You may heard about the incident at the Berlin Zoo, in which a woman decided to commune with the polar bears.
Polar bears, along with Kodiak brown bears, are the largest terrestrial carnivores. (However, you could make a case that polar bears, which spend lots of time in the water and on the ice, are actually marine mammals.) They can kill you.
Germans are polar bear obsessed. A few years ago, there was Knut (pronounced the same way we pronounce the Danish king of England whose name we usually spell “Canute.”) Knut’s mother rejected him, and the zoo wanted to keep him. However, animal rights people demanded that he be euthanized, which ticked off the German public, and thus, he was saved. He became a German celebrity. His fame was followed by Flocke (“snowflake), a female bear born at the Nuremberg Zoo. Her mother also rejected her. She is also a celebrity.
And like all celebrities, they attract fans.
This woman was lucky that she wasn’t Timothy Treadwell II.
Actually, it was the animal rights activists who called for Knute’s destruction (ya’ know, better dead than fed or bred), the zoo declined.
This lady would have had such a good shot at a Darwin Award…..
let me rearrange that a bit.