This isn’t new news but the hairless bear shown in the accompanying picture (hairless, except for that Pete Rose-haircut-looking patch on its head) is something that came up as a topic of conversation yesterday and I still can’t get it out of my head. In fact, as I was driving my son (who was also involved in that conversation yesterday) to school this morning, I told him that I couldn’t quit thinking about it and he told me that he had a dream about it last night.

As a friend of all animals (except for bats, birds, insects, rodents, opossums and snakes), please know that I take no pleasure in the pain or suffering of any kind of animal. Having said that, although I try with all of my might, I find it almost impossible to look away from this hairless bear that is held captive in a German zoo.

I’m not sure if it’s a genetic, viral or stress-induced malady that caused the bear to lose all of its hair but the end result (a living, breathing, moving hairless bear) really throws me for a loop.

I have never before even wondered what a bear without hair would look like. “Bears have hair” is just a general rule in life that you learn at an early age and I guess that I’ve kind of accepted that fact and rolled through life with it – never wondering, “yeah, but, what if they didn’t?” Folks, this is not at all what I expected a hairless bear to look like in the short time that I’ve had to process all of this information.

I feel really bad for it because I’m sure that it just wants to have a thick coat of bear hair to get through the rest of life in the closest state of normalcy that a bear held captive in a German zoo can achieve. It’s also kind of cute in the most incredulous way that I could ever consider something cute. These are strong feelings that I have on one side of my internal conflict.

The other side of me screams a horrified, guttural scream. I mean, I have never seen a large, walking scrotum with eyes and teeth but that’s exactly what it looks like to me. Its skin is probably really warm too (I’m going to faint from just typing that). I’m sure that a conventional bear attack is a horrifying thing to go through but being mauled by this nutsack-looking bear would be one of the worst things that I could ever imagine happening. In addition to all of the normal things one might scream during a routine bear attack, I’m certain that “OMG, it’s warm!” and “Please! Help me! The skin is so gross and it rubbed against my face!” would involuntarily come out of me if this specific bear attacked me.

Anyway, it’s my hope that writing this blog post will get all of the horrific thoughts about it out of my system so that I can move on with my life. I wish the best for the bear and hope that German zoologists can figure out a cure for this poor creature in the very near future.