Saturday, February 17, 2007

Questions about Bears


Z is afraid of bears. She has--inexplicably--been afraid of them since she was very young. She had nightmares about them when we lived overseas (and before she had ever seen one) and continues to worry that they will show up and... I'm not sure, but I assume she is afraid that they will eat her.

In any case, while we were staying in Moscow, Idaho, she was very concerned that bears probably lived in all of the nearby woods. She assured me that they would come to the hotel. She seemed to think that they might hang out behind the hotel. I wasn't clear why they would do this (smoking?). Probably local bear hooligans or something.

I explained to her how bears hibernate all winter, and they do this in caves, not in the back parking lot of hotels.

But I thought about it later and realized that I only know that bears hibernate because of my lifelong friendship with the television. I started to question what I had come to know about bears.

Do they really hiberate all winter, for instance. And how do they all find caves? Are there really that many caves in the woods, to accomodate every single bear? What happens if they can't find a cave? Do they just sleep next to a trail or something? For that matter, I've been in plenty of caves and do you know what I found? Beer bottles. I always assumed this was from people. If they are from people, then the only evidence I have that bears live in caves is watching Fozzie and Yogi.

Are you out there, Mr. or Ms. Bear Expert? Perhaps a bear is reading this blog? Someone give me some insight here.

7 comments:

  1. No, I don't know anything about bears. But I do know Someone who does. Let me introduce you to my good friend and universal knowledge repository, Wikipedia. I thought you had met.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bears

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  2. I wrestled a bear once.

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  3. I was on a 16-hour train ride in Russia with a man who had hunted bears... in the winter. He said it is easier that way. He taught me how to do it.
    1. Go to a place in nature where bears are known to live (usually far away from cities unless you live in Siberia. Then, because of global warming, sometimes it is too warm so they have a hard time sleeping so they wander into villages to find food and vodka.)
    2. Find a "breath hole" in the snow. Because it is so cold, you can see their breath. They are usually covered over by snow, so all you can see is the hole.
    3. Have your brave (or drunk), persistent buddy go poke the sleeping bear incessantly with a big stick until he wakes up.
    4. Tell your buddy to run for his life as you shoot the groggy, angry, slow- moving bear.
    5. Don't hunt bears with Dick Cheney unless he is the one with the stick.

    (I added number five. The Russian man would be glad to go with Dick.)

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  4. sorry to break the bad news to you Matt ... don't tell Z

    http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/article2091875.ece

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  5. might have been cut off, try this instead

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  6. Matt-- YOu know, I find wikipedia an entertaining collection of knowledge, but I'm just not always convinced that it's really a trustworthy source. But I am going to go check it out.

    Matt-- who won?

    Cheryl-- I don't know why you waste a hilarious story like that for the comments here when it could be an entire blog entry on your own blog.

    Ken-- you are the master of news and answers to questions. I salute you. Good thing we don't live in Spain.

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  7. So, did you know there are bears on the WSU campus 7 miles from where you stayed. They have them there for some type of research I think...

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