The Foraging Habits Of Tropical Bears

The Foraging Habits of Tropical Bears

Published by D. Robert Simpson at Smashwords

Copyright 2012 D. Robert Simpson

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Note: All Hawaiian words herein are depicted with their appropriate glottal stops (‘), the reverse apostrophe indicating the verbal hitch most commonly found on the mainland in the middle of uh-oh.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Invocation

Get Your Ass To Maui

Castoff, Party Of One

A Military Escort

Please Feed The Bears

Breakfast With Blaine

Devil’s Gate

Pollenesia

Wankiki

Just Flew In From Honolulu

Youre Kiddin’ Me, Right?

Cats Away

Pecker Valley Triggers A Rally

Gone Whalin’

The Not-So-Celebrated Bushwhacking Bovine of Haleakala

Model XE-25: Air Guitar, Spring-Loaded

Drew Hits The Beach

Early Afternoon Of The Lepus

Haole Go Home

In The Sacred Bosom Of Paradise

Half-Ass Nelson

Boil The Frog Slowly

Game Over

About The Author

INVOCATION

Keep your powder dry

And a weather eye

For a scurrilous guy

Toting a scythe

GET YOUR ASS TO MAUI

When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.

Hunter S. Thompson

The Good Doctor’s advice was sound to a point, but not really an option for a guy who’d long since lost his big league stuff. Five years into a losing streak, the best I could manage was: When the going becomes unbearable, the able bear leaves town. Not exactly reaching for the stars, but it wasn’t reaching for the gun, either, and that was good enough for the time being. What the hell; why not? Things weren’t totally in the crapper, at least not yet, and if it came to that, well, I could always go out behind the garage and shoot myself then.

Two things I’ve learned about depression: once roosted, it’s a tough bird to flush; in such situations, procrastinators tend to have a greater life expectancy than go-getters. When survival itself depends on putting something off, what would normally be deemed laziness begins looking downright respectable, and any motivation for doing it acquires the same patina; short of committing a crime, anyway. Deadly sins are fine. Besides not being crimes, they keep the economy going. Greed, for example: Every new day is another chance a failed game-show host in a bad suit will show up on the porch with a camera crew and an oversized check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

I’ve never bought into the adage that money can’t buy happiness, largely owing to the fact that the only people saying it already have money. Until I can run the experiment myself, I ain’t buyin’ it. Back that truckful of Benjamins up to my lab and I’ll start the equipment.

Ah, Poor Richard, I knew him well; followed his lead, in fact. The only difference between wine, women and song and sex, drugs and rock and roll is two hundred years of chemistry and a stack of Marshall amps. I had but one bone to pick with old Ben: his theory on death and taxes. No arguing death; we all learn that early on. Old people fade away, Fords flatten Fidos, cats get curious and livestock is delicious. Death, right; got it. But taxes? Bullshit.

Oh, they’re certain enough for average bears, but those more equal than others weasel out all the time. For every Leona Helmsley or Wesley Snipes earning a state dinner, a thousand fat cats with better accountants swill gibsons by the pool, waiting for their refunds while describing how they stuck it to the little guy who should be happy just to have a job and pay taxes in the first place. No; if there are two certainties in the world, death’s wingman is life, with the disclaimer that it won’t be fair, which unfortunately appears in very small print legible only to actuaries and ambulance chasers. As such, it can be easy to miss.

In a college dormitory, sympathy does not flow freely. Snap an ankle at the rec. center? Clumsy bastard. Get burned on a weed deal? Dopey bastard. Flunk out? Lazy bastard. Short of a death in the family, Life’s a bitch and then ya die was the standard response to whatever complaint you rolled in with. Little did we know the smart-ass remark of the day better described the nature of existence than anything the old whoremonger said. Well, he was a white male, as were most of us. With more balls in the fairness lottery than everyone else, reality can take a while to set in, at least so far as its applicability to us. When the wheels came off for me, I never saw it coming.

Maybe I was too close to my folks, though I doubt it. Lots of people come from lousy families or none at all. Ours was like the Cleavers, except instead of the Beav we had Tanglefoot, an astoundingly clumsy girl up to the age of about 12 (which, other than the time she tumbled down the stairs, scrambled her brains and decided to become a hillbilly, was excellent cheap entertainment). A tight family can make suffering the slings and arrows of everyday life a lot easier; they put up with your bullshit, at least to a point. Having it yanked away before its time was like being run down and devoured by a three-headed, fire-breathing wolverine from hell. Actually, it just really sucked, but at the time it seemed reasonable to think the two might be similar.

Not that they died young; got the senior discount for years. But in terms of family history, it was far too early. Dad went out at 71, fifteen years before the law of averages said he’d be due, but in his case it was actually a good thing. Disabled at work decades earlier, limited in mobility and in near-constant pain, he’d managed to continue enjoying life—or at least to convince us he was—for 25 years until dementia began taking him away. Once a mathematically-inclined, funny, thoughtful fellow now stripped of all but the most rudimentary awareness, he’d likely have chosen death given another coherent moment. When it came, it was time.

Mom was another story. Her mother lived to 101; everyone expected Mom to hit 100 at stride, 90 ten miles over the limit and 80 at speeds generally reserved only for the likes of Kenny Bernstein and John Force (an apt analogy considering she was a leadfoot). In March of ’99, she turned 74. Two months later, Tanglefoot—who’d left Portland for Richland, WA, in the fine blue glow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation—got married, walked down the aisle by her Richland dad, patriarch of the family she’d stayed with until getting settled, and her brother. (He got her to second, I brought her home. At the rehearsal, we worked out a tag-team exchange that brought the house down the next day.) Standing for photos before sun-splashed rhododendrons, flanked by her children and their significant others, Mom said, Well, if I die tomorrow, I’ll be happy. My kids are taken care of. Objection! Witness is drawing a conclusion.

Besides being technically incorrect—my relationship was already developing a serious barnacle problem—and the fact we still wanted her around, it seemed an inauspicious thing to say. I’ve never gone in much for faith, fate, curses or jinxes, but why go looking for trouble? Two weeks later, she was diagnosed with cancer. Five months after that, she was gone, wearing her fine new mother-of-the-bride dress for the second and last time. Poof...the only people I’d been able to trust without getting burned for it. While not particularly unfair (death and all), it was definitely a bitch; brought me low, weakened my defenses.

At least I still had my career, though that appeared crapper-bound, too, largely owing to shifting management trends, which sway with the wind in government work much more than the private sector. Whether or not the status quo is working, new emperors always change things up, if for no other reason than to stamp their mark on the joint. Propose a radical new direction, get written up in a managment rag, depart before implementation and be sitting fat and happy in a cushy consulting gig when it all blows up. Good work if you can get it.

In the ’80s, tyrants were the norm, had been since the early Interstate program. Successful on the surface in that the roads were well-surfaced, morale, along with any aspirations of building better mousetraps, was rolled flatter than a fresh overlay on I-84. Beyond high attrition, the system was ripe for opportunism; the only surprising thing was how isolated and small-time it was: case of Scotch from a contractor here, couple engines from the motor pool there, guys cramming four hours’ work into six and claiming eight. As highwaymen, the Highway men were comically inept. Well, nobody takes a government job to get rich, not even scammers. The real money is in private corruption—more Benjamins, less oversight.

Hell, why not? Doesn’t cost much; couple years’ country-club correction and most of these characters are welcomed back with open arms. In the warm embrace of a public service career, however (Sure, I love tar and feathers), one guy screws the pooch, we’re all poodle pumpers. When capos were phased out in favor of mentor/coaches, it seemed like a good idea...on paper, anyway.

Small problem: While a Box O’ Managers can be obtained with nothing more than a flatbed truck and a Costco card, good ones are hard to come by, particularly in a specialized field. Any low forehead can kick their staff around the lot; actual leadership requires more rarefied skills, and few people possessing them are up for the dog-pound atmosphere and comparatively low wages of a government job. So, with the alphas gone and leaders steering clear, what remained was an overabundance of indecisive managers largely reduced to signing time sheets, holding unnecessary staff meetings and walking briskly while wearing a tie. Not much to justify one’s existence, but a little random discipline solves that problem.

Example: Unnamed manager Abel tells manager Charlie of perceptions one of Charlie’s employees, Foxtrot, is a slacker/free thinker/flatulent (pompous, obese and eats cactus, too). Proof? Other than free thinking, none; none to be had. No matter. Seeing an opportunity to appear both useful and of stout spine, Charlie places Foxtrot on a very short tether and leaves him out in the rain for a couple months. Yeah, that’ll bring out the best in him. What we’ve got here is...a failure to communicate. Some men, you just can’t...shit.

A splendid time was being had by all when the latest emperor, unable to contain aspirations of grandeur any longer, decided to shake things up with one sweep of his imperious hand. A fetishist for fad management theories, when re-engineering came down the pike, he was all over it. Inflicting radical change on a small venture? Small taters. What better way to receive the coveted attention of a big-time management rag than completely overhauling a statewide agency of over 3,400 workers? The possibilities were enough to boggle the mind. Clearly, something did. When sentient employees ranging from bridge designers to road kill wranglers pointed out it looked a lot more like de-engineering and would likely lead to disaster, they were promptly dismissed as crabs, fleas and some other creature I’ve since forgotten and the process lurched ahead. In the quest to define the great new wonderful, so much tail-chasing went on over the next few years, the place resembled a Dalmatian sanctuary.

When it finally came, the roll-out did bring immediate results: morale hit a new low, marriages failed and nearly the entire bridge department resigned. Hard to blame them; with privatization a clear goal of the process from the get-go, they made the transition on their own terms