News From the Eastern Front

Some folks, sang Brother Lyle Lovett, say there ain't no bears in Arkansas. Well, there sure as hell ain't no bears in Barvaria, as Bruno the Hero Bear fell to relentless Tuetonic efficiency:

BERLIN - Bruno has eaten his last sheep.

The 220-pound brown bear who knocked over honey pots and ravaged livestock, who roamed the Bavarian Alps like an outlaw on the run, eluding farmers and Finnish hounds, was tracked by three hunters and shot just after dawn on a partly cloudy Monday.

The first wild bear known to have to meandered into Germany in more than 150 years was "painlessly done away with" near the town of Rotwand, said Otmar Bernhard, undersecretary of the Bavarian Environment Ministry. "We will perform a genetic examination of the bear, then preserve and exhibit him in the museum for man and nature in Munich."

German engineers labored feverishly under brutal deadlines to complete the "Monster Garage"-like transition of a new Porsche Cayenne into a mobile "Feral Bear Containment Facility"...naw, that's just an on-going cultural slur. But "painlessly done away with"? I'm amazed they didn't issue a statement that Bruno was "relocated to the East..."

So meet a bear and take him out to lunch with you
And even though your friends may stop and stare
Just remember that's a bear there in the bunch with you
And they just don't come no better than a bear