Aquarian Weekly 6/21/03
REALITY CHECK

BEAR HUNT MADNESS

If you live in my neck of the mountainous woods, or some points beyond, like places in New Jersey where no one reads or down in NYC, where the Village Voice is now being run by despots, you will hear a great deal of nonsense about some letter that was written to PETA (Protection for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) about organizing a vigilante group to shoot bear hunters here in the greater Vernon area.

You will also hear a lot of crazy talk about hooded nefarious types involved with The Desk and other seedy individuals seen leaving Fort Vernon with fatigues and bull horns and detailed maps of black bear hunting routes.

This is wrong.

Slander is the better word. And those who wish to attach me to such scurrilous rumor will pay dearly, but not with their life. We here at Fort Vernon preach pacifism and civil disobedience, and even though the odd ass stomping must be administered to the right people, a glorious acceptance of peace and love.

I say let the bear fend for themselves. It's natural selection. I'm sure there were plenty of Native Americans perfectly happy to hang here without any of the white man's bullshit. But they are gone now, and so soon will the bear be gone.

I didn't invent madness. I just comment on it. And now people who contemplate the parameters of my wife's animal rights zealousness now think it necessary to drape me with all kinds of sick innuendo about feeding puppies to traveling bear to properly arouse their taste for blood and then dangle fresh raccoon meat from car antennas during midnight runs off side roads on Route 23.

As if the odd prank could even begin to organize the bear population to break into kitchens or feed on discarded infants.

I know the images are harsh, but you have no idea what kind of bizarre shit goes on up here late night when the bear comes out. It's like a concentrated microcosm of SARS or Anthrax scares when nothing really happens but panic.

We don't have terror alerts in the mountains. We have black bear.

Why do you think Orson Wells picked Jersey for his little radio ruse? It works well on the panicky kind. And we have so many up here it's hard to fathom.

The good people of Sussex county or PETA have apparently not heard of Manifest Destiny or the United States army or the NJ State Police, and they want to shoot off their mouths and get smarmy about citizens taking up arms and cutting down those involved in some Neanderthal hunting activities up here.

I must rail against such nonsensical talk. Killing hunters? The irony is admittedly sweet, but it is still a crime here in New Jersey. At the very least it coincides with the Ten Commandments, and in my continued study of the Bible and other subversive material, that is where the fun stops.

No, I must not only take my name off such irresponsibly and criminally insane rhetoric, but I must implore my fellow Vernonites to bow to clearer solutions and allow the natural order of things to take hold. That is what we were taught in Civics 101 and Sunday school and at the lap of Grandpa, who told us to "Keep our friends close and our enemies closer" and "Don't let your right hand know what your left hand is doing" and other bits of wisdom that has outlasted dusty paperweights like the Bible.

But one thing this kind of reverse guerilla media warfare accomplishes is to alert us to this latest ham-handed attempt at silencing strange journalists with methods best left unsaid and unwritten and understood quite differently by people who don't consider their environment and the dangers it presents.

The truth dies hard up here.

Bear are a much easier target.

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