Thinking of Bears

When I was a kid my favorite hymn was “Gladly the Cross-Eyed Bear”. Why we sang about a bear in church was a delightful mystery.

My father used to sing us a song about a preacher who was pursued by an angry bear. The chorus went something like this:

“You saved Daniel from the lion’s den. You saved the Hebrew children from the fire. Oh, Lord, if you can’t help me, please don’t help that bear.”

It helps that fire and bear rhyme in my native dialect. They both sound like “far”.

There’s a black bear in my neighborhood, and just about everyone has seen it but me. I would love to see a bear. I have had a few encounters with bears while hiking, mostly in the Smokies. A bear mauled our rental car when we were camping at Redwood National Park. A black bear came into my mother’s back yard when I was away at college, and some forest service guys came and trapped it and took it back to the Chattahoochee National Forest.

The rest of the bears I have come close to have been in zoos or the Olympic Game Ranch. The polar bears at the Central Park are fascinating to watch, and the grizzlies in the Cherokee, North Carolina bear zoo are real hams. You get to feed them. You can also feed the grizzlies at the Olympic Game Ranch. If you throw a piece of bread like a Frisbee, they can catch it easily.