Ice Bear

I was going to wait until tomorrow to reveal the horror that is Ice Bear, but after I thought about it for a minute I realized the only other thing I was going to do today was rummage around in the bulk bins at Winco and then wait in line forEVER behind some methface who doesn't understand how to bag her own groceries.

The highlight of my shopping trip was spotting the bulk bins of individually packaged tea bags.  Every time I see them, I think they are condoms.  Buying condoms in bulk is economical and responsible, I suppose, but buying them 3 inches away from where you buy your oatmeal?  Kinda weird. 

Anyway, ICE BEAR.  Get ready for this, because it will blow your mind.  It's pretty much the most horrifying real monster I have ever heard described.

My cousin lent me this book, The Final Frontiersman, by James Campbell.   He's a journalist profiling his cousin, Heimo Korth, who left Wisconsin as a young man in the 1970s and set out for the Alaskan Interior.  He's obviously pretty hardcore, because as of 2002, he had spent about three decades not starving or freezing to death, not getting eaten by a bear, and not going batshit crazy from isolation because he now has a wife and two teenage daughters who all live in the wilderness of Alaska hundreds of miles from other people.

So this Campbell guy is kind of a rube when it comes to surviving in the Arctic, and while he's hanging out with Heimo in the dead of the Alaskan winter helping him trap wolverines and all, he inquires about the danger of bears.  Heimo proceeds to inform him of the most terrifying form of life ever to walk the earth simultaneous to humans.

We all know bears hibernate in the winter.  One would think it would be pretty safe and bear-free during the winter months, but no.  One would be appallingly, terrifically wrong.  Sometimes, bears go to sleep hungry, and wake up ANGRY because it's still winter.  Not only are they angry, but also still very hungry and thus even angrier, and the anger of course demands energy because it takes more muscles to frown that it does to smile, so of course this destructive cycle reaches an apex and the bear is all "EFF THIS CAVE, I'M GOING TO GO OUT AND DESTROY EVERYTHING I SEE, AND THEN I'M GOING TO EAT AND EAT AND NEVER STOP EATING."

The bear, at this point still a regular but very angry bear, rushes out of his den and prepares to morph into the must destructive thing you can fathom, Ice Bear.  He frantically searches for a body of water, fully submerges himself for a brief moment, and lunges back onto land as the water on his grizzled coat begins to freeze.  In no time at all, he is covered in a thick protective coating of ice that makes him IMPERVIOUS TO BULLETS.

Imagine a confrontation between an unsuspecting but fully-armed woodsman and Ice Bear.  Unless fully-armed includes being strapped with multiple flame throwers, ICE BEAR WILL WIN EVERY TIME, and he will EAT YOUR FACE.

P.S.  You can read all about Heimo, the ice bear, and all kinds of other crazy stuff, if you buy the book.  Or I'm sure your library can get it for you, but why not give yourself a gift that keeps on giving (if you read the book over and over again, I mean).