Nonconformity

A blogger-reader-friend (her blog can be seen here) did a neat round up of “odd stories” in her post. Among the items is the following (from a Wisconsin paper, found here):

A bear is hibernating in a bald eagle nest at the top of a tree … while several of the birds look on.
``You can imagine they're thinking, 'Now what?' `` said Ron Eckstein, a state Department of Natural Resources wildlife biologist.

This sounds like something that would happen to me: I would pick the wrong place to recline in, completely inappropriate to my species, dispossessing some bewildered souls of their lair and then have the whole community just laugh and laugh from below. Or, translated to human terms, I would plunge into doing something [in the manner of: “oh, this sounds neat.” plunge.] that most would consider rather batty, not realizing, not caring maybe, forging ahead because it seemed interesting, not seeing the oddity of it at all.

But let me focus on the bear for now. Why is he up there in that tree? Typically, bears hibernate in caves or other hollow places on the ground. The DNR specialist speculates that perhaps the bear had had some unpleasantry happen to it on the ground and was escaping the mean world below. Eagles are tolerant of other species: they’ll stare, but they wont be aggressive toward the visitor.

There is a fine for humans who would get it into their heads to disturb a hibernating bear. Just entering the den of a sleeping bear carries a maximum fine of $10,000 and 9 months in jail. Somehow it doesn’t seem right to put a person who entered a den of a bear in prison along with the Martha Stewarts and druggies of this world, but I suppose it would make for interesting, lively conversation during morning prison yard exercises (and what are you in here for? “insider trading” “possession of narcotics” “disturbing a bear”).

[photo credit: bear with us, inc.]