"The kitchen is just strewn.
It got a forty-pound bag of cat food,
a thing of roasted garlic,
my package of cookies.
It got into the coffee.
It got into a five-gallon bucket that Kathy saves butterscotch and chocolate chips and stuff in. Didn't eat a lot of those, but it spread them all over the floor.
It didn't get into the honey.
It got into the olive oil.
I've come into houses where a bear has torn the range hood off,
torn the microwave off.
The shelves are all broken and everything's collapsed,
or the doors are gone and the whole cabinet's off the wall.
Turnd over refirgerators.
A house here burned down because a bear broke in
and knocked the stove over. The electric igniters went off.
It tore the gas line open
gas started spewing.
I heard this snapping and popping.
It's ten-thirty at night, and I'm going,
What the hell?
I walked out in the street and could see the flames.
By then, the whole house was engulfed.
The fire department saved the foundation."
*
Recently, an insurer received a claim that a bear had vandalized a Rolls-Royce;
investigators showed security footage of the incident to a wild-life biologist, who determined that the perpetrator was
a human in a bear costume.
*
"I've seen 'em go in through a skylight.
Dropped twenty feet through the house, then ransacked it, and broke a window to get out.
Like, how'd they not break a leg with that?"
"They're very athletic."
*
from "Wild Side" by Page Williams
The New Yorker
December 2, 2024
