As most of you probably have learned by now, Maymont had to kill off their bears this past week after a four year old, in what can only be described as a great failure on the part of natural selection, climbed into the bear quarry (from whence Richmonders have long since mined the city’s bear supply) and got bitten.  Of course, everyone in town, being great bear enthusiasts (The Great Bear Enthusiasts of course, making an excellent name for a band) is all sort of outraged at this development, and all signs indicate that this shall likely soon be upgraded from mere brouhaha into a full-blown debacle before the week is out.  Indeed, the last time that anything like this happened was a few years ago when the city hung up a giant banner of a bear on the flood wall (though when the Arthur Ashe statue was revealed to depict him hitting a bear with a tennis racket people objected stridently as well).  Out of courtesy to my readers, I will be making no bear-related puns whatsoever here, as such things are invariably too cute for anyone except for old women who live with 78 cats.  Also, I will not be posting any Danish cartoons that happen to imply that bears have violent tendencies here out of respect to the bear worshipers who as recently as two weeks ago torched a McDonald’s in Belgium in response to such acts.

The management of Maymont, of course, is all sorts of freaked out by the incident and as a precaution has done what any sensible institution would and completely gone overboard.  I understand that now it is forbidden to get within three feet of the buffalo terrarium, and a strict no making out policy has been implemented regarding the otters.  Furthermore, all the goats now have 10,000 volts running though them, the chickens have been moved to an undisclosed location, and all the squirrels have been wrapped in barbed wire.  Also, there is now a large man named Hugo who patrols the park at all times in his Golf Cart of Eternal Vigilance, punching anyone in the face whom he suspects of fraternizing with the ducks.  In short, Richmonders everywhere (though, admittedly, most are, by definition, in Richmond) can rest easy knowing that our great city has already found it’s Ridiculously Silly Outrage of the Year.  Which is a good thing since it was beginning to look like we might have to end up deciding to either canonize the untimely beaver of Louis Ginter (The Untimely Beaver of Louis Ginter being an awesome name for a band) or just settle for working our selves into a collective tizzy over the EPA outlawing that cookie smell near the Science Museum.

All of which gets us dangerously far away from the original subject here: bears, and whether or not they’re really all that dangerous.  The unfortunate truth is that not only are bears dangerous, but they are in fact the most dangerous beast in all the animal kingdom, except for Bob Dole.  How, you may ask, are bears such a threat to humanity?  Well, I’m glad you asked.

First, bears are incredibly flammable.  You know how the Indians would cover themselves with bear grease?  That’s because bears are made almost entirely out of 30 weight motor oil, which is what gives them their inky hue and charnel stench of death.  Worse yet, most of the rest of the bear is made out of C4, making bears far and away the most highly explosive mammal indigenous to North America.  You know what really created that big pit at Maymont where they keep the bears?  Some guy back in the 80s threw a cigarette into the bear enclosure and the bear on duty at the time detonated with an explosive for nearly ten times as great as the bear dropped on Hiroshima during WWII.