Remarkable Bears • Vol. 19: #16 • (4-9-2023) Tidbits of Coachella Valley

While we may rightly consider bears to be formidable creatures of the wild deserving our respect and a safe amount of distance, this week Tidbits looks at a few of these carnivoran mammals who don't quite fit this description. In fact, you could consider them quite extraordinary!

THE CANADIAN BEAR

• When WWI started, Harry Colebourn of Winnipeg, Canada volunteered. He was on his way to report for duty in 1914 when he came across a man who had a young black bear cub for sale. The mother bear had died. Colebourn bought the cub for $20 ($600 today) and smuggled him all the way to England. He named the cub Winnipeg, or Winnie for short.

Harry Colebourn, with his beloved black bear, "Winnipeg."

• The bear became the mascot of his brigade. When they were mustered out to France, Colebourn left Winnie at the London Zoo, intending to transfer the bear to the Winnipeg Zoo after the war. But Winnie became such a popular attraction in London that Colebourne relinquished her permanently to their care.

• The gentle bear was fond of the children who flocked to the zoo to visit her. One of those visitors was a boy named Christopher Robin Milne. Christopher’s father bought him a souvenir teddy bear in 1921. Christopher and his Winnie teddy bear became inseparable. When Christopher’s father began writing stories to entertain his son, the main character was a bear called Winnie the Pooh.

A child visits Winnipeg or "Winnie" at the London Zoo.

• Winnie the black bear died in the London Zoo in 1934, but Winnie the Pooh will live in the hearts of children forever.

A.A. Milne's "Winnie the Pooh" books are a favorite for children of all ages.

THE SOLDIER BEAR

• In 1942, a young Iranian boy rescued a sickly Syrian brown bear cub after its mother was shot by hunters. He took it to the train station near him. A young Polish woman bought the cub from the boy and spent the next three months in a refugee camp, nursing the cub back to health.

• She then gave the young cub to the 22nd Artillery Supply Company stationed nearby. They named him Wojtek, a Polish name meaning “happy warrior.”

Wojtek performs a trick with a Polish soldier.

• The soldiers doted on the bear, teaching him tricks and feeding him treats. He drank coffee every morning but preferred beer. They tried to teach him to smoke cigarettes but he only ate them. Wojtek learned to salute, engaged in wrestling matches with the soldiers, and often marched alongside the men on his hind legs.

• The bear moved with the 22nd Company throughout Iraq, and then to Syria, Palestine, and Egypt. But when the 22nd Company was reassigned to the Italian front, the British ship that was to carry them refused to carry pets or mascots. So Wojtek was officially drafted into the Polish Army as a private. During the brutal Battle of Monte Cassino, Private Wojtek helped keep the guns firing by dragging boxes of ammo, each containing four 25-pound shells, where they were needed. These crates normally took four men to haul. For his bravery and service in battle, Wojtek was promoted to Corporal. On one occasion, the bear was sleeping in the ammunition depot when a thief broke in late at night. Needless to say, the maurader received the fright of his life and quickly fled the area.

A statue commemorating Wojteck outside the Edinburgh Zoo, in Scotland.

• At the end of the war, Wojteck accompanied the 22nd Company to Scotland, where he became very popular with the townfolk. When the 22nd demobilized in 1947, the bear was donated to the Edinburgh Zoo, where he lived in pampered peace until he died in 1963 at the age of 21. By that time, Wojteck weighed 1,100 lbs and stood 5’11” tall on his hind legs.

A POPULAR POLAR BEAR

• In 1986, a polar bear cub was snatched from her mother in Canada and sold to an East German circus. Named Tosca, the bear was acquired by the Berlin Zoo in 1998. There she gave birth to two cubs in 2006, abandoning them both outside her den.

• The cubs, blind, naked and the size of guinea pigs, were rescued by zookeepers. One died, but the other survived. Zookeeper Thomas Doerflein became the cub’s surrogate mother, staying with him round the clock for 150 days. It was the first polar bear born at the Berlin Zoo in 33 years. His name was Knut.

Zookeeper, Thomas Doerflein, with Knut, the polar bear cub.

• Twice a day, Thomas Doerflein would put on shows, playing with the cub, feeding him, and showing him off to live audiences. “Knutmania” swept across Europe. The zoo’s revenues for 2007 were 30% higher than the previous year, making it the most successful in the zoo’s 168year history. The Berlin Zoo already had a full complement of polar bears and normally would have sent Knut off to some other zoo, but they were not about to let their celebritiy bear leave.

Crowds flocked to the Berlin Zoo to see Knut, the adorable polar bear.

• Knut became addicted to human attention. He engaged with zoo visitors, pressing up against the Plexiglas divider, and playing fetch with a ball he would fling over the divider.

• As a young adult, Knut was moved into an enclosure with several female polar bears, including his mother. In the wild, male and female polar bears avoid each other. Here, Knut could not avoid the other bears, who bullied him. Knut took up repetitive behaviors so common to stressed zoo animals, such as relentless pacing. In the wild, Knut would have travelled up to 20 miles a day or swam great distances in search of food.

Knut as a young adult polar bear.

• In 2011, Knut unexpectedly died at the age of four, drowning in his pool after suffering a seizure that resulted from a viral infection in his brain. His mother, Tosca, died in 2015 at the age of 30.

THE BAD LUCK BEAR

• Andrew Thornton was an American narcotics officer with the DEA who quit his job with law enforcement in order to become a smuggler. In 1985, he was delivering a load of cocaine from Colombia in his Cessna airplane.

DEA agent, Andrew Thornton, ca. 1985.

• During a late-night flight, he became aware that he was being followed by two government aircraft who had obviously been tipped off about his payload. Thornton put the plane on autopilot, pushed all of the illicit cargo out of the plane, strapped on a parachute, and jumped.

• Unfortunately, both the parachute and the reserve chute failed to open, and Thornton plummeted to his death in the driveway of a Knoxville, TN home. His unmanned plane crashed 60 miles away in North Carolina.

Thornton's parachute failed, and he plummeted to his death in the driveway of a Knoxville, TN home.

• The police began searching for the cargo that had been dumped. Media covered the story and encouraged citizens to turn in any suspicious duffel bags they found. All but one were recovered.

• About ten weeks later, a hunter in Georgia was tracking a wounded deer when he was surprised to find a dead bear in a clearing near an empty duffel bag. When recounting the tale of his hunt, a friend suggested that the duffel bag could be the one the police had been searching for. The hunter led police to the dead bear.

• Sure enough, the now empty duffel had previously been full cocaine. Acting on an educated hunch, they had the dead bear autopsied. The chief medical examiner from the Georgia State Crime Lab found that the bear’s stomach was packed full with cocaine powder. The bear must have consumed all 75 lbs of the cocaine very quickly as it would have taken only a few grams to kill it.

A taxidermist stuffed the "cocaine bear," and it's now on display in Lexington, Kentucky.

• The bear, known locally as “the cocaine bear” and officially dubbed “Pablo Escobear” was stuffed and mounted by a taxidermist, passed around to various owners, and is now on display at the Kentucky Fun Mall in Lexington, Kentucky. Some observers claim to see a faint smile on its face. □