'Nuf Said...

I frequently write letters to the local paper when I read something that irks me. Never political. I get letters published in the paper frequently, though. I just had a letter published recently about the Duggars and the fact that they just had their 17th child (and apparently aren't finished breeding yet!). Anyway, usually if I get a letter published, I'm told via email ahead of time. This morning, though, as I was leafing through the "SE County Living," my name jumps off the page. They had published a letter that I had written about a week ago. Here's the letter:

Title: Bear was just protecting her young.

"If the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service kills the bear that attacked the biker at Banner Forest Heritage Park, and that bear was in fact the mother of two bear cubs, then the service has essentially killed three bears ("Port Orchard man attacked by bear is in satisfactory shape," Local News, Sept. 4).

That's so sad; the mother bear was just protecting her young, like any good mother would do. Why do we think we have to control nature this way?"

What angered me about the article mentioned is that another biker interviewed that day had seen a femal bear with her two cubs, and then I read that the adult is going to be killed because it turned on a biker who probably came up so fast and scared her. So they are going to orphan two bear cubs? If it was a mother bear, you'd think that efforts would be made instead to relocate the mother and cubs to a more remote location. I can't stand it when I read about things like this; officials killing the wild animal whose habitat we have invaded.

I'm surprised, though, that the letter was published today. I think I read the original article last weekend, and I believe that the person has since insisted that it wasn't a mother bear but a male bear...He was quoted in another article saying something about the bear at some point being on top of him and he was definitely a male. Hmmmm.