DO Feed The Bears. Yes, BEARS. As In More Than One Of Them.

So a few years ago I used to hang out at a fairly strange place. Lets see here, it is 2008 now so this had to be at least 12 years ago. 12 - 15 years ago. I can not remember well enough to pin down an exact date so you will just have to deal with a range of possible dates.

I forgot the exact situation. Actually I do now. I knew someone who knew these chicks. One was a stripper I believe. Something like that. The other chick was not a stripper but still attractive.

Anyway where was I? OH YEA the bear story.

There was a party and I showed up and a lot of people were there. One of the two chicks mentioned something about something and somehow I got involved in it. Now that I think about it, I think it had something to do with lifting weights or some such shit at a clubhouse in the development one of the chicks lived in? Sounds right - but it was a long time ago.

Nobody ever lifted anything. There were time-space altering plants that got in the way of that. DARN PLANTS!!!

Flash forward some time. There is no way to know how much time due to the whole altering of time-space thing. Could have been weeks, could have been years. Who really knows.

I don't.

One of the chicks (the one who was not ever a stripper and who I had become friends with) had a little accident. Maybe on purpose, maybe not. The accident led to a hasty marriage and new life. OOPS! It happens. Not my fault!

I think it was at a time that for some reason I had lost contact with everyone. But I got a call and found out the news. I was also invited - by someone else - to go visit!

Well why not.

As it turns out she had married some kid whose father had recently died and left him with a full fledged business. A business that was making money. He had a really nice house on a decent size chunk of land in a good area. The living area of the house was built over the business. The business was boarding animals. The place was bonded, meaning that was the only place that could collect critters that came into the airport. US Customs dogs also stayed there.

Which was strange, for the living area of the house had a constant cloud of mystery smoke wafting around. It made for some interesting times. There would be a room full of people hanging out and smoking "stuff" - when a van that said "US Customs" would pull up and a bunch of federal agents with dogs would get out and come in the house and nobody seemed to care.

It really was strange. But whatever. Cool place to hang out. There was AC and a TV and other things.

And now for the bears. One day bears were flown into the airport. And the bears needed a place to hang out for a few days. So they came to the place. Real live Russian circus bears. Hairy, stinky, pissed off, BEARS. In cages made from cheap plywood and flat iron bars. ALL the welds had cracks on them.

And since this was a Russian outfit, the cages were barely large enough. Yea I know - bad pun. But the cages were small. The bears could not really even stand up fully. The boxes were just large enough that the bears could be crammed into the cages.

Now imaging you had to fly all the way to Miami from somewhere in Russia in a box that was really too small for you. How happy would you be? Now imagine you are a BEAR! Now how pissed off are you going to be?

Very. The answer is very. Everyone hates flying. Epically bears. They have to fly as cargo you know. No drink service, no movie, no anything.

The bears could only speak Russian. And nobody except the trainers could speak Russian. But the trainers bailed. Leaving the bears. In the flimsy looking cages.

And of course, the bears got hungry. But there were fruit trees on the property. So some hippies went off and collected a few bananas and stuff.

And thus we all learned that if you show two hungry bears food, and only give them one banana at a time - and then run out of "bear food" long before the bears are not hungry anymore - the bears get very mad. I mean they were a little upset about the flight arrangement as it was, but then you show a hungry bear one banana when they want 10 pounds of bananas??

Seriously - someone was feeding the bears grapes ONE GRAPE AT A TIME. That REALLY pissed them off. Imagine a person who has not eaten all day, and some asshole offers them ONE CHEETO. One. Not one bad. But one single solitary Cheeto.

So the idea occurred to someone that dumpsters are your friend when you have to feed bears. Perfectly good bear food is thrown out every day.

So a few people loaded up into the business van and headed off to raid dumpsters.

We actually returned with a bounty of food. Some of it was pretty rank, but we did find one market that was tossing out a lot of stuff that was just too ripe to sell, but was not rotten yet. We got to that stuff before it even got near the dumpster.

In a short time we had what seemed like enough bear food. So we went back.

This time we did not show the bears the food. We just got two piles of it and rapidly stuffed it into the cages. So the bears had enough food to make them happy.

I think the wacky Russians showed up later with real bear food. Maybe they bought it from the zoo? Who knows. But they brought something. Which was good, as nobody really wanted to mess with the pissed off caged bears.

The gross thing is that some of the hippies there decided that the bear food was also human food. And they made this large bowl of salad.

We fed the bears all the good stuff. Needless to say I did not eat anything.

So there. My famous bear story. And as crazy as it sounds, it is all true. Really. It is true. In spite of the time-space altering plants it is true.

So what happened after that? A lot. The kid running the place let it go. It got a little scary to be there. The marriage broke up - badly. I quit hanging out at the place, and after some time I lost contact with everyone involved with the place. The house was trashed (really trashed - doors removed all windows broken and the whole works). The business closed. The land was sold and subdivided and is now a bunch of single family homes.

But the bear story lives on. I shall never forget the Russian circus bears. And the adventure they spawned. Those were crazy times.