By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Call of the Wild
Great news from Lansing, where the same state government that gave us the Flint water crisis has banned using chocolate as bait for bears.
We can poison poor people but pack M&M’s in a picnic basket and Yogi purloins the thing, look out. We can still bait him with other foods, then kill him whatever way makes us happy when hunting starts. But since chocolate contains theobromine which can poison bears, powers that be says luring them with it is inhumane.
Ethical questions are always best left to Lansing. Like intent. If you mean to lure a bear with chocolate to his eventual death, is it different than if you set out Hershey Kisses for an Easter egg hunt and a bear beats the children to it?
Do we blame the bear in that case for stealing it? And what if he eats the children? Is it his fault the chocolate deranged him? So many questions, so few lawyers.
Theobromine can also be toxic to dogs, raccoons, some birds and other animals. My dog steals and eats anything he can get his mouth on. Do we value the lives of bears over our best friends?
I was hunting bear with my camera in Saugatuck Township after a “sighting” last fall — which turned out to be of Mabel, a Bernese mountain dog —when I thought, Since we all die anyway, why is by gun, bow and arrow, steel trap and so on OK but chocolate isn’t?
Then there’s moose. We have few here, but in Alaska it’s not uncommon to see 1,600-pound bulls strolling streets of Anchorage. Wildlife officials warned residents there last week to keep their distance after two close calls with grumpy creatures.
One moose walked up behind a woman who was tending chickens, ate food from the bucket she was carrying, then, when she turned around to confront it, kicked her.
“It pulled its nose out, looked at her, reared back and kicked her right in the noggin,” said Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Jason Herreman.
Another moose twice charged skiers in a lift line. “It ended up resembling the running of the bulls in Pamplona,” department spokesman Ken Marsh said.
In summer moose eat lush leaves, Marsh explained, but in winter — which lasts a long time in Alaska— they turn to twigs and other woody material less nutritious. By spring moose are tired and cranky, the spokesman said.
I know of no confirmed moose or bear sightings here, but learned a lot about both having watched cartoons. Education is a great thing. I later learned both can be human spirit guides.
If a moose, say Bullwinkle, is your animal totem, friends and peers look up to your knowledge and innate wisdom, according to spirit-animals.com. You move through life with authority. If it’s Yogi, you’re well-grounded, have strength and confidence. I took a test on the site and found out I was a tick.
“I could have told you that,” my wife said.
Why? I asked.
“’Cause you stole my chocolate.”
You left it out. What did you expect?
“Why can’t theobromine work on humans?”
What if the dog had eaten it?
“He eats everything. Nothing phases him.”
This was true. The big lunk devours tin cans, whole boxes of Cocoa Krispies including the wrappers inside and cardboard, a full bottle of sleeping pills once that did not even make him drowsy … He is not yet bear-size but soon will get there.
You adopted him, I accused her.
“But he’s your best friend.”
Also true. The idiot sleeps next to me, bounds and turns circles at the sight of any red car, like mine, and is otherwise insufferable in ways only canines can get away with.
Look, I said. If a bear had broken into the house and eaten it, we would be in deep doo-doo.
“Eaten the house? Or chocolate?” my wife asked.
Either. In the latter case, we could be fined up to $500 and/or sentenced to 90 days in jail.
“And the bear would walk free?”
That or die of chocolate.
“I can think of worse ways to go,” she said.
