We made enough excuses for the sharks now we’re starting on the bears.

The bears chase us through the woods, they catch us and rend us.

Forest Rangers tell us play dead, look big, walk backwards, walk forwards, climb a tree,

But the bears know our tricks and they wait til we are done with our useless antics

And attack. 

They claw us and bite us and toy with us.  Then they look around and test the air as if to see if anyone is coming

Then go at us again.  Meanwhile we are screaming, screaming never thinking it would end this way

That the bears were our friends, they were just being bears, you can’t blame bears for being bears…

But you can, you can. 

And when you do, it’s the bear’s turn to run and hide. 

Mother bears better hide their young because we are now coming for them for real and not in the mother’s instinctive imaginations.  We will round them up and dress them in little suits and sit them down to porridge and honey just what their mother’s always feared.

When they are fat and round, we will sell them to the highest bidder who will take their insides out and fill them with stuffing and sew them up and give them to little girls and boys. 

The great male bears will grace our floors. 

We will put taxidermists back to work, everyone will have a bear rug and we will rest our heads on their skulls and

Make love on their harsh hides. 

And the children of men will run through the woods unafraid. 

They will sleep in the open, scatter their food where they please, play

In the salmon streams, gather berries in the dense thickets, brave the bees’ nests for the freshest honey.

In the end we will tell stories of when there were bears and we will frighten the children but then

We will calm them and tell them there are no more bears, there were never any real bears,

Just the idea of bears, the fear of bears.