All Entries Tagged With: "bears"
Toole Defects to Bruins
(Ridgway) Astrodynamic editor Manfred “Waterworks” O’Toole, has fled the coop, apparently preferring the company of bears to that of his fellow humans. According to a note left on his computer earlier in the week the noted scribe had “had enough” and was going to the woods “in search of some answers”.
According to a longtime co-worker O’Toole always had a thing for bears.
“He used to feed them and liked to photograph them when they weren’t looking,” said Estelle Marmotbreath, a blind proofreader employed by the San Juan Tattoo and Tofu, a publication that included O’Toole on its payroll roster. “Some of us thought it was odd that he lived on berries and apples and liked to bury his meat, sometimes for up to a month, before consumption.”
An accomplished caver, “O’Toole claims to have explored over 400 caves in Western Colorado and New Mexico. He had begun growing out his coat in 2015 seemingly protesting the use of rubber bullets and tagging of bruins. In 2017, when more and more bears were being destroyed for their garbage raiding incursions into local towns O’Toole became a virtual recluse, rarely venturing forth from his den, located between Elk Meadows and Lake Otonawanda on Miller Mesa.
“He clearly saw the bears as the good guys and the encroaching humans as the aggressors,” said Marmotbreath. “Some people may brand him a traitor to his species but most of us around here just think he’s loco.”
According to former reporters at the paper O’Toole has experienced short-term memory loss since 1965, often not recalling simple daily routines and unable to find his car or typewriter. Sometimes he even went out into the wilderness looking for bear when even a simpleton would know that they were in town eating garbage.
“One time he wrote a scourging piece accusing the DOW of murdering all of the bears only to realize that they were safely hibernating in their caves,” said a former reporter, turned beekeeper. “We were continually coming up short here at our operation and thought maybe O’Toole was swiping raw honey for his friends in the forest. Why else would he have developed such an intense interest in what we were doing? He was hanging around all the time, asking questions and taking notes.”
Although O’Toole has done nothing illegal he has been quickly ostracized from certain segments of society such as the hoity-toity Polar Bear Lodge and the Disappointment Valley Optimists Club, an organization that he founded in 1952.
“He doesn’t seem to give a damn about anything human,” said an old friend and naturalist Suzie Compost, who is contemplating spending next summer living with Japanese Snow Monkeys (Macaques) in the Kitami Mountains.
O’Toole, who put on some 100 pounds since August, will not be harmed by authorities unless he becomes a nuisance.
Meanwhile local wildlife experts say that calculations “were a bit premature” regarding claims that well publicized bear diversion projects had been a rousing success so far this winter.
“We didn’t account for the fact that the bear were engaged in serious hibernation and therefore were not coming to town like in the fall,” said several biologists.
– Fred Zeppelin
Bears and Angel Above Board in Legal Squabble
The Gladstone Bears are expected to drop a painful class action suit against Johnny Angel it was disclosed today. Attorneys for the fury beasts appear to have convinced them that they have no case while a nearby magistrate is leaning toward a dismissal.
Angel, the local hermit, had taken to playing one-armed bingo and eating sausage sandwiches inside a large meal culvert in the middle of town. The grievance declared that he was creating a pubic nuisance, especially in the winter months when the bear are trying to sleep.
“These bullies have sued only resident of the town,” said one circuit judge in Silverton last July. The summons did not cite past misdeeds such as public nudity, baiting, flatulence, drunkenness, halitosis and the insensitive, grotesque exhibition of hides.
Angel, who is most likely unaware of the news, is expected to file a countersuit on the grounds that the bear closed the road to his diggings up Meatloaf Meadow. Furthermore, he claims that bears roughed him up every time he went down to the town’s only bar, which has been closed since the abandonment of the Silver Standard in 1896.
The miner’s friends say he has been hunting salmon over in Topeka Gulch.
As the dust settles San Juan County has agreed to allow the Bears, a semi-professional hurling team, to play their home games at Ghost Field, the scene of much wickedness and debauchery especially in the later innings. Meanwhile Hinsdale and Ouray Counties are shuffling trapped, stranded spirits, local ghosts and unnecessary elected officials in an attempt to field a team by May.
The hermit, as our readers often proudly remind the public, gained marginal notoriety when in 1975 he discovered a pretend land route from Eureka to the East Sea. He is the author of Spooning in Animas Forks, a detailed chronicle and comparison of telephone books used as seating accessories in the Opera Houses and Brothels of San Juan County (1879 – 1899). Testosterone Brothers, Boston.
