Hurry up Jake! Turn the prop and get in! The owners are coming! Photo: Richard Voliva
This week we took a break from fishing to do some polar bear watching from one of our Churchill Wild ecolodges on the Hudson Bay coast. The bears were most cooperative, arriving in large numbers and primping and preening and sometimes sparring just outside our enormous picture windows. On this particular afternoon, the fireplace was lit, the lodge was cozy, a delicious lunch had been enjoyed by all and frankly we’d seen so many bears we decided that a little siesta was in order.
Well, it was about that time that a couple of young polar bears chose to make their break. One polar bear was inside the airplane manning the throttle (sorry you can’t see him) while the other hand-bombed the prop (Doug Webber had wisely taken the keys for a nap as well.)
Doug’s granddaughter Allison (thank goodness teenagers never nap — they’re afraid to miss something), upon spotting the attempted hijacking, alerted her grandfather, who shook the sleep from his brain, headed outdoors and told the bears to pack their bags and get out of town — or at least to the end of the runway — and to not come back until they were ready to apologize.
Upon returning after dark that evening, the polar bear family confessed to having eaten the barbeque that went missing in the fall and were thus given their choice of five days of counseling or five days of hard labor at the Polar Bear Jail in Churchill.
Dr. Phil, are you available?
