Help! A Bear Is Eating Me! (3 page)

Still stuck. I tried wriggling, yanking, squirming. I can’t feel my legs too clearly, but that’s just fine considering. I’m biding my time, waiting for my opening. Mister Bear is fast asleep. I’d be asleep too, if Mister Bear didn’t snore so incredibly loud. I thought animals were supposed to be silent, so they can’t get snuck up upon and eaten by other animals. But bears don’t worry about that, do they? Other animals don’t fuck with bears. Bears rule the animal kingdom. Okay, I respect that. But I’m not from the animal kingdom, I’m from the United Fucking States. The animal kingdom is our colony. Mister Bear, you may think you’re the carnivore and I’m the carne, but time will prove you wrong. Time will prove you a bear-burger breakfast and a soft warm place on the floor upon which to get nasty with Marcia from Product Dialogue.

Wish I could sleep. These pills are just a tiny bit speedy. That’s usually how I like them. I think I’ve got some codeine in here someplace but I can’t see at all, feeling slightly lightheaded under a Range Rover in the middle of the night in Noplace, Alaska. There’s just the tiniest eau de petrol in the mix of hideous nature smells I’m choking on. But I’m cheerful, I’m upbeat.

It’s funny … I used to fall asleep with a bear, a cuddly toy bear my parents gave me when I was small. He was a brown bear, and he wore reflective sunglasses and leather motorcycle clothes — the jacket, the hat and the chaps. He looked just like the singer in Judas Priest, Rob Halford. I called him Bomber — Bomber Bear. Technically Bomber was my little brother Jimmy’s bear, but Jimmy was too young to really appreciate bears. During the pre-divorce meltdown I used to have a lot of trouble getting to sleep and I really grew to depend on Bomber. So when I went off to live with Dad I appropriated him: I told Jimmy that Bomber had been killed in a motorcycle accident, and we had to bury him in a closed casket because his corpse was too mangled to look at, and we had held a nice funeral but we forgot to invite Jimmy, and Bomber never liked Jimmy anyway. Jimmy cried about that. Jimmy was a big crybaby, but we all cried a lot back then. So I said goodbye to Mom and Jimmy, and me and Bomber went to live with Dad in Orange County, and I slept with Bomber every night until the ninth grade when I found out Rob Halford is gay.

Knowing what I now know about bears, I think it’s just sick that people give cute fuzzy stuffed gay ones to children. What are we teaching these kids? Bears aren’t cute, they’re not friendly or helpful, they’re vicious, stupid, bloody-minded people eaters. You might as well teach children to play with infected rats, or foamy-mouthed doggies. I read tons of stories on the Internet during my extensive bear research phase about little kids climbing into bear cages at zoos to pet the bear, and getting mauled and eaten. Polar bears especially. I ask you, should we even be surprised? We’re just setting kids up for that …
Look, mommy! See the bear? Oh, so cute, so white, so fluffy. Watch him dance. Back and forth, back and forth in his little home in the zoo. The bear looks sad. Why is he sad, Mommy? Does he not like the zoo? Maybe he is lonely, and needs love. I will hug him, Mommy, like I hug my own bear at home. Rrrrrrr …
splat!

On my father’s grave, on my mother’s grave, on the graves of my bear-eaten subordinates and on the grave of my own foot I solemnly swear that when I get home I’m going to pitch the Ups and Veeps a public service campaign for children: Just Say NO to Bears! Reversing trends is my specialty and that one needs immediate, well-funded reversal. (We have to meet a public-service percentage every year anyway, ever since that whole Chinese lead paint dog chew mix-up and the accompanying class-action hell.) We’ll need some kind of evil bear that kids can learn to fear, and some kind of hero figure — a hunter, or a ranger … no, even better: a talking car. A talking Sport-Utility Vehichle who will remind kids that nature is dangerous and bad! If it wasn’t for society’s deranged bear fetish and the conditioning I received from my parents, I probably wouldn’t even be stuck here in this stupid mess. Thanks a lot, Mom.

I’m not getting depressed. Power of positive thinking. Power of yes! I am smart and lucky and sexy and cool and wealthy. I am edgy! I have good teeth and excellent taste! Good things happen to me. Because I make them happen. And because the universe loves me.

Tom Petty never seemed so deep and meaningful to me before. But somehow Tom Petty knew: the waiting really is the hardest part — especially when you’re covered with crawling ants. But I can beat this. I’m a can-doer. I just have to bide my time. Someone will come, soon. Meanwhile I’ve got something here in my hand that feels about like I remember codeine feeling, plus another OxySufnix, in the unmistakable blister pack. A cold Bud, a Slim Jim and these pills, and then I’m going to try to get some shut-eye.

Getting rescued tomorrow. Big day ahead.

3

Asshole ate my other foot!
This really impacts my outlook.

Oh, I was close. I was there! I was dancing in the end-zone. I would be angry, oh how pissed off I would be if my mood weren’t so well-stabilized. I would be howling mad and probably depressed and blubbery too, maybe even weeping like a little girl, or trembling like a blind kitten in a sack falling towards the water … man, you gotta love mood stabilizing drugs.

But can I at least describe this to you? How close I was? I woke up in the morning and Mister Bear was gone. Sensing an opening, I unsheathed my plan and plunged into action. From the snack box I extracted one Texas Pete’s Yard-Long Spicy Chorizo Jerky Twister — the largest, longest, thickest and most satisfying beef jerky Texas has to offer — and bent one end of the stiff, sulfated meat into a crude hook. Using this wobbly meat-hook I reached out like a stoned croupier to rake in the jackpot: the jack! I hooked the knob of the jack crank, but it slipped free. I hooked it again, it slipped free, again and again … but I did not give up, I persevered, because Marv Pushkin Gives Nothing to Nobody, and Especially Not UP! and finally, after eons of this, I somehow snagged the jerky in its scissor knee and oh so slowly, oh so carefully and gently began to reel it in across the lumpy, scrubby, muddy and buggy bog I’ve been lying in, soaking in, sinking into … thence to jack the fucking axle off my knees, thence to clamber into the cockpit, lock the door, load the gun, cue up the Slayer, crank up the seat-heater and the Shiatsutronic roto-massage system … oh, I could smell it!

And then Mister Giant Fat Stupid Snarling Vicious Ugly Malodorous Evil Angry Buzz-Killing Bear arrived out of nowhere, howling and screaming as if I was his girlfriend and the jack was his best friend from college. He charged, rammed the car hard — further crushing my knees, and somehow lowering this oil pan a centimeter closer to my face — and then he tried to squeeze under here with the rest of me, swiping with his paw, snapping his teeth … he almost got me.

He got the jack instead, and he also got the Jerky Twister.
My
Texas Pete’s Yard-Long Spicy Chorizo Jerky Twister. Like my feet aren’t good enough, that he has to raid my snacks as well. He’s eating me
and
he’s starving me.

But it’s a funny thing: in the pantheon of jerky, there’s chorizo, spicy chorizo, extra-spicy chorizo … and then, at the bottom of a smoking crater in the center of the room, there’s Texas Pete’s. Hotter Than The Sun
^™
. Don’t Mess With Texas
^™
. Face-Melting Good
^™
. (And it’s no lie — it did actually melt a small child’s face once, which is where Image Team got involved, and how I became a fan.)

Mister Bear gnawed on this yard-long cord of jerky napalm, appearing to enjoy it for maybe ten seconds … then he spat out half of it in a smoking gob of drool and began rubbing his face on his belly, huffing and puffing with his lips pulled back and his giant tongue flipping around, spraying bear-spit in all directions. He panted and spat and drooled and waddled around in a circle trying to cool down his lips. What a pussy! Take that, Mister Bear. Don’t mess with Texas! I laughed out loud it was so funny.

Shortly after I started laughing at him he started eating my other foot. Who knew bears were so sensitive? Jesus, it almost hurt. I mean the pain is pretty much blocked but just the concept of the blocked pain existing down there somewhere in my leg, the crunching and the ripping and the being yanked on, it disturbs me slightly. But a great feature of OxySufnix is you can chew one up and get the whole twelve-hour timed release dosage in one hour of bliss. And that’s where I am right now, floating on cloud nine while Sensitive Mister Bear lies on his belly a few feet left of the Rover, still rubbing hot chorizo oil off his lips. Sucker.

Mister Sensitive Bear, how smart are you really? I’ve read that you’re “cunning” and “subtle”; I sure don’t grasp your subtlety yet. Whenever someone cites me evidence of the intelligence of animals, they further convince me of the stupidity of humans.

Take dogs, for instance. Dogs are prized, by dog-prizers, for their intelligence. Edna’s hyperactive Papillon, Wagner, never despairs of impressing me with his intelligence. He keeps bringing me his leash. When I enter the house, when I sit, when I stand, when I emerge from the bathroom, he picks up the little leather strap, symbol of his own slavery, and drops it drooly on my feet. He thinks maybe I’ll take him for a walk so he can shit all over our nice neighborhood. Maybe he even thinks I’ll buy him ice cream and a movie. I throw Wagner’s leash in the closet, he brings it back. I throw the leash in the trash, he digs it out and brings it back. I kick him in the ribs, he brings the leash. I take the leash and whip him with it, he leaves me alone for maybe five minutes, then he brings the leash again.

Wagner exhibits no learning ability. A robot vacuum cleaner can grasp concepts this dog cannot grasp. He’s deluded: he thinks he can make me his friend, make me throw his dog-spit-covered chew toys and scratch his hairy testicles and do all the other stuff that Edna does for him. I yell at Wagner, I step on Wagner, I pick him up and throw him, but he just won’t comprehend my loathing. It’s a very retarded kind of intelligence, if you ask me.

Mister Intelligent Bear, what’s your S.A.T. score? Or did you take the Bear Aptitude Test? How did you do on Lumbering? What’s your Snarling percentile? Do you have plans to further your bear education? I’d get further from here if I were you, Mister Bear. When those Search and Rescue guys show up with their big bear-killing guns, you’re going to have a lot of flying lead to outwit.

Truth is, I don’t even know how much of me you’ve eaten, because I can’t see past this axle. But I’m a realist — or at least an opti-realist. I have to assume at the rate you’ve been gnawing on me I’ve lost quite a lot: tendons, little bones … things they can’t just graft from my earlobe. It’s horrifying to contemplate, but it’s a brutal fact that when I get out of here I’m going to have to buy some new feet. They’ll be expensive, I’m sure, and time-consuming, but I’ve got time and Range Rover has lots of money, and my legal position is iron-clad, vis a vis the utter failure of this jack to provide reliable jacking in exactly the adverse jacking conditions Range Rover has repeatedly claimed their product easily overcomes, leading to undeniably severe injury and lifelong mental trauma. What jury wouldn’t sympathize with a guy who lost his feet to a bear due to blatant manufacturer negligence? To the tune of several dozen million American simoleons, at least! I mean, who can put a price on feet?

So I’ve been thinking more about that human foot transplant. I’m sure they can do those now, in our futuristic era of high-tech medicine. I could end up with the feet of a professional athlete who died in a car crash after smoking too much marijuana. I wonder how high I could jump if I had basketball player feet? I’ll probably get a new shoe size and have to buy a whole new set of shoes. That’ll be fun. I live for shoes.

Only, they better not give me negro feet.

You know … prosthetic feet are kind of cool, too. In their way. For instance: there’s a café in Belltown where I get my double latté in the mornings — only because there’s a girl who works the espresso machine there who’s kind of a dyke, but really really hot, so I go there to leer at her — and at this café I’ve often noticed this guy with prosthetic feet. Some kind of veteran, I guess. He’s got nothing but aluminum and plastic from just below the knees all the way to the floor. He’s kind of an older hippie looking guy. He usually wears tie-dyes and jogging shorts, a waxed grey mustache and his grey hair in a pony tail; he looks like shit, basically. But he can walk quite well, which is amazing if you think about it. He’s a little bit overweight but not fat or anything, not Edna fat. At least he’s trying. He’s got little sport shoes on his little plastic feet and he takes his little pug dog out for a walk every morning. He stands, he sits, I even saw him jump up and down once when I knocked coffee in his lap. (I watched him fall over once, too. Actually I sort of pushed him, accidentally — or like, fifty percent accident, forty-nine percent enforcement of my personal space against hippies in general, and maybe just one tiny percent of curiosity about whether he could break his fall with those legs of his. Which he couldn’t, and that was entertaining to watch, but mostly it was an accident.)