Bears!

Bears on the loose! The #1 threat to America! Where is Stephen Colbert?

Today the scene from the couch includes black bears prowling through Paramus, NJ. For a lot of people, NJ is a maze of concrete, and Paramus, if they've heard of it at all, is the birthplace of shopping malls. For me, it's where my parents are buried and where I planned to rest my bones one day. Maybe not.

Now we see Jack Hanna of zoo fame telling us about bear behavior: "You'd be hungry too if you hadn't eaten in four months." I feel as though my whole life is coming together in this story. Before I fled to the Lowcountry, I was exiled in Columbus, OH, which is where Hanna drew attention as the director of its zoo. I could digress into a tale about a woman I know who fostered a chimpanzee from the zoo nursery and how she and I went to a psychic together, but I guess I'll save that and try to get back to today's drama, which I'm taking personally because before I was dragged to Columbus, I spent thirty years in towns near Paramus.

I KNEW that area. There were no bears there then. WTH has happened? I can hear my father saying now, "The whole world has gone ape-shit." When he really said that was years and years ago. What would he say now about the fact that I live where an alligator might invade my kitchen? Maybe "Lass, at least you escaped the bears."