend to think Bubby’s dad is taking him for a ride on this one. Old folks are just tired, and in a world that demands so much disapproval, one has to be careful where one chooses to spend it. Even so, I’d watch my mouth in public. You don’t want to get caught tossing the “T” word around.

What did you do to make the old folks angry?