Not Your Average Bear

This is our local bear.

She has been living in the tree outside my living room window for many years. She comes and goes with the seasons. Every spring my landlord Dan carries an aluminum ladder out to the sidewalk and climbs up to place her in the notch of the tree. In the fall he takes her down again.

This teddy has lived outdoors so long she’s gone feral. The pink fur has turned matted and dirty and gray, even rotten in places. The bag of sugar under her left arm has split and is leaking stuffing. You wouldn’t even want to touch her. No self-respecting mother would ever let such a bear in a child’s room. Certainly Rosine, who is Dan’s wife, isn’t thrilled. She’d toss it in the garbage if she could.

No one knows how, or why, the bear took up residence. It just showed up one day. There it sat a long while. Then Dan took it down and threw it in trash.

But the neighbors came calling, quite distressed, especially the children. “What happened to the bear?” they cried.

So Dan pulled the bear from the trash and put her back in the tree. And the annual migration has continued ever since. The bear summers in our tree and winters in a dry alcove in the side alley.

Someday, when I don’t live here any more and I’m driving through the neighborhood during the dry season, I will come by and look for the bear, just like the kids. If she is not there I will be a little disappointed.

How could I not? I mean, she’s our bear.