Bear Awareness Week: Part 2
So, it appears that my last post was on July 3, 2006. Today is April 29, 2007. For those of you who are good at math, you've already figured out that that has almost been an entire year. And what a year it has been. Graduation from grad school, a new job, passage into real adulthood (i.e. paying student loans). One would expect that my next post (which has been almost a year in the making) should be one full of exciting adventures and deep insights. Unfortunately, one would be extremely disappointed upon entering this blog with these expectations. It's about animals.
I love animals. Many are cute. Some are tasty. Others are good for a scare. Generally thought, animals provide endless supplies of blog topics for me. In fact, while reviewing my most recent blog (the one from last July), I realized that I posted about gross animals there (by the way, I won that war). The Discovery Channel, therefore, is my new friend in the Blogger World.
Bears.
National Bear Awareness Week begins on May 13th, and I for one will take note. In a recent survey taken among coffee drinkers at Barnes and Noble (me and 2 friends), 100% of participants agreed that given the choice between killing Bambi and killing Whinnie the Pooh, Bambi would be jerky. The solidarity of the three responses, I think, can be attributed to one thing. Whinnie walks on two legs. Shooting a cartoon bear on two legs would be almost equivalent to shooting Mother Goose. It's wrong on every level. Bambi, however, is much less likeable, especially after he goes through puberty. Disney already killed his mom, so it's really not that big of a deal to hypothetically kill him - especially if it means saving Pooh's life.
Other interesting bear information: Until recently, I had thought that there is no animal scarier than a shark. Jaws has always had me scared of wandering too far from shore (even in fresh water - ridiculous I know, but I don't want to be the one eaten by nature's fluke great white freshwater shark. It's happened before! Not to me of course, but Jaws is actually based on a story of a shark that finds its way up a river and ate children. I digress.
Until today I had thought that sharks were the scariest animals of all time. Today, though, I watched one of those Discovery Channel shows that were supposed to make us feel really bad about global warming. The posterchild (or postercub) of such shows, is always the polar bear. This disturbs me. If one were to draw a food chain, and one wanted to find where the polar bear is, he or she would need only to find humans, and then look one link up. Polar bears actually hunt people. This is terrifying. Why ought I feel bad about polar bears dying? That would be like feeling bad when terrorists are stopped or when drunk drivers lose their licenses. Sorry Al Gore, I'm not tearing up just yet.
Anyway, why are polar bears more terrifying than sharks? Because, on Discovery Channel, they showed a calm ocean scene, and then they showed a polar bear's head sticking out of the water!!! Holy Freaking Cow!!! At least sharks will stop chasing you if you're lucky enough to make it to the beach. What do you do if you get chased by a marine polar bear? No one is safe from these things!
If all of this isn't disturbing enough, the Discovery Channel went on to show the bears eating...a whale!!! A WHALE!!! What kind of freakish animal can eat a whale?! Polar Bears!!! On a less horrific note, it was fascinating to watch the bears climb on top of the whale and eat it. They were eating what they were standing on. That's the human equivalent of climbing to the highest peak of a mountain, only to discover that the mountain is made of chocolate. You'll never go hungry again. Back to the horrific part. The polar bears were eating a whale!!!
Perhaps it would be best to end this post with advice: What not to do if attacked by a polar bear.
1) Climb a tree. According to Dwight Schrute, bears can climb faster than they can run.
2) Run into the water. Not only can polar bears swim, but there are also sharks (hmmm...under-water cage match?)
3) Play dead. If they'll eat a dead whale, they'll eat a dead you.
Good luck friends
I love animals. Many are cute. Some are tasty. Others are good for a scare. Generally thought, animals provide endless supplies of blog topics for me. In fact, while reviewing my most recent blog (the one from last July), I realized that I posted about gross animals there (by the way, I won that war). The Discovery Channel, therefore, is my new friend in the Blogger World.
Bears.
National Bear Awareness Week begins on May 13th, and I for one will take note. In a recent survey taken among coffee drinkers at Barnes and Noble (me and 2 friends), 100% of participants agreed that given the choice between killing Bambi and killing Whinnie the Pooh, Bambi would be jerky. The solidarity of the three responses, I think, can be attributed to one thing. Whinnie walks on two legs. Shooting a cartoon bear on two legs would be almost equivalent to shooting Mother Goose. It's wrong on every level. Bambi, however, is much less likeable, especially after he goes through puberty. Disney already killed his mom, so it's really not that big of a deal to hypothetically kill him - especially if it means saving Pooh's life.
Other interesting bear information: Until recently, I had thought that there is no animal scarier than a shark. Jaws has always had me scared of wandering too far from shore (even in fresh water - ridiculous I know, but I don't want to be the one eaten by nature's fluke great white freshwater shark. It's happened before! Not to me of course, but Jaws is actually based on a story of a shark that finds its way up a river and ate children. I digress.
Until today I had thought that sharks were the scariest animals of all time. Today, though, I watched one of those Discovery Channel shows that were supposed to make us feel really bad about global warming. The posterchild (or postercub) of such shows, is always the polar bear. This disturbs me. If one were to draw a food chain, and one wanted to find where the polar bear is, he or she would need only to find humans, and then look one link up. Polar bears actually hunt people. This is terrifying. Why ought I feel bad about polar bears dying? That would be like feeling bad when terrorists are stopped or when drunk drivers lose their licenses. Sorry Al Gore, I'm not tearing up just yet.
Anyway, why are polar bears more terrifying than sharks? Because, on Discovery Channel, they showed a calm ocean scene, and then they showed a polar bear's head sticking out of the water!!! Holy Freaking Cow!!! At least sharks will stop chasing you if you're lucky enough to make it to the beach. What do you do if you get chased by a marine polar bear? No one is safe from these things!
If all of this isn't disturbing enough, the Discovery Channel went on to show the bears eating...a whale!!! A WHALE!!! What kind of freakish animal can eat a whale?! Polar Bears!!! On a less horrific note, it was fascinating to watch the bears climb on top of the whale and eat it. They were eating what they were standing on. That's the human equivalent of climbing to the highest peak of a mountain, only to discover that the mountain is made of chocolate. You'll never go hungry again. Back to the horrific part. The polar bears were eating a whale!!!
Perhaps it would be best to end this post with advice: What not to do if attacked by a polar bear.
1) Climb a tree. According to Dwight Schrute, bears can climb faster than they can run.
2) Run into the water. Not only can polar bears swim, but there are also sharks (hmmm...under-water cage match?)
3) Play dead. If they'll eat a dead whale, they'll eat a dead you.
Good luck friends
posted by Andy at 7:09 PM
6 comments
