Brother Bear

As it turns out, that bear I met who came from Warren County, New Jersey, and likes all the same stuff that I do, and has an identical birthmark is actually my twin. Separated at birth. Larry Bear is his name. I’ll be damned! Actually, I have been damned for all intents and purposes. He’s been running up gambling debts, conducting his affairs with enviable promiscuity, and generally being a disreputable bum around this forest for years. And when most critters see me, they tend to assume I am he.

Not to be outdone by me in the wild, life-changing surprise department however, he had no idea who his father was, or that he was still alive and residing within garbage can-throwing distance. The only family he had ever known was a “pack” of feral huskies who aspired to lupine status. In effect, he was raised by phony wolves. As a result, he had acquired a taste for a dish comprised of deer meat and Purina. I tried some, and I’m inclined to stick with frozen pierogies and squirrels.

In the past week, I’ve made multiple attempts to introduce him to old John Birch Bear, but he has failed to arrive at the appointed hour each time. Birch Bear is none too excited about meeting him either. Apparently, when we were born, a fortune-telling porcupine prophesized most threateningly: If a single forest two twins do roam, confined you’ll be to a nursing home.

“But it will be a really cool Star Wars themed place with storm trooper nurses and all the ice cream you can eat!” he added. Prescient.

Consequently, my father outfitted Larry with a sack of trail mix and sent him down the Appalachian Trail as soon as he could walk.

An Evil Twin?

So I ran from those menacing dancing bears as fast as I could. I leapt over streams, ducked under branches, slid down ravines. I grabbed hold of a birch tree to temper a particularly sharp turn and smashed belly first into the very bear the others had originally been pursuing.

Dazed, we slowly arose. I scratched behind my ears. He scratched behind his ears. I put my left foot out. He put his right foot out. We both did the hokey pokey in perfect unison. I tilted my head this way and that. He tilted his head this way and that. I performed a jerky flailing dance with my tongue hanging out and my eyes crossed. He performed a jerky flailing dance with his tongue hanging out and his eyes crossed. Recognizing a shared fondness for that scene in Duck Soup where Groucho and Harpo mirror each other’s movements, and a rare willingness to waste inordinate amounts of time, we continued doing this for a good 25 minutes.

In the course of this we got to talking. He had been born in Warren County, New Jersey and put up for adoption. We discovered that we shared a birthday. And a favorite flavor of squirrel goulash – banana nut! And a proclivity to tie the laces on our dancing shoes “bunny ear style” out of an inability to learn the other way that everyone else does it. Finally, we simultaneously grabbed each other’s right feet and discovered identical birthmarks under our third claws.

You guessed it dear reader! Bears everywhere are trying to cop my style! And who could blame them?

Do the Charleston!

I was in the forest practicing doing the Charleston where no one could see me. My ankles were going every which way and my furry paws were jutting to this side and that. I closed my eyes and saw the band on the other side of the dance hall.

As I spun around, I opened my eyes and saw a 400-pound bear galloping towards me. I leapt out of the way and into a tree, at which point I noticed two other bears chasing the first. The first bear slipped out of sight, at which point his pursuers noticed me and started climbing my tree and shouting all sorts of unfriendly-sounding things in my general direction. Something about a few hundred dollars owed from botched bets on badger boxing, something about hibernating with other bears' honeys, something about months of unsettled tabs from the Perilous Shore, something about toenail clippings left in beehives.

I expressed the sincerest bewilderment, but they would have none of it. They grabbed a fallen branch off the forest floor and poked me out of the tree. I fell over backwards and landed miraculously on my feet. Without a thought, I took three steps forward, point the toe, three steps backward, point the toe.

“Charleston. Charleston. Made in Carolina.”

Bewildered, the other bears facing me began mirroring me.

“Yeah that’s the idea! … Some dance. Some prance.”

Drool-soaked grins spread across the bears’ faces. Next, I added in the arms, and clumsily they tried to follow suit; more often than not, their arms would follow their legs rather than alternating sides, so that they resembled robotic punching machines.

“I’ll say there’s nothing finer than the Charleston! Charleston!”

They were still in the game, however, until I added the ankle movements.

“Lord how you can shuffle. Every step you do leads to something new.”

They were starting to stumble pretty badly, so I pushed the tempo and reduced them to a furry heap on the forest floor and made my escape.

Another Sucky Scenario

When twice within a week a fellow critter assaults you, you begin to wonder if there’s some big secret that everyone is in on except for you.

With my father’s residence firmly established out at Binary Sunset, it dawned on me I could put off no longer the ordeal of cleaning out his old den. I enlisted the help of Roderick, who made sorting through the old bear’s belongings easier by just eating anything that didn’t appear toxic. Everything else, we put on a pile to donate to charity.

There are limits, however, to the number of miniature ketchup packets even the most gluttonous raccoon can ingest. In addition to the stash in the fridge, there were cartons upon cartons in various closets, all meticulously labeled with the dates and names of the high school cafeterias from which they had been pilfered.

While Roderick left to score some cheeseburgers to make his job more palatable, I continued to excavate my way through my father’s life. Among the most notable finds was a stash of newspaper clippings going back to 1947 of fatal bear attacks in the U.S. It did my heart good to find something over which I could bond with my dad like that. As a gesture of goodwill, I brought him his portfolio, updated with a clipping from last Thursday’s Times about that feast out in Yellowstone.

Having cleared most of the detritus, I revved up the old Hoover, which promptly caught fire – I suppose it hadn’t been used in a few decades. A family of aardvarks had moved into the forest to set up an appliance repair, so I brought it in. Little aardvarks were scurrying all over the place, with their mother chasing after them. The bloke behind the counter dryly enquired what he could do for me. Pointing over my shoulder, I said, “This vacuum cleaner is busted.”

With a slap across my face, he shouted, “That’s not a vacuum cleaner, that’s my wife!”

The Cold Treatment

Friends, let me tell you, bears are not logical creatures. You go through life saying “thank you” and “gesundheit”; holding up logs for pregnant bunnies to pass under; allowing coyotes to snag the freshest road waffles. My greatest fear in life is to offend somebody – what else is a bear to be afraid of? Really. It is in the context of this preamble that I shall relate to you the horrors of my day.

I appropriated some construction equipment I found by the highway for the purpose of transporting supplies for Roderick’s fishing venture. It was in the course of these errands that I met the most irrationally quick-tempered ursine ice distributor. Not a minute into our dealings, he asked me if I preferred the ice in the form of cubes or chunks. Eying a fine sow walking past, I exclaimed, perhaps more enthusiastically than is comme il faut, “Chunky!”

The ice bear gave me an icy stare as he asked where I wanted the chunks loaded, and I pointed over my shoulder and said, “Right in the back of that dump truck.”

At which point the bear lost his cool, shouting, “That’s not a dump truck, that’s my wife!” and clocked me. Knocked me out cold.

Nursing Home Nightmares

I went to check on my father yesterday over at the home. When I arrived, some muskrats were holding a Han Solo look-alike contest in the common room. The old bear had hung a big, colorful sign on his door that said, “NO BATHROOM! NO!” for the benefit of a senile neighbor of his who was in the habit of shuffling over to use his toilet.

“The old crone has no sense of decency!”

One of the nurses, a field mouse, had been smuggling him flasks of whiskey. We come from a long line of whiskey-drinking bears: a great uncle of mine met his end after helping himself to a barrel of Jameson’s. (I was reminded of this unfortunate incident when I saw an ad to this effect on a subway in New York when I was in town for a dance marathon convention held by a bunch of Peabody enthusiasts.)

These libations were probably not helping with his nightmares of course. He told me of a dream he had in which he watched a crowd of drunks pile on a cart behind a decrepit old horse and proceed to beat the poor thing to death when it failed to pull them all. I told him to get out and socialize more with the other animals, and headed home.

This morning I got a call from the head nurse telling me that Birch Bear had hit his neighbor over the head with his cane when she came to use his bathroom again. Luckily, she was fine if not a bit disoriented, but they confiscated my dad’s cane and put him on some harder meds.

And Bat's The Way It Is...

I’ve spent the past few days nursing my wounded ego and the poison ivy I picked up on the way to the puppetry gig. I’ve been signing apology notes to be sent to the parents of all the bats in attendance at our program.

The show was ill conceived: it was a series of biblical morality story adaptations for pirates dancing to Michael Jackson hits. Pretty early into the bit about Sodom and Gomorrah, the tape player malfunctioned. In my consternation I said some things that were picked up by my clip-on microphone that I have come to regret very deeply.

It is by great good fortune that the little fledermice in attendance were blind, and therefore did not notice that in my violent scratching at the poison ivy on my wrists, the puppets on my hands appeared to be engaging in unspeakable acts. One less thing to explain to the parents. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I was back on the job market again.

I figured Roderick always has something cooking, so I went and found him hydrating himself at The Perilous Shore. Sure enough, he was devising a plan to sell summer season passes to his ice-fishing club. Osgood behind the bar has an exclusive on the peppermint schnapps, and I’ve got the job of hauling in the ice.

Prosperity's Just Around the Corner

I went to see Dr. Bruce Beaver D.D.S. last week after the incident with the soundboard. (The band made a big stink about the whole incident, so I had to reimburse them for their equipment. Thankfully, they deal in skunk cabbage, which is easy enough to come by.)

Bruce was a nice enough bloke, but carrying on a conversation with him was like pulling teeth. But that’s precisely his job, so I guess it works out. It had occurred to me that my cash flow had been unidirectional ever since I left the motorcyclists, and what with the dentist visit and the ordeal with the smelly Kiss band, it might behoove me to find some gainful employment. I asked the Beaver poking around in my mouth how he got into dentistry.

He had always dreamed of being a dancer, but at the annual job fair held by the East Tennessee Critters Employment Training Conglomerate (ETC ETC), he stumbled into the booth placed alphabetically contiguously to that occupation, and was bitten by the dentistry bug. He pointed out that the fair was being held again that weekend.

I went with every intention of getting in with the psychologist crowd but I happened into the puppetry booth, and what can I say… a star was born. Apparently, average starting pay for puppeteers is $490,000 or something like that. I got my hand puppet certification over the weekend, and I’ll start tomorrow morning with a show at 7:45 at the Helen Keller Elementary School for Bats.

Some Otter Time

Old Birch Bear sure wasn’t keen on being stuffed in his “holding cell” out at Binary, but the doe on staff slipped some tranquilizers into his ice cream and that was that. I bid him adieu and headed down to The Perilous Shore to grab a drink.

I had a lot on my mind as I had received a long awaited letter from Mary Bear back in New Jersey that was decidedly more distant in tone than previous correspondences. But whatever. I figure she’s busy helping her mom run their combination umbrella and concealed handgun store in addition to maintaining her medical practice.

I started slurping, and struck up conversation with Osmond the otter or whatever his name is. He told me that he had been a few days away from being ordained as a Catholic priest when he heard from a lady otter he had encountered over spring break up in Grand Forks, North Dakota. She was pregnant, so he disappeared from the seminary and married her. They divorced shortly thereafter, of course, and he joined a traveling medicine show. One night on the road, he and his boss got into a heated argument over the transubstantiative properties of sarsaparilla and grain alcohol. His merchandising companion tried to strangle him with his bolo tie, at which point they parted ways. Which is how he came to tend bar here in Tennessee.

Just as he was beginning to explain how Medicare reimbursements work for snake oil salesmen, a Kiss tribute band comprised of skunks began playing at top volume. I was in no mood, so I ate their soundboard. Half way through the reverb panel however, I chipped a tooth, but Osric was able to recommend a dentist.

Roderick Pulls a Fast One

I was supposed to move my dad into Binary Sunset today, but I got the most urgent phone call from Roderick the Raccoon who had landed in prison for scalping cheeseburgers outside a Wendy’s. Rod has been a real help since I’ve been down here, so I couldn’t very well leave him hanging. And besides, the prospect of going to a jail seemed a lot more exciting than that of going to a nursing home. Even one with a cool Star Wars theme.

So I went down to the jail to see what I could do. It seems Roderick had devised an ingenious scheme based on the idiosyncrasies of the Wendy’s price structure. He was buying Jr. Bacon Cheeseburgers for 99 cents a piece, peeling the bacon off them, and then selling them for 1.29, a full ten cents below what Wendy was charging for cheeseburgers inside.

The judge was in the pocket of big business, and was much more appalled by all this than the fact that he was then taking the leftover bacon, grinding it up, and using it to stretch the pastrami he was selling to a Kosher Deli on the other side of town. But that’s the South for you.

The bail was $500, way more money than I had ever seen in one place, but Roderick told me where his stash of cheeseburgers was, and we were able to bribe the warden with ten of them, plus fries and a frosty.

Riding off into the Binary Sunset

I’ve spent the past week scoping out what must be every retirement home in East Tennessee, and I can’t say it’s been fun. I used to frequent old-folks homes around Christmas and Memorial Day with a Reggae-Klezmer band I played in when I was rebellious teenager, but there’s a big difference between visiting to bring music to warm peoples’ hearts, and visiting to survey the prospects of bringing in a disgruntled old bear.

These places are all the same. The smell of pee and death wafts through fluorescent-lit hallways leading nowhere. (Sorry for getting mildly poetic for a moment, but a week like this will do that to a bear.)

I was getting mighty discouraged in my quest until today when I came upon the most novel establishment: Binary Sunset Rest Center. A Star Wars-themed nursing home! The nurses all wander around in storm trooper costumes and their syringes light up and have light saber sound effects built in. And on Tuesday nights at 5, right after naptime, they have a Cantina scene-themed dance in the common room with a live band.

Of course, this all got my attention in a hurry, but what finally sold me was the free ice cream they were handing out to anyone who signed up in the dining area. If you ever meet a bear who claims to be impervious to the persuasive powers of ice cream, he’s either got rabies or he’s a pathological liar, and either way, you should run as fast as you can. Unless it’s a grizzly, in which case you’re supposed to curl up and play dead. I think. You can thank me later for that.

The Perilous Shore

After the scene at my father’s, I went down to the creek to drown my sorrows. As I began slurping my way to oblivion, I struck up a conversation with the raccoon seated beside me. Roderick was his name, and what stories he could tell. He said he had stood in the path of a semi on Route 26 and not been squished through sheer willpower. He was a not-too-distant cousin, he also told me, of Rocky Raccoon of Beatle’s fame. He had spent many years working pyrotechnics for a rock band called The Gnarly Buttons. What a character!

I asked him if he was related, by any chance, to Ralph from back home, but he didn’t think so. Same surname though, so I have my suspicions.

It turned out that he knew my father by reputation because his sister-in-law Rita had done landscaping for him.

“She really made the place as welcoming as you could under the circumstances. I always thought the petunia planters on top of the gun turrets were a nice touch.”

He was surprised to learn Birch Bear was still among the living since he had not heard about him in a few years. As the conversation progressed, the Lutra canadensis tending bar – Oscar something-or-otter – chimed in about a home his mother was in called Hillside Manor. Then a duck seated across from us suggested Lawn Crest Retirement Village. And a beaver mentioned Shady Elm Assisted Living. And a sparrow offered Pinedale Convalescent Home. Soon, more animals came yammering out of the woodwork with ideas: Hillcrest, Lawn Side, Elm Dale and Shady Pine Senior Center, Rest Home, Geriatric Care Facility, and Skilled Nursing Unit, respectively. Having heard enough, I thanked them all, settled up my tab with Oswald or whatever and stumbled out.

Nurse Sherry Bear

Nurse Sherry Bear was a weathered old thing. She had a big floppy bear gut and claws stained yellow from years of tobacco use. Still, with a twinkle in her bloodshot eyes and winningly gnarled teeth, you could tell she had once been a P.Y.S. – pretty young sow. She knelt silently over old Birch Bear to stabilize his wounds.

“How’s the old dipstick, eh?”

With pursed lips she continued working, ignoring his tasteless overture.

“Think I’m about due for another oil change yet?”

Flustered, she turned to me and said, “I really have no idea what he’s talking about. He must be delirious.”

“What’s this now? What happened to all the fireworks! Hubba-hubba!”

She continued diligently as the possums wandered over to the fridge and started rummaging.

“My flower, what’s the matter? Bzzzzz! Bzzzz! I’m a bee! I’m a bee!”

I was appalled. What kind of vulgar brute was this bear, and how could such a sensitive gentleman as myself be related to him? As I considered this, the dentally endowed little card sharks removed a rotten head of lettuce, triggering an avalanche of miniature ketchup packets from the depths of the icebox. They scurried to shovel them into the wastebasket and return to their scavenging but the old bear’s head shot up.

“All my evidence! I need those for my lawsuit against the Education Department!” He had snapped one of his neck splints and his head hit the floor with a thud.

Sherry stood and said, “He has no business living alone. Get him into an assisted-bear facility before he really hurts himself.”

An Armed Bear

John Birch Bear had always been somewhat more conservative than the average bear. But starting with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, through the oil embargo and resulting economic downturn in the ‘70s, he declined from quasi-respectable, wire-rimmed glasses-wearing business bear to ranting conspiracy theorist, eager to explain to anyone unfortunate enough to be pulled into conversation with him that homosexual Mexican bears had infiltrated the Food and Drug Administration with the aim of slipping oral contraceptives into Ketchup packets distributed to public school cafeterias.

I hadn’t seen him since he left in 1996. When I found him, he was holed up in his den, playing cribbage with a posse of possums. Naturally, Fox News was blaring something about the threat of Obamabear and the creeping European-style welbear state.

I rapped timidly on the door. In his deafness, he was alerted to an outside presence only by the intrigue on the faces of his toothy compatriots. Convinced that the feds had finally caught up with him, he leapt from his recliner and in dashing across the room for the nearest firearm, slipped on a Teflon pan set on the floor for his dog to pre-wash – he had sautéed kippers and capers for lunch. Having knocked his head in the fall, only a glimmer of recognition flashed in his eyes as I knelt at his side.

“Dad!”

An expression of horror swept over his face.

“It only took one careless evening when your mom and I forwent condiments.”

He still possessed whatever dented marbles he ever had, though he was incapable of moving. I beseeched the marsupials to summon medical help, and one of them rang up the local clinic.

Resting the receiver, the critter said, “Nurse Sherry Bear is en route.”

Tennessee

I realize I haven’t posted in nearly three years, but I’ve been a busy and beleaguered bear. I’ll offer no further excuses, just my story. When last I wrote, I had left the bikers, and rode into the sunset on my unicycle. I was Tennessee-bound to ensure my estranged right-wing father didn’t hurt anyone in his derangement. After days on the trail I rolled into the majestic forests of the Iron Mountains. Once I knew I was in the vicinity, I accosted a wise old owl – what other kind is there?

“Do you know John Birch Bear?”

“Who?”

“John Birch Bear. Do you know him?

“Who?”

“Well, you should ask, ‘whom?’ since he was the object of my question.”

“Who?”

At this point I realized I was dealing with an idiot, so I peddled on. Shortly, I came upon a diner that advertised fresh baked bear claws and took it as a sign. As I ordered at the counter, I noticed a possum eyeing me from across the room. The bear claw came out, and as I started eating, the little marsupial wandered up.

“You Birch Bear’s boy?” Before I could answer, he continued, “He’s been expecting you.”

Normally, when a rodent-like creature implores me to follow him, I have my reservations. I knew a British bear who followed a slick little mouse on the premise of visiting “the happiest place on earth.” I haven’t seen the bloke since, but the word is that he’s being held hostage for a few billion dollars worth of merchandising revenue.

Having no other option, however, I followed this toothy critter to my father.