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