Wednesday 21 December 2011

"Feed the bears"

Barkingly insane reader's letter from yesterday's Metro:

My latest blogpost: "Feed the bears"Tweet this! Posted by Mark Wadsworth at 10:40

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15 comments:

Antisthenes said...

My understanding is that polar bears are increasing in population. However I must be wrong because the Metro says so.

21 December 2011 at 10:54
formertory said...

Having just called in here after reading the Daily Mash it's unusually difficult to see the join.....

Dear God, there are some thick people in the world.

21 December 2011 at 10:56
Mark Wadsworth said...

Anti, they once admitted they didn't know how many polar bears there are. So they can't possibly know whether numbers are increasing or decreasing.

FT, with letters like this, you sometimes wonder whether they were a spoof to start with.

21 December 2011 at 11:04
JuliaM said...

Well, I really can't see any drawback to habituating the world's largest land carnivore to associate human settlements with an easy source of food. Can anyone else ?

21 December 2011 at 11:11
Anonymous said...

A classic case of "if you like polar bears so much, why don't you go and live there"?

Word verification: markw

21 December 2011 at 11:29
Richard Allan said...

Come on, that's obviously a spoof. It's supposed to be Americans who are so bad at spotting irony!!

21 December 2011 at 11:31
Mark Wadsworth said...

JM, don't worry, polar bears are highly intelligent, they can tell straight away whether food was left out for them on purpose, and would never confuse them with other edible things like shopping bags in the back of a car, a domestic pet, a small child, waste food in dustbins and so on. Stands to reason.

Anon, the writer is from London, of course, where we complain bitterly about foxes.

RA, I'm still not sure.

21 December 2011 at 12:06
NickM said...

I think Kate from London E8 (home to a lot of bears) really ought to talk to a few park rangers. Ones in the US I've met go mental if you leave food about. They will even give you a telling off for leaving food visible through windows. I heard a park ranger say on TV he'd seen a Grizzly take the back of a Winnebago "like it was opening a can of tuna". It's target was a packet of Oreo cookies.

My favourite bear story though involves the prep for a 4th July party. This country club or something had left the beer outside the night before and found a drunk bear and very little beer. Oddly enough it had seemed to prefer imported brands.

21 December 2011 at 12:12
Mark Wadsworth said...

NM, good point. On one of those survival shows on the telly, the chap said if you're camping in the forest in Canada, always store your food a couple of dozen yards away from where you are sleeping. If a bear nicks your food, well tough, but if the food is in your tent, the chances are the bear will eat you as well.

21 December 2011 at 12:22
formertory said...

Kate from E8 should probably avoid cuddly polar bears if she's feeling a bit pre-menstrual.

Then again, perhaps the bears should avoid her....... paraphrasing only slightly the old joke, you can at least attempt to reason with a polar bear.

OK, OK, I'll get my coat.

21 December 2011 at 13:00
neil craig said...

This is why a world government (or indeed aunited British Empire) is a bad idea. It would involve politicians in London feeling pressured to tell the people of Northern canada how to live their lives, as a cost free alternative to telling their own constituent she is an econazi moron, which might cause ructions.

I doubt if there is anybody in Churchill writing to their local paper calling for a law to reintorduce thousands of brown bears, wolves, wild boar etc to central London and stake out every econazi for them.

21 December 2011 at 13:25
Anonymous said...

@neil

But did we have these problems during the empire's heyday? Wasn't it more a case of "we'll leave you alone as long as you make a profit"? And what's the difference between politicians in London telling the Scots how to live as opposed to northern Canada?

21 December 2011 at 16:44
Mark Wadsworth said...

Anon, I'm definitely with Neil on this one.

21 December 2011 at 16:59
Rob said...

London, E8 looks like being 4,000 very comfortable miles from northern Manitoba. Even NW postcodes are miles away.

I suspect Kate has no fucking idea what a polar bear is like, how big, fierce, fast and dangerous it is. Maybe she thinks it is some sort of cute white koala bear.

I suspect, like all econuts, that meeting a polar bear be quite a revelation to her, though a short one.

22 December 2011 at 13:56
Derek said...

Kate should be shipped over to Canada for a little re-education. Hopefully she will learn faster than Timothy Treadwell.

Now and again we get black bears wandering through the suburban gardens of Calgary. Not a patch on polar bears although you still don't want to meet one armed only with a garden hose, but there is an advantage. They scare off the cougars.

22 December 2011 at 15:34

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