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Juvenile Delinquent Animals

© Sharon Wren

I'm sure by now you've noticed that people seem to be getting crazier these days. There are more instances of violence and one of the hottest TV shows, "Survivor", features people living in hostile environments trying to off each other (fortunately, not literally). I think all this is starting to affect the wildlife.

As proof of this, I offer the following bizarre story of pyromaniac bears, from Reuters news service via the CNN website. Honest, this is a true story. A group of brown bears on Alaska's Afognak Island, located about 250 miles southwest of Anchorage, started a four acre wildfire back in May. Officials believe the bears were drawn to an incinerator and started pawing through it, pulling out burning debris which started the fire. Fortunately it was contained relatively quickly, but not before four acres of innocent tundra were torched. Locals have no recollection of other incidents of bear pyros, although beavers have been known to cause power outages by gnawing down poles.

Bears starting forest fires? Look out, Smokey the Bear is back and he's flipped his lid! "You people never listen; you wanna see how bad forest fires can be? I'll start one that will blow your mind!" This could be the start of a frightening crime wave - McGruff the Crime Dog holding up banks, the Geico car insurance gekko committing insurance fraud, the Budweiser Clydesdale horses being arrested for DUI; I shudder to think about it. That reminds me, has anybody seen Morris the cat lately? Maybe he's in the Witness Protection Program for spilling the beans on a drug cartel! I've always wondered what was in that cat food that made the cat actors act so happy.

When humans go bad, the so-called "experts" like to blame it on movies, music, video games and bad parenting. Who's to blame when animals go bad? Take our pyros, for example. Bears have been around for, what, a few million years? Generations of them have lived relatively law-abiding lives, except for that loose cannon named Yogi. Then all of a sudden, we've got bears that start fires. You can't blame their parents, saying they spent too much time at the office when they should have been home with their cubs. And I'm pretty sure bears lack the manual dexterity to play "Duke Nukem" and the money to go to see "South Park". I don't know about you, but I've never heard of bears attending an Eminem concert either.

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