Bring On The Bears
April 2006
The Western Europeans killed almost all of their wolves and bears before they got religiously green. What’s left of their wildlife is pretty timid. In America, we have big, wild country AND a population of mostly greenish city slickers. That is the deadly combination that makes for animal attacks.
The protected critters get bold, and people in any leafy area less urban than Central Park sometimes get et.
When I lived in France in the early 1990s, I began collecting news stories of animal attacks in America. Some of my French friends loved to hear these stories, because it flattered their notions of America as a wild place.
Not to be outdone, the French have decided to release Slovenian bears in the Pyrenees. Two or three shepherds opposed and disrupted the first release. So the French government released the second bear (named “Franska,” or “Frenchy” in Slovenian) at a secret time and place. If all goes well, we will have stories from Europe of animal attacks within a few ursine generations. (It takes that long for animals to realize that we got religion and are no longer a threat to them.)
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