From Harper’s Weekly Review:<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re talking about the ones that are on crack, and they break your door down, and they\u2019re standing in your living room growling and tearing your house apart,\u201d a Florida legislator explained to a state committee regarding a bill to remove most penalties for killing bears without authorization.<\/em><\/p>\n Let’s pause a moment to consider this item. (“Consider” = Google.) There are questions.<\/p>\n First, there are bears in Florida? Yes. Not very many but some. Indeed, until recently they were borderline endangered, although who knows whether that category has to do more with their residence in Florida or their general existence?<\/p>\n What kind of bears? Black bears. (Black<\/strong> bears in DeSantis’s Florida! Yes, they are definitely endangered.) That is, the sort of bears my sister might hope not to see in her Jersey suburb when she’s out walking her dogs.<\/p>\n Are black bears violent? Not even in Jersey. Every couple of months I’ll see an item about a scared black bear up someone’s tree or messing around in someone’s garbage bin, wherefrom it is gently removed by wild life groups, post a sedative.<\/p>\n Black bears on crack? Well, I first had to reclarify my knowledge of crack cocaine. I learned, yes, crack is a highly concentrated form of cocaine. The National Drug Intelligence Center has this to tell us about how crack is produced…The National Drug Intelligence Center will not permit me to copy and paste its information, presumably because it doesn’t want to facilitate Florida black bears in setting up labs in which crack is produced, by printing out the instructions which would tell them to boil powdered cocaine in a mixture of water plus ammonia or sodium bicarbonate, until the thing turns into a hard lump which is thereupon broken up into nuggets (a\/k\/a “rocks”).<\/p>\n Crack cocaine is typically smoked, I guess in special pipes, and is so highly concentrated it\u00a0 blasts into your lungs and your brains and you. are.way.up.there.high.<\/p>\n This seems to be a fairly complicated process. Kudus to black bears on this, uh, achievement.<\/p>\n Do Florida black bears invade homes (either on or not on crack)? Let’s go to the videotape, when one wandered into some guy’s garage looking for a snack.\u00a0<\/a>The guy was more than copacetic; he was sympathetic.<\/p>\n Leading me to wonder: did this Florida legislator confuse the word “snack” with “crack?” Also wondering what he himself is on.<\/p>\n OK, I can’t believe I spent half this afternoon on this so I’m going to press “publish” now and go shopping.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From Harper’s Weekly Review: \u201cWe\u2019re talking about the ones that are on crack, and they break your door down, and they\u2019re standing in your living room growling and tearing your house apart,\u201d a Florida legislator explained to a state committee … Continue reading