More About Bears

There are three species of bears: black bears, brown bears, and polar bears.  There are several sub-species of black and brown bears, but I don't think there are of polar bears.  The grizzly is a sub-species of brown bear, as is the Kodiak bear.  I don't think there are any wild brown bears east of the Mississippi in the US, but I'm not sure about Canada.  Polar bears are the largest and most aggressive, with brown bears coming in second, but even black bears can become aggressive on occasion.  That said, black bears probably account for the most attacks on humans because they are the ones that are most comfortable living around humans.  Brown bears are more reclusive, although they do become habituated in the national parks.  "Habituated" doesn't mean "tame", it just means that they get used to seeing people and become less afraid of them.  There is a town in Canada on the shores of Hudson Bay, I believe it's Churchill, where the local polar bears have become so habituated that armed guards have to accompany children when they go trick-or-treating on Halloween.  Adult brown bears do not climb trees, but their cubs do.  Black bears can climb trees at any age, but I think they do it less frequently as they get older.  I don't think there are any trees where polar bears live.

The more I think about it, that North Side-South Side thing is largely a myth.  From what Uncle Ken said, it's more about how close you live to Lake Michigan.  That's not so different than what we have here except that family name also enters into it.  It's not necessarily the richest families either, some families are just more respected than others, or at least they used to be.  I don't know how much that matters anymore, it never did matter to me anyway.

When I engage Uncle Ken in an adversarial discussion, I have little hope of changing his mind.  Mostly I am just trying to find out what's in that mind of his.  Many people prefer to converse with like minded individuals, but you'll never learn anything that way.