Bears are truly badass, and could kill you with one bite of your head, or by sitting on you if it’s a panda. Yet we give them to children to cuddle, because they’re also ridiculously adorable as well as fearsome and terrible.
They are complex creatures. Mainly solitary. Also, they shit in the woods – badass.
They live in caves, probably. Like people used to when they were cave-people. Maybe not the same caves, because they are solitary (when they’re not mating with other bears, or raising their offspring) and cave-people would have been ever wary of having their heads bitten off.
But ever since we both lived in caves, we have shared a powerful bond. Having worked in a cave, I know what this is like. Those feelings run deep. And the human race has long respected bears as great warriors, and stealers of picnic baskets – ever fearless and heroic.
Many of my own heroes have been bears. This started in early childhood. There was Winnie the Pooh, of course, the erudite, honey-eating philosopher. He was right, it is so much friendlier with two, and you never can tell with bees. For a long time I thought Paddington Station was named after the bear, and I even had a bear of my own – Beary, due to my great proclivity for awarding toys primarily descriptive names.
So bears were an important part of my childhood, one that I carried around with me daily. They also stuck with me through literature – the previously mentioned Pooh and Paddington, then Iorek Byrnison and Aloysius. They even featured (along with their superior dancing) in my cosmonaut phase, where I was overly interested in space, Russia, and Communism.
It’s not just me, bears are everywhere! They have a whole economic concept named after them. It’s not everyone’s favourite economic climate, but the bull market isn’t so great when world finances don’t look all that different from a china shop. There’s even two of them in the sky. The sky. That’s extra points, because space is really cool, too.
I turned to Wikipedia again, as I do every time I get even the slightest bit interested in something. It described bears as having a “heavy build and awkward gait”. But you know, how many salmon have you caught recently, Wikipedia? It redeemed itself by revealing that bears’ closest relatives actually turn out to be pinnipeds, such as seals and walruses. Musteloids aren’t that far off, either. And you know what they are… weasels.
All in all, they’re just great. Let’s hear it for the bears! (oh my)
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