Bunnies and Bears

For those who think I'm a tad off center, AMY HAS SEEN THE FAIRIES TOO.

I was laying in bed the other day when I heard this piteous mewing outside my bedroom window. My room is on the second floor and the birch girls are about 100 feet tall, and the mewing was coming from above, up amongst their tender leaves.

So I parted the sheers and boldly looked out into the night (it's ok to look out bedroom windows at night as long as it isn't October), and there stuck in the trees was a little black bear cub.

I quietly slid the window open so as not to frighten the poor thing, and said in a gentle voice, "Hey, little fella, you ok?" And a voice boomed from the darkness below, "Yo, human, what the fuck you want?" I was startled, to say the least.

I looked down and there on my patio was a mama bear and two other babies. She was looking up at me with agitation. "And shut your pie-hole, it's not polite to gape," she growled.

With a great deal of effort, I shut my pie-hole, then opened it to speak, thought better of it and shut it again, then opened it yet again to squeak out a bit of mewing myself.

"You're talking," I said. I am eloquent under pressure.

"No fucking duh, moron," said the bear in what I considered an extremely rude tone of voice for something that has just spoken of politeness. "Now, mind your own bizness and go back to your little fluff-headed sleep."

"But your baby..." I started.

"Gr," said the bear.

"But your baby is stuck in a tree!" I rushed the words two octaves above squeak.

"You think I need you, a human with marginal intelligence, to tell me, a talking bear, that my baby is stuck in a tree? Do you think I'm deaf? Cuz clearly YOU are - I said MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS."

"But I can help," I said, thinking, "Yeah right, you don't have a ladder that works, you don't have a cell phone that works, and you clearly don't have any negotiation skills or Sir Thinks Alot would be laying next to you and you would be doing something vastly more entertaining than talking to a swearing bear."

"You can help," said the bear with sarcasm.

"Yes, help get your baby down!"

"Fluff," said the bear with the smallest inkling of impatience, "Did you know bears could climb trees?"

"Yes," I replied, puzzled by the question.

"Have you ever seen a bear skeleton hanging from a tree?" said the bear with slightly more than an inkling of impatience.

"No," said I, suspecting I was about to have my intelligence insulted.

"Do you know why you never see a bear skeleton hanging from a tree?"

I considered a smarty pants answer but couldn't actually think of one, so I replied, "Because they don't stay stuck in trees?"

"Very good, fluff, now go back to sleep before I break your kitchen door down and eat you."

I replied as instructed by Ms. L, "Jackass."