Still flying the stars and stripes...

Here it is, a week after Memorial Day and he's still holding the stars and stripes. I'm guessing simple geometry wasn't the neighbor's strong suit. The angle of the flag is about 12 degrees above 0....

So the Bear looks like he's been skewered by Uncle Sam.

Poor guy...

Of Bears and things...

I've always been an admirer of Bears, but my taste generally ran to Polar Bears and Pandas.

As a child, on a trip to Beardsley Zoo I became fascinated by the Polar Bear. I watched endlessly as he dove into the water, pulled himself up on the rock, turned, dove, pulled, and so on... Years later, I learned that Polar Bears in captivity are prone to OCD. The boredom of not having to forage for food causes them to develop Obsessive Compulsive Disorder so they repeat the same pacing/swimming/circling movements over and over. But at the time, all I knew was that this huge white bear moved with a remarkable rhythm that was mesmerizing.

I asked my Dad if we could bring him home and he, being the coolest Dad on the planet, said "Sure! He can sleep in your room." My mother was not so cool.

Needless to say, I didn't get my fuzzy roomate.

As for Pandas they're really the superstars of the Bear world when it comes to publicity. They've been endangered for years. And yet, they're in every zoo around the world. We've seen videos of them playing, eating, sleeping and even mating. I remember seeing that Panda Porn on the animal channel. Too freaky for words. Pandas have no shame.

Now, there is a brown Bear in my life.

No great drama in his life. He isn't a victim of global warming, nor is he in danger of extinction.

The only thing that threatens him is public humiliation.



"Save the Bear... save the world."

Memorial Day Weekend

And the Bear flies the stars and stripes...

Oh say can you see...

And so it begins...

The Bear is our next door neighbor.

At one time, in his place stood a majestic pine tree, but someone decided to remove the tree, leaving an eight foot high stump.

Now, we wondered why anyone would leave a stump that tall. Then they stripped the bark off the stump and left it - nekkid. It had an unusual shape,rather lumpy with a flat top. I thought it bore a bizarre resemblance to Bart Simpson, but my husband insisted it looked more like an 8 foot erection protruding out of the grass. Bart or Penis, for more than a year it was an eyesore.

Then one weekend in March, we went out of town. We returned home to find that the stump was no longer a stump. It had been carved into the Bear.

A raw pine nekkid Bear. Eeewww.

A week later, they painted him. Brown. Just ...brown. He stands on a rock (painted gray of course), one paw across his chest as if he's saying the pledge of allegiance.

Not a scary, ferocious Bear (as bears should be), but a goofy, non-threatening, patriotic Bear.

I hated him. Despised that stupid Bear. Each day, I'd plot his demise. I'd fantasize about borrowing a rifle and blowing that stupid brown woodie out of the yard.

Then came Easter.

What I didn't know was that when they carved this monstrosity, they also drilled a hole under his paw.

So there he was, Easter weekend, surrounded by bright yellow daffodils, sporting a huge pink "HAPPY EASTER!!!!" flag clutched in his paw. However, because the paw is permanently poised across his chest, he looked like he'd been speared through the heart by some demented Easter Bunny.

I swear I could see a definite wince in his painted eyes as he stood there on display for the world to witness his ultimate indignity.

I began to see the Bear in a completely different light.