Today we have a guest poster, who happens to be a longtime blogging acquaintance of Rhodester’s. For reasons known only to him he goes by Krispy, and you’ll find his blog here.
In our own humble opinion, his blog is funny most of the time. Kind of depends on how many donuts he’s had.
NOTE – Evidently he quit blogging, so never mind.
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Don’t Feed The Bears
Think of this as a public service announcement. It’s something I’m posting simply because it’s a topic I care about and it’s worth taking the time to post it if even one person reads it and thinks about it or looks into it.
This is also an area where my feelings are passionate, and drift close to a mindset associated with those flaky, granola eating, tree hugging hippies. You have no idea how much that bugs me. To find myself agreeing with PETA about anything just makes me want to crawl out of my skin. Nonetheless, on this one topic, I’m in favor of…. (Oh, God, it hurts me to say this)… I’m in favor of animal rights.
There, I said it.
The topic is bears.
I have strong feelings about bears, and I don’t have any idea why. I can’t explain it. I’ve never been involved in any way with preserving or protecting bears, I’ve never spent time with bears, and I don’t believe that I was a bear in a “past life.” Nonetheless, for whatever reason, I’m pretty adamantly pro-bear, and I’m pretty strongly in favor of healthy and rational bear-human relationships.
That is to say, I don’t believe that there should be bear-human relationships. I think that the best thing that humans could do for bears is to leave them the hell alone.
With all of that in mind, please excuse me while I climb atop my soap-box and rant and rave about bears:
Point One: People shouldn’t keep bears in captivity.
Bears don’t do well in zoos. Elephants don’t either, and some people argue that no animals should be kept in zoos. I’ll leave the elephants and other animals for someone else to rail about. I’ll just stick with the bears.
Naturally, bears are roamers. They travel in search of food – that’s just the way they’re built. If you check the internet for stats you’ll find that nobody agrees exactly how far a given bear of a given type will roam in a days time, but the one thing that all sources agree on is that they roam. And they roam far further than they’re allowed in the confines of even the biggest zoo.
When bears are kept in captivity they basically go insane. They sit there in one small area, denied the ability to follow their natural instincts, and they lose their bear minds. It becomes obvious too, as they pace and sway their heads back and forth. This isn’t behavior bears display in the wild. It’s just basic psycho-bear behavior. When you look at bears in zoos, you’re looking at crazy bears. Once you know that, it takes the fun out of it.
On occasion, bears escape from zoos and, well.. you can probably figure out what happens when a crazy bear is loose, roaming the suburbs. It happened at a zoo in my town in December of 2003. It wasn’t pretty.
Zoos aren’t even the worst of it. Circus bears go crazier, and sooner. In Europe, it’s still legal in most places to keep bears in captivity and force them to perform. They typically pull their teeth to try to make them harmless and keep them tied and muzzled, except when they’re being made to “dance.” I can’t imagine why anyone would want to see this kind of thing. It really makes me sick.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those nutcases who’s ready to burn down zoos over bear rights, but I think it’s appropriate to share this information and, hopefully, help change a few minds. If more people speak out in opposition to keeping bears in captivity maybe there’ll be fewer captive bears. That’s all I’m sayin’.
Point Two: People shouldn’t feed, hunt
or otherwise mess with bears in the wild
Okay, my opposition to bear hunting is a hard sell… especially to bear hunters. The case against feeding wild bears, however, is easier to argue, especially since it’s illegal in many (if not most) places in the US.
And there are a number of good reasons why it’s illegal, too. For one thing, bears can really get grouchy. It just ain’t a good idea to attract them. For another thing, bears are far better off eating their own natural foods than eating human foods. According to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s research, bears that eat human food are a third less active and usually overweight. Human food makes bears fat and lazy. And why wouldn’t it? It makes us fat and lazy, after all. Well, anyway, I know it damn sure makes me fat and lazy.
I realize that getting people to agree with me on bear captivity and bear hunting isn’t really likely. Still, if by writing this, I can get a few people to decide that they’ll not try to feed wild bears if they ever have the opportunity, I’ll be happy. Bears have a hard enough time coexisting with us as it is. Heck, a lot of the time they can’t even get along with other bears. Bears are dangerous to people, and we’re dangerous to them, too. A lot of the time, when we cross paths, bears end up being exterminated. That’s unfortunate. Sometimes, contact with humans is fatal to bears in ways that are so sad, even the coldest heart is bound to feel a little sympathy.
While writing this I’ve realized why I have a lot of sympathy for bears – they’re big and often loud, they generally just want to be left alone, junk food makes them fat and lazy, they can be mean, and they don’t get along with anybody.
No, I wasn’t a bear in a “previous life,” but maybe I’m a bear in this one.
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