Althouse: "We were in this town in northern Manitoba where polar bears literally will walk down Main Street."

February 3, 2013

"We were in this town in northern Manitoba where polar bears literally will walk down Main Street."

"There are polar bears in this town. People will leave their cars and houses unlocked, and it's perfectly good form just to duck into any open door you can find when there's a polar bear chasing you."

36 comments:

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...: I like his self-deprecation.; 2/3/13, 9:16 AM
pm317 said...: "[The bears] don't want to be in town, they're just waiting for the ice to freeze. But if they're a hassle in town, put them in jail, give them a short sentence, and the problem is solved."

Ha, this is where all the missing polar bears that lefties talk about are.; 2/3/13, 9:18 AM
Eric the Fruit Bat said...: Get rid of the Coca-Cola and you'll have fewer polar bears.; 2/3/13, 9:18 AM
ricpic said...: Canadian Homesick Blues

I wuz amblin' down duh street
When what should appeah?
Polah Beah!
I duck in duh daw
But forgit to lockit...

Canadian homesick one ahm b-l-o-o-o-o-s.; 2/3/13, 9:21 AM
The Drill SGT said...: I love the Churchill doormats; 2/3/13, 9:23 AM
The Drill SGT said...: BTW: Polar Bears are convinced that they are at the top of the food chain...; 2/3/13, 9:24 AM
chuck said...: I started realizing polar bears were not in as bad a shape as the conventional wisdom had led me to believe

"The conventional wisdom?" Call it ignorant belief in BS. And while that sort of ignorance is commonplace in certain circles, to call it conventional is to insult everyone with a working connection to reality who takes the trouble to be informed.; 2/3/13, 9:26 AM
Automatic_Wing said...: BTW: Polar Bears are convinced that they are at the top of the food chain...

Hard to disagree with them.; 2/3/13, 9:31 AM
Oso Negro said...: All you have to do is stand between a bear and your family one time armed with nothing but a rock and you will be a zealous advocate of firearms.; 2/3/13, 9:31 AM
virgil xenophon said...: Polar Bears!? B, B, B, But, But But, I thought they were all extinct because of Global Warming! The MSM told me so! The MSM is wrong? Oh Noooo....Say it ain't so, say it ain't so..

(PS: A recently deceased 85 yr-old dear friend of mine--an extraordinary woman and native of Milwaukee who raced formula cars, and was a 50s/60s folk-singer of some note in NYC--has a husband (still living) who is, among other things, an expert on Polar Bears and has perhaps photographed more in the wild than any man alive. He ALSO calls BS on all the "climate-warming-on-the-road-to-extinction-of-polar-bears" crap..); 2/3/13, 9:37 AM
Sorun said...: The guy uproots his family to go write a "mournful elegy" for the polar bear, and then finds this out: "There are far more polar bears alive today than there were 40 years ago. ..."

He could have found that out at home in California. Google? Library?; 2/3/13, 9:39 AM
Cedarford said...: Give the author credit that his opinion changes without ideological pride "fuckin' with his head, telling him to say no!" when he comes in contact with reality. Unlike other lefties, or the free traders, PETA folk, and neocons.

These people he writes about are people in the remote boonies. They tend to be practical, "unromantic" people. Like their polar bear solutions...which tend to (1)Beat the NRA Freedom Lover with his Beloved Gun Free to shoot anything he in his minds sees as a threat, with impunity...solution.(2)The only government heroes can save us solution.; 2/3/13, 9:49 AM
edutcher said...: Well, they could always walk around naked and the bears will just figure it's another Polar bare.; 2/3/13, 9:56 AM
Titus said...: I have seen bears walking the streets of Montreal.

They even have a bear week.

Ptown too-you can't swing a cat without hitting a bear.; 2/3/13, 9:58 AM
Wince said...: TIME Magazine mistakenly reported that polar bear populations are shrinking due to being forced in the water by the receding ice cap.

What government-funded scientists actually found is that male polar bears suffer from "shrinkage" due to cold water.; 2/3/13, 10:03 AM
The Drill SGT said...: He ALSO calls BS on all the "climate-warming-on-the-road-to-extinction-of-polar-bears" crap..)

as I understand it, Polar Bears and Grizzlies are almost exactly the same at the DNA level, just some color variations. Apparently the ranges overlap and depending on climatic conditions over the last several hundred thousand years, the bears change color back and forth.

hell, we see that in birds over a hundred years. urban swallows for example.; 2/3/13, 10:03 AM
DADvocate said...: Obviously Zac Unger is perpetrating a huge hoax upon us. Everyone knows there are hardly any polar bears left and those are floating around hopelessly on a piece of ice.; 2/3/13, 10:06 AM
Leslie Graves said...: Oh shoot. For a second I thought this was the Gatsby sentence of the day.; 2/3/13, 10:11 AM
Megaera said...: Spent a few days in Churchill waiting for the Muskeg Express (the sleepers are laid on soft Arctic substrate so the "express" never gets much over 25 mph). Even in summer all those years ago you could tell that a major part of the town's livelihood revolved around polar bear tourism (mid to late 90's), and there was an amplitude of bears back then, so no, this guy's research skills do not impress. What should/does impress anyone who canoes the rivers in the Hudson Bay watershed is that when the ice melts the bears all go ... inland! upriver, prowling the muskeg flats and river bottoms looking for seal, caribou, fish, and the occasional canoer to round out their summer diet. Being exclusively carnivorous, a fact we all took very much to heart on that trip. We had no problems, but an unarmed group of 4 who were being methodically stalked by 2 adult bears had to be evacuated by helicopter to Churchill and lost everything when the bears ravaged their campsite by way of compensation for THEIR loss.; 2/3/13, 10:23 AM
Bob Boyd said...: "...because you don't want to be dressed as something white in the darkness when there's a bunch of guys with guns looking for polar bears."

The KKK never really caught on up there.; 2/3/13, 10:36 AM
Megaera said...: Cedarford: Churchill may be geographically remote, but it doesn't exactly fit the rather patronizing "boonie" description you've assigned it. It used to be a bustling port with extensive freight and grain facilities, rail connections with Thompson and lots of shipping in and out of the Northern Interior. A lot of that has gone, dried up now, and the facilities linger on more derelict than usable, but you can see what the town used to be. And in the grand old spirit of using the lemons you've been handed to make lemonade, they've taken the most dangerous carnivores on earth, which traverse their town twice yearly and hang around like lethal delinquents -- greatly affecting public safetly and freedom of movement, BTW -- and exploited the lunacy which is polar bear faddism to the absolute max. Good on them, say I, but don't mistake a pragmatic decision to literally not kill the goose that lays the golden egg of ecotourism with a touchy-feely hug-the-poley instinct. They know exactly how dangerous the damn things are, and the precautions they take to protect themselves ought to give you some hint of that.; 2/3/13, 10:37 AM
Anonymous said...: "People use what they call Churchill welcome mats, which is a piece of plywood laid down in front of the door or leaned up against the door with hundreds of nails sticking out so that when the polar bear comes up to pad across your porch, he's going to get a paw full of sharp nails."

I'd love to know how many people mistakenly step onto those.

Peter; 2/3/13, 10:37 AM
Tyrone Slothrop said...: When I lived in Alaska we had a method for taking care of polar bears. You dig a hole in the ice, and spread peas all around it. When the polar bear comes to take a pea, you kick him in the ice hole.; 2/3/13, 10:38 AM
Anonymous said...: Sorun said...
"The guy uproots his family..."

C'mon his family consists of himself, his wife, and three young kids. This is called Adventure with Dad, beats getting expelled from school for drawing a "gun" on a piece of paper.; 2/3/13, 10:44 AM
Big Mike said...: ... and a bunch of wildlife conservation officers will come by in a truck with a bunch of guns.

How many lefty readers had a fit of the vapors when they read that line?; 2/3/13, 10:59 AM
Big Mike said...: ... and a bunch of wildlife conservation officers will come by in a truck with a bunch of guns.

How many lefty readers had a fit of the vapors when they read that line?; 2/3/13, 10:59 AM
Clyde said...: Oso Negro said...
All you have to do is stand between a bear and your family one time armed with nothing but a rock and you will be a zealous advocate of firearms.

Says the man whose handle means "black bear" in Spanish! :-); 2/3/13, 11:02 AM
Sorun said...: This is called Adventure with Dad...

True -- an above average dad in the careless but fun department. He's like Clark Griswold.; 2/3/13, 11:02 AM
Ambrose said...: A variation of the "any port in a storm" rule.; 2/3/13, 11:03 AM
Anonymous said...: How many lefty readers had a fit of the vapors when they read that line?

Probably very few.

And the reason there are more polar bears now than forty years ago is that hunting ceased in the early seventies.

Polar Bears!? B, B, B, But, But But, I thought they were all extinct because of Global Warming! The MSM told me so!

You are just making shit up if you seriously believe that the mainstream media has said polar bears are extinct. The concern is that if the loss of sea ice continues, polar bear populations will be threatened. Spending a season among one of the greatest polar bear populations in the world and writing an amusing travel book about it, hardly demonstrates the concerns of serious scientific researchers are unfounded.; 2/3/13, 11:17 AM
Anonymous said...: In Longyearbyen, the capital of Spitsbergen, polar bears are so common and so aggressive that it is illegal to walk outside the built-up parts of town without a rifle. If you don't have one of your own you can rent one at the police station for a small fee.

Peter; 2/3/13, 11:28 AM
Megaera said...: Freder: I think if you check you'll find that the tribes have never stopped hunting polar bears; they have their own regulations and how and whether they enforce them is up to them. Canada allows hunting of polar bears by non-natives only with a licensed First Nations guide w/ a very costly tag. Same rule may run in Alaska ... I seem to recall a bizarre situation a few years back where a properly licensed hunter with a properly credentialed NA guide shot a bear designated for him by the guide, then the Fish and Wildlife people necropsied it and announced that while it was superficially indistinguishable from a polar bear it was nevertheless a polar bear/grizzly bear hybrid and as such illegal under the tag, and tried to put the guy in prison for 10 years w/ a $50K fine by way of insult to injury. Took years to work out.; 2/3/13, 11:53 AM
Rusty said...: Freder Frederson said...
How many lefty readers had a fit of the vapors when they read that line?

Probably very few.

And the reason there are more polar bears now than forty years ago is that hunting ceased in the early seventies

http://polarbearhunting.net/

Uh. No.

The concern is that if the loss of sea ice continues, polar bear populations will be threatened.

You know polar Bears estivate, right?; 2/3/13, 11:55 AM
DADvocate said...: Here you go Frederson, you dumb ass, from National Geographic Most Polar Bears Gone By 2050, Studies Say.

Quote: "If we don't change the path that we're on now, then it will be too late," she said. "Polar bears will become extinct."; 2/3/13, 12:06 PM
kentuckyliz said...: I know where the polar bears are going.

They are falling off planes.; 2/3/13, 12:18 PM
Gene said...: How many lefty readers had a fit of the vapors when they read that line?

That made me laugh. Times have changed so much when I was in college at Columbia in the sixties. I kept a .22 rifle in my dorm room in those days and shot on the rifle team.

I forgot all about it until I went back to Columbia 10 years ago, idly looked at a glass trophy case and happened to see my name.

I hope no one in the school administration notices it. These days they'd probably retroactively revoke my degree.; 2/3/13, 8:21 PM