This past weekend, a group of us headed to the zoo and I don't mean Walmart on Black Friday. I just realized we might not be classified as a group but I'm guessing we weren't a gaggle and I could've attempted to Google a gaggle but that would make me Gaga. This may be off topic but quite frankly, I'm tired of Googling everything and I, just in case you're wondering, I have Googled myself and I thoroughly enjoyed it, you should try it sometime, and I wish they'd just come up with something else other than Googling.
I've heard the term lions and tigers and bears all of my life and it was usually followed by an 'oh my' so I was right on cue and I believe it came from The Wizard of Oz where they were so afraid of lions, that they adopted one for the journey to help him get enough courage to attack and devour them.
While following the yellow brick road to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz, Dorothy was concerned that they might come across wild animals; enter the lions and tigers and bears, oh my. They are among the top things on Maslow's, lesser known, Hierarchy of Things That Should Scare the Shit Out of You, quite literally, and if I came upon all them at the same time, I'd need a change of underwear.
Lions and tigers are what I call irrational fears as I'm a surburbanite and there's not much of me coming face-to-face with them unless I get cast in Lion-nado, a movie brought to you by the Sharknado people. The bears are the ones that really get me as, at least in my part of the country, we have them in our backyards so you think I should be properly equipped to deal with them.
On my way to work, I drive up Bear Mountain and when I moved to the area I thought it was just named that way to sound cool and tough and to attract a certain type of person who eats Grape Nuts and who dons a flannel shirt but that was until a black bear ran across my front bumper.
If it came down to it, I think I could deal with a black bear since they have really short front legs and I could just run down a hill and with brown bears, as I'm told, one can just play dead as they only eat living things and with polar bears you just give them sunglasses and a Coke and Yogi Bears are easily distracted with picnic baskets. Giant pandas are so big that they deserve an additional name of panda bear and I don't concern myself with them them as I don't think one will break into my house while I’m sleeping as my bedroom isn't in China and even if one does make it up to the second floor, he’ll be too busy eating and pooping to attack me and I just wondered where our obsession with bears began as my first recollection of them was seeing bear skin rugs in old timey movies and comedy characters dressed in bear costumes who would get hit in the head with a frying pans because the other guy would think he's actually a bear.
The teddy bear was named after Teddy Roosevelt and he must have found them cuddly when he wasn't shooting and mounting them, and not in a gross way. The three little bears let Goldilocks off the hook when she should have been charged with breaking and entering and The Berenstain Bears attempted to soften us to bears when any one of then could have turned my head into a handball with one swipe.
I've seen Grizzly Adams reruns late at night when my only other options were infomercials or watching two white guys boxing. I guess the show attempted to make bears seem cute and approachable and it was probably the reason why Grizzly Man thought he was figuratively one with the bears and that became quite literal when one of them ate him and his girlfriend alive and they became bear poo.
The Grateful Dead had dancing bears and little kids have Gummy Bears and Care Bears and there is also the Disney’s Country Bear jamboree and Winnie the Pooh with his head in the honeypot and the Chicago Bears with their lineman the size of bears and Baloo from The Jungle Book and Teddy Ruxpin who was creepy as hell and Paddington Bear who wore human clothes, minus the pants for some reason, and who, I'm quite certain, didn't poop in the woods.
Gentle Ben was a grizzly bear in the book yet was somehow transformed to a black bear in the television series as the grizzly's agent didn't want his client to be portrayed as a pushover. In The Great Outdoors, John Candy battled the Bald-Headed Bear of Claire County, a group of raccoons, and a 96oz steak.
The bear is one of the most dangerous, yet somehow universally loved animals out there. A big and husky guy is known as a bear and my girlfriend says I'm cuddly like a bear which makes me wonder who she dated before me. Kids are taught to be afraid of wild animals but we tuck them in with a teddy bear at night. As dangerous as they are, the bears seem to be taking over and I can't understand why. I can fight it, or I can just grin and bear it.
