Blubber Up

Dear Jack,

Locke here.  I know that the last few months have been nothing short of a dumpster fire, and I did not realize that when I woke Albert, I would literally somehow throw the Earth off kilter, unleash some evil spell, anger the gods, and cause a worldwide pandemic.  Wow!  I truly underestimated Albert's effect on humanity.   But, let me explain why I disturbed Albert's peaceful slumber.  Please know that it was not for some altruistic motivation that I awoke Albert from his ludicrous Arizona hibernation.  What bear hibernates in an arid climate?  An indolent one.

Nope,  I firmly believe nature innately selfish.  Self-preservation is my motto.  When I heard your mom say, “Well, it’s official, we are moving to AK,” I hightailed it back to your room to contemplate the news.  How is a tiger like me supposed to survive in -40?   I grabbed every encyclopaedia in your room.   That’s when I realized that you likely lack the knowledge I need to survive there.  Geez, you’ve got nothing on AK.

So, I snuck to your sister’s room, avoiding Sally and Samantha.  They were rummaging through Grace’s hair paraphernalia arguing over whose hair is least likely to turn into a rat’s nest.  I quietly grabbed Grace’s book on polar animals and another one on the Kingdom Animalia, noticing the latter had a geographical breakdown of the species.  Perfect.

I began studying the menu...ahem....books.  Let’s see.  Moose?  Snow hare?  Musk ox? Whoa, what happened to him.  I’d need dental floss for days!  Dall sheep?  Hmmmm.  Salmon.  AK might just be my kind of place.  I might need to escape my more refined, domesticated life for a few jaunts into the wild.  I hoped you wouldn’t mind, Jack.

Then, I flipped the page...hmmm...what have we here?  I began laughing hysterically.  A white bear?  What a joke!  Where’s Albert?  Albert, come look at this buffoon!  I remembered he was “hibernating.”  I immediately stopped laughing when I began reading the guy’s stats.  Umm...hypercarnivorous.....uh huh.....largest land carnivore.....700 to 1500 lbs......aggressive....powerful...   Albert, we might have a problem!    I quickly flipped to the next page, noticing my paws had started trembling.  Grace usually does this with her books on insects.  Immediate mental relief when you flip from arachnids to Lepidoptera!  I was hoping for the same.

Ok, that’s better....a brown bear........wowzers..........a “Grizzly Bear!”  I might need some back-up on my hunting trips in AK.  Sheesh.  

 I decided to wake the ol' beach bum up and start him on a diet of whale blubber....some kind of blubber.  Albert needed to be in tip-top shape -- the kind of shape that would cause his AK cousins' jaws to drop, their tails to tuck, and their legs to run --- the opposite direction, of course.  We decided that going straight from a diet of kale chips and carbonated water to blubber would really do a number on his innards.  

Of course, by this time, the dadgum Coronavirus was really menacing our plan to beef up ol' Albert.  I have to admit that pantry raids while you are at school and your mom running errands were a piece of cake.  But suddenly, the entire family is home all day, everyday, for months on end!  Somehow we managed.  When your mom had to buy Crisco because she couldn't find butter, we were ecstatic.  Crisco =pantry staple, much easier to raid than fridge!  We haven't figured out how to keep our paw prints off the stainless steel.  We decided consuming large quantities of Crisco would be a good way to ease into a more "blubberous" diet.  It was particularly easy when we realized that Crisco meters out dosages on its sticks.  

Albert got to the point that he could down two sticks of Crisco in a single gulp.  Remember those cookies your mom made with the Crisco that everyone rejected?  Thank Albert for taking those off the menu!  To subsidize the Crisco diet, we added some bacon grease, basically any grease we could wring out of a paper towel.  Gosh, I wish we could have convinced your mother to just save the grease in some Tupperware. 

One evening in particular was quite memorable.  Your mom made salmon, and I had read about salmon in AK.  I had also read that salmon are a staple of the bear's diet.  Your mom tossed the greasy salmon skin into the trash, and we spent a good part of that evening fishing for that skin.  

Well, kid, I have to say that we've been successful with ol' Albert.  The fact that you thought he needed to be crated up with the household goods and shipped in a container really made us proud!  Too big for your backpack, eh?  Yep!   See you in AK, ol buddy.   Bon Voyage!

Locke

P.S.  Ludendorff, that ridiculous, pompous, hippo seems to think that if we are crated with the computer, we can somehow still communicate with you while enroute.   Remains to be seen.