A GRIZZLY DIALOGUE

Can you sing this song?

What do you do with a drunken sailor

Early in the morning?
Shave his belly with a rusty razor,
Put him in the hold with the Captain's daughter,
Put him the back of the paddy wagon,
Throw him in the lock-up 'til he's sober,
Put him the back of the paddy wagon.

What about this one:

What do you do with a captive grizzly?

Don’t shave his belly with a rusty razor!

Throw him in a cage with a bigger grizzly,

Throw him in the lock-up to make him a REAL bear!

Then both lives will be full of adventure!

Montana is blessed with grizzlies, which means the continuing problem is what to do with individuals who must be confined. Some are born in captivity (hey, no canoodling in those cages!) and some come as cubs due to some sort of misadventure -- like, someone shot their mama.

In this case, Bruno (a big bear, twelve years old, born in captivity) and Ozzie (a two-year-old when captured six years ago in the wild) were introduced to each other as a bit of an experiment. The trouble with zoos, even ZooMontana, is that they’re boring. And Ozzie was an anxious bear -- he needed some challenges to build up his confidence. So the management, after a lot of consultation and discussion, set up a tranq gun, put a vet on alert, coiled up firehoses and a pail of firecrackers -- even a canister of bear spray, and let the two male bears into the same cage at once, fearing mayhem, hoping for friendship.

Bruno entered. Ozzie flopped on his back in the classic canine and ursine surrender signal, and Bruno sat on him for the next hour. I’m sure he was smiling. Then he let Ozzie up and the two began wrestling. They’ve been happily wrestling like two junior high boys all day every day since.

Dialogues are always interesting so I thought I’d try inventing what was going through Ozzie’s and Bruno’s heads during that first hour.

BRUNO: You twitched! I felt it! You can’t fool me. Stop twitching!

OZZIE: I didn’t! It was involuntary! I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry. No one has sat on me for a very long time and I have no practice. Don’t bite me. Don’t eat me! I’m just a young bear and need to be schooled!

BRUNO: Stop talking. I can’t stand bear babbling. Just show some respect! Don’t move a muscle. Don’t even swallow!

OZZIE: Can I move my eyes?

BRUNO: NO! and stop dribbling!!

OZZIE: Sorry. I didn’t mean anything. I’d like to see your face. Could I see your face? I’m sure it’s a really wonderful face!

BRUNO; Now you’re blathering! Stop that or I’ll bite your unmarked muzzle! And stop rolling your eyes like that.

OZZIE: Your breath smells really wonderful! Like apples and carrots and timothy hay!

BRUNO; Stop smelling my breath!

OZZIE: I’m finding it a little hard to breathe. Could you shift your weight a little? My diaphragm isn’t very strong. I don’t get much exercise.

BRUNO: You’re a lousy excuse for a bear. Soft ! But they do feed well here.

OZZIE: Thanks so much. That’s better.

BRUNO: Tell me -- What’s it like?

OZZIE: What?

BRUNO: You know. IT !! Sex.

OZZIE: How do I know? I was only two years old when I was captured! I STILL miss my mama! I would never have left her. At least I wasn’t right there with her when she was shot.

BRUNO: Well, then, tell me what it’s like to be free, out there in the woods the way bears are supposed to be.

OZZIE: It was pretty good as long as I was with my mama and my brother. We got pretty hungry sometimes, though I really do like carrion and there was always lots of it in the spring. In the fall there were the gut piles from hunters. It was easy to scare them off and you get used to that pepper stuff. I kinda like birdseed, though they never put out enough of it at once time.

BRUNO: So where’s your brother now?

OZZIE: A big bear ate him. My mama saved me but she couldn’t save my brother. I’m not sure she wanted to that much. She didn’t seem to hold it against him long. He was really a big powerful bear and he started her next set of cubs. At least that distracted him enough that he didn’t look for me afterwards. (Pause.) He was bigger than you. Are you planning to eat me?

BRUNO: Stop rolling your eyes around at me like that! Naw. I get enough to eat. What I need is more exercise, a little distraction.

OZZIE: I suppose we could wrestle. I used to do that with my brother.

BRUNO: What else was it like out there in the world?

OZZIE: There weren’t so many humans. I never get used to them interfering with me, moving me around, sticking needles in me, paralyzing me, gawking at me. The scary ones want to pet me.

BRUNO: I’ve never known anything else. This place is better than the one before. It was . . . abusive.

OZZIE: My mother was pretty harsh. I got smacked hard lots of times. Did the humans do really bad things to you?

BRUNO: I don’t want to talk about it. If I do, I have bad dreams.

OZZIE: I can feel your heart beating. (Pause.) How long will we have to stay here?

BRUNO: Forever. The rest of our lives. If we’re lucky.

OZZIE: What do you mean?

BRUNO: Humans get bored easily. If they lose interest or if they can’t get enough money, we might be sent to a worse place or just be killed.

OZZIE: Couldn’t they just set us free? Someplace with lots of carrion and no humans? Or we could promise to be vegetarians. We used to eat a lot of roots and stuff we dug up. I know how to find the right places.

BRUNO: So you were caught six years ago? The world has already changed a lot. There is NO place without humans. If we were lucky they might send us to Alaska where there are lots of salmon, but the salmon are disappearing now. You and I don’t know how to fish. Anyway, the bears up there are a LOT bigger than us and we’re real marshmallows from sitting around in a cage all day.

(Very long pause. We hear two bears breathing, but that’s all.)

OZZIE: Bruno?

BRUNO: Yeah? What?

OZZIE: Let’s wrestle.

BRUNO: Okay.