The Brilliant Bear

These furry friends may have figured out the best way to live. While they are some slouchy, strange looking mammals, they’ve figured out a lifestyle worthy of envy.

During the late Spring, Summer and Fall, they gorge themselves on any available food source they can find: berries, apples, deer, garbage… human, anything with calories, or at least appearing to contain them.

Eat, eat, eat! Get super fat and pass out in a tremendous food coma that lasts for months. They sleep through the nasty gray winter and awake to a fresh and blooming landscape once again only to participate in another 9-month rampage of eating. And sleep, what a sleep a 3-month slumber must be. Perhaps the dreams are only of next years smorgasbord, mmm hibernation.

The birds too, appear to have the right idea. Unlike the strange human who shovels and slogs their way through a cold, unpleasant winter, birds fly south. Down to their summer homes. Even the turkey skips winter, although probably not by choice. Instead they are spared this horrid season and are roasted up and placed triumphantly in the center of a Thanksgiving table. The latter, while not as enticing as the former, still seems better than the bi-polar tease of summer – 60 degrees today, ice in your face tomorrow!

Maybe as the birds fly south each summer, the incessant cackling (while probably still incoherent bird babble) is actually them shouting, “SEE YA SUCKERS!” And the bear, laughs himself to sleep, big full belly jiggling while he giggles, wondering why the silly humans won’t just take it easy a few months as well. The birds and the bears, BRILLIANT!