THE BEAR IN THE GARAGE

I was sitting with the wife, cat on my lap, ranting about people with excessive tattoos trying to attract a disproportionate amount of attention to themselves without really doing anything intelligent or creative to earn it, or like bikers who ride extremely loud Harleys, or teenagers who blast the bass in their cars so that you can hear it three blocks away trying to make people look at them without providing any good reason to do so, and that’s why you should NEVER look, when I noticed that the cat was looking at me with rapt attention, as if I had a bunch of tattoos or a loud car stereo. The cat seemed to be thinking, “Yes! Right! You nailed it!”

This is the same cat who normally spends its time trying to create puncture wounds in hard to reach places, such as behind the couch. I looked back at it and it winked at me, so I realized that it might be yanking my crank. Humans are transparent; my wife she did a slight eye roll then “Yes, deared” me. But cats are an inscrutable lot, and my crank is much more easily yanked by them.

I enjoy playing with the cat; he likes strategic board games with a lot of game pieces. Sometimes we play a simple game where I just annoy the crap out of it, and it tries to bite the fleshy area between my thumb and forefinger, where it’s the most painful. Where did it learn this- are there a lot of animals out in the wild with a fleshy area there? I thought most animals don’t even have a thumb. This cat, angry that it does not itself have opposable thumbs, vehemently opposes mine. It is purring loudly when we play this game, which leads me to believe that a cat is happiest when it is trying to kill you.

Unlike a cat, other animals don’t want to hurt you, they just want to eat you. For instance, a snake doesn’t go for the fleshy area between your thumb and forefinger, it just kicks you in the balls and then swallows you whole. You know exactly what a snake just ate because it takes so long to digest. If you’re looking for that roast beef sandwich with a coke that you just bought at the deli, check the snake. There he is, looking up at the ceiling trying to avoid your eyes, with a big bulge in EXACTLY the shape of a roast beef sandwich and coke, traveling slowly down his body.

When I was looking for the possible Mountain Lion in my back yard that time, I never thought once that it would lunge at the fleshy area between my thumb and forefinger. I thought of the old adage, that the wild animal is more frightened of YOUR thumb and forefinger than you are of ITS thumb and forefinger.

I read that if you encounter a wild animal in the wild, you are supposed to open your jacket and hold it out by the sides, widening your profile so you can look more threatening. In my case I was wearing only swim shorts, but I figured that when I held the shorts open to widen my profile, the sound coming from me enduring a major-league wedgie would scare the thing off even before it looked at me.

The one thing you are not supposed to do is run, because the tiger will immediately think that you are going to get THE LAST piece of wildebeest at the cafeteria, and wants to get in the line before you.

Animals in general are becoming less fearful of humans. Did you see the video of the bear cub climbing around in someone’s garage? It scared the hell out of me, because there is so much crap in my garage, how would I even know if there are bears in there? My brother-in-law Jeff encountered a bear while napping in a hammock at his house in the Poconos. The bear gave him a look like, “Dude, you’re in my hammock,” but Jeff had already run into the house so fast that now there is a hole in the wall shaped exactly like him.



Incidentally, you should NOT try to suck the poison out of a snake bite. Because then it’s in YOUR mouth, and when the guy you sucked it out of slaps you on the back to thank you, you’re screwed. Instead, apply a tourniquet above the bite so that the poison does not spread through the bloodstream. If you must suck poison, suck the poison out of the snake itself- that would be a public service.