👮♂️911 operator: "911 what is your emergency?"
— 👮♂️🚒 Tales of Badge & Blaze™ (@ScottEnlow) July 21, 2026
😳Caller: "I'm calling to report a bear on top of a light pole." pic.twitter.com/8g07ibZupQ
July 22, 2026
I feel as though the blog has a theme this morning and this belongs in it.
Maybe you can help me refine the concept:
Posts
74 comments:
Unfortunately, it looks like this bear was electrocuted and died.
Theme - Things that will shock you or are out of this world.
I wonder why it climbed up there? Was it trying to get away from another bear? There aren't many other animals that can "tree" a bear.
I hope Gary Larson sees this. He'd know what to say.
@Boyd, too many women want to date him. Needed space.
From a distance, on first blush, it resembles a pussy without a hat or boots hanging on a pole. Meow.
Sometimes words can’t express the reality of the situation.
Bob uses word to explain the obvious state we are in now. The bear looks to have electrocuted itself, and now its carcass has to be removed, so as to quit short-circuiting the power line. But those words don’t explain how we got here.
Why is that bear on that pole? What possessed it to climb it when it should be obvious there is nothing there for it. If the basics necessities are food, water, shelter; none of those things were in the offering for that bear at the top of the pole. But then, none of it looks in the offer in that prairie surrounding the bear. Why is the bear even in that prairie?
It is so lost that in desperation the bear climbed to higher ground to get its bearing, then became the ground.
Is that the situation we may be in soon?
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2025/12/02/bear-stuck-at-top-of-light-pole-rescued-watch-the-arizona-video/87554016007/
This is how America feels trying to remember how it got stuck in Iran with no exit strategy.
"Land art"
I went to Six Mile Cypress Slough in Fort Myers yesterday and a black bear had been spotted on the boardwalk. I didn’t see it, although I heard it vocalizing back in the trees. A volunteer at the visitor center got a pretty good picture and showed it to me.
“I was a lineman for teh county…”
The telephone pole is a man-made object 47 feet high, and is
said to be the highest object on the plains. Its top is called "the top." Close to the top is a bear. No one has explained what the bear was seeking at that altitude.
I feel as though the blog has a theme
The bear is up a tree
which means
the shorts are down
which means
Althouse is not happy
and Japanese women are not happy
Haven’t we all been situations like this where something seemed like a good idea and ended up with an ‘Oh shit’.
Hark! What vision yonder breaks. It is Bearily, blogging... on a pole without a hat or boots.
Matt Damon's double for the hairy scenes
a bear
tried to stifle free speech
by climbing up a telephone poll
only to be electrocuted by the ghost of Thomas Jefferson and Charlie Kirk
The Odyssey, 2026
make it two minutes for the kids
Is it art or is it sex harassment?
Bear Up a Telephone Pole
$1.2 million
Makes me think of the old line "If you see a turtle on a fence post, you know he didn't get there by himself."
We can talk through this bear! We know you're going through a hard time right now. Every one of us have anxieties about whether we're putting on enough weight for winter as well. We have your mom on the phone and there's some ice cream for you if you'll just come down and talk to us. Don't do anything drastic, ok? We're gonna get you some help. YOU HAVE EVERY REASON TO LIVE!
It's easier to climb up than down.
Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, spends $10 million to get a bear on a bridge to nowhere. It was supposed to be a celebration of the California flag, with the bear heading left, to the red star of Communism. 50 years later, the bear is up a telephone pole. And Govan is being sued for sex harassment. "Why did I make this stupid art that nobody wants to buy?" he asks.
"I never promised you a rose garden," Trump says.
Let's ask Turtle On A Post interviews Bear Up Pole
Premium bear posting is what keeps me coming back to Althouse. Best ursid content online, bear none.
wanted:
Cherry picker,
Tranq gun
Strong dudes.
"It's the noise before the chaos, the noise that is always there when I close my eyes to sleep," the bear says, while on a telephone pole. Right before he is thunderstruck with a jolt of electricity.
I was caught in the middle of a railroad track (thunder)
I look 'round and I knew there was no turning back (thunder)
My mind raced and I thought, "what could I do?" (Thunder)
And I knew there was no help, no help from you (thunder)
Crew done good planting that pole. -- how heavy is that bear? Almost as long as the crosspiece!!
@ Disparity of Cult
Paywalled article. Did the bear live? Is it the same bear? I hope it didn't die.
Like seemingly all news these days, there are two completely opposite stories online and you don't know what to believe.
Yes bear lived:
“The black bear that climbed a utility pole in Cochise County, Arizona, and had to be coaxed down by a lineman using a bucket truck and a fiberglass pole. The bear was at risk of electrocution, but crews cut the power first and the animal came down safely and ran off uninjured.”
Raccoons straddle tree branches and hang out in a similar posture during warm weather.
That’s a different bear.
Cochise County? I used to live there. Near Fort Huachuca.
The bear in Cochise County is a different bear from this one.
Looks like that bear in the photo was electrocuted and died.
"They even had a bear in the air."
Ah, breaker, Pig Pen, this here's the Duck. And, you wanna back off them hogs? Yeah, 10-4, 'bout five mile or so. Ten, roger. Them hogs is gettin' in-tense up here
By the time we got into Tulsa Town
We had eighty-five trucks in all
But they's a roadblock up on the cloverleaf
And them bears was wall-to-wall
Yeah, them smokies is thick as bugs on a bumper
They even had a bear in the air
I says, "Callin' all trucks, this here's the Duck
We about to go a-huntin' bear"
'Cause we got a great big convoy
Rockin' through the night
Yeah, we got a great big convoy
Ain't she a beautiful sight?
Come on and join our convoy
Ain't nothin' gonna get in our way
We gonna roll this truckin' convoy
'Cross the USA, convoy
We had an immature bald eagle walk up the porch roof and stare at us through the bedroom window yesterday. Got a great picture of the Peeping Tom. I told my wife, "I've seen The Birds, this does not end well."
Idea for a movie: Qatar gives the President a new Air Force One. But it's a Trojan Horse. Hidden inside the plane are a score of ninja Islamic terrorists. In shorts. And there's an explosion.
What the terrorists did not know is that President Trump was not on the plane. There was a stunt double, a black bear, who fell out of the plane 20,000 feet. Miraculously, the bear survived the fall, bouncing on the cable wires multiple times. Unhappily, he was also electrocuted multiple times. Happily, he survived, and was given the Congressional Medal of Honor, a first for a bear.
California later spent $106 million dollars on an art installation project to memorialize the event. Matt Damon plays the bear in the movie.
I'm proposing as a theme "Seemed like a good idea at the time."
Somebody upthread kind of already said this, so I'm not going to take all the credit.
@Disparity of Cult I got sidetracked by that story too. It's a different year, different state, and, I presume, different bear.
Is that unusual?
"Cochise County? I used to live there. Near Fort Huachuca."
MI? A fellow 'weirdo' from Huachuca?
It's the start of the campaign season, and if the bear touches two of those wires, he'll be conducting a pole.
The theme as expressed by the Serenity Prayer:
“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Women, we NEED TO KNOW...
would you rather be stuck on the top of a power line pole with:
a) a man?
or
b) a bear?
I'm saddened to learn that the bear from the blog post did not survive. My apologies for the noise. I provided Grok the X link, it replied that the bear had been rescued, and when I asked for a news link, it gave the one that I had posted here in the comments. That news link is available on archive.ph but the video will not play, at least not on my device/browser setup.
Bears and powerline poles are White Supremacy, according to the Smithsonian.
The lessons are: When climb a pole -- grin and bear it. When you bite on an electrical wire -- grin and bear it. When you are skinny dipping -- grin and bare it.
Just grin and bear it always. It makes for a prettier face in the casket too.
And that was the clue to finding Mitch McConnell
Not a turtle.
Not a fencepost.
Not my business.
Good luck unlucky Bear, how did you get there?
My Pennsylvania electric company always claims it's a squirrel causing the outage. I will be suspicious going forward.
The bear climbed up the powerline pole,
The bear climbed up the powerline pole,
The bear climbed up the powerline pole,
To see what he could see.
The pole is DSA. The bear is DNC. RIP bear.
What apex predator wouldn't wish to survey all they own. You go bear. Take it all in.
It's a variant on the theme of the "Post Turtle". You see something that doesn't belong--and then wonder how it got there. Sort of like Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary. He was a Post Turtle.
Movie pitch: An electrically charged bear gains superpowers after being shocked while innocently climbing a pole. The giant sparky bear then goes on a Godzilla-like rampage, wreaking vengeance on the tourists who scared him up the pole. For the naughty tourists, choose an ethnicity currently disfavored publicly, wealthy Iranians would be fine but wealthy Russians would also work these days . But in the end the giant, static-blasting ursus saves the world from an alien space invasion, those details to be finalized after funding is secured for production. Then having discharged its electrical superpower, the bear just goes back to the woods - until needed again by society!
This movie would be an even more successful sequel to Cocaine Bear from a few years ago. The bears could even be related, somehow.
Lowlife hooligans put turtles on fence posts and laughed at their inability to get down, but I doubt they could manage that with bears and telephone poles.
"Sort of like Pete Buttigieg as Transportation Secretary. He was a Post Turtle."
Peter "Principle" Buttigieg was bearly man enough to reach such a lofty post.
Up shit creek without a paddle.
RideSpaceMountain said...
"MI? A fellow 'weirdo' from Huachuca?"
Nope. 11th Signal Brigade. Remember the patch on the mountain? They had just removed it when I got there.
He's standing on the neutral and had to have hit one of the phases to get into that position. Don't deal with an idiot 911 operator or Fish and Wildlife. Call the power company.
They'll have to keep that line dead till the bear extricates itself and it already looks like the crossbar brace needs repair. Maybe that spur is shutdown for some reason?
I have to question if the video is real.
Subcontractors.
I have spent a fair amount of time in Cochise County, and am heading out there again in a few weeks. Not near anything or anywhere. Have seen bears but not on telephone poles.
The bear is breathing and moving. He just found a good place for a nap where he wouldn’t be bothered by lesser forms of life. He’ll come down when he’s good and ready.
But it's possible I wasn't looking and have driven past many bears on telephone posts.
Bad news, for the bear
"Remember the patch on the mountain?"
Do bears shuffle up power poles? Small world. Go Thunderbirds.
I am absolutely making this a t-shirt. Also, very album cover worthy.
After seeing this, I just bet $100 on the Bears to win the Super Bowl.
Mr. T. said...
Bears and powerline poles are White Supremacy, according to the Smithsonian.
A year ago to the day two black bear cubs were electrocuted climbing a utility pole in Juneau. It’s always the black and brown bears of color. Never the white ones.
After seeing this, I just bet $100 on the Bears to win the Super Bowl.
Should have taken the Chargers.
Bob, good point. So I just bet $100 on Chargers too. Thank God there wasn’t a plane in that clip because no chance am I betting on the Jets.
Roughly 400 illegals who voted in NJ will be processed and deported. Another 113 who voted in DC were identified yesterday.
This is just the beginning.
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