As the New York Times reports that my home state of New Jersey is gripped by the furry paw of a bear epidemic…
State biologists estimate that as many as 3,400 bears now roam New Jersey, the nation’s most densely populated state, and say a hunt is the most effective way to control the increasingly troublesome population. Two bears were killed last weekend in Sussex County in northwest New Jersey after one broke into a house and another broke into a shed.
“We are going to have a large population of bears way into the future. It’s a prolific problem,” said Martin J. McHugh, the director of the state’s Division of Fish and Wildlife. “Our aim is to reduce the growth of the population.”
Here in Taiwan we see what happens when bears are allowed to run completely rampant.
A three-year-old boy was critically injured yesterday after a caged circus bear nearly ripped off his arm in southern Taiwan, a hospital official said. Doctors performed emergency surgery to reattach the right arm of the boy, who was found lying in a pool of blood by the bear’s cage on a farm where a circus from Vietnam was performing, an official from Chi Mei Hospital said. Farm staff said the boy, who went to see the bear perform stunts like riding a bicycle, might have provoked the animal by trying to pat it. The incident occurred while his mother was talking to performers. The performance was suspended after the attack. The boy’s parents blamed the farm owners for the attack for failing to put up warning signs in front of the bear’s cage, local newspapers said.
There was a string of bear attacks in Japan in 2004 as well. I was tempted to post on it but decided against it, mostly out of laziness. Bears are dangerous!
And I thought I would escape their scourge by coming to Taiwan. Japan at least we know has a long history of ursine-residents, from the Auni bear-worship.
Anyway, dig up those articles and post something! It’s great stuff.
Regarding the Taiwan story, the bear was in a cage. It was the mother and child who were running rampant. Same goes for that Chinese reporter who had her hand bitten by a panda sometime within the past couple of days.
That Martin J. McHugh might want to focus his efforts on “reduc[ing] the growth of the [human] population” instead.
People are dangerous!
From what I’ve seen of Pandas, you’d have to work mightily hard to piss one off enough to make it bite you. Or possible wrap yourself in tasty little bamboo shoots.
… or take a pregnant and moody one, place it in a cage, surround it with shouting people and flashing cameras, and then get a dumbass reporter to stick her hand in…