They say nothing ever happens in a small town but when it does the local nail salon is the place to find out the details.  The word at the (rumour) mill where my husband works spreads faster than a three dollar hooker as well so between us we are always up on the latest gossip.  Usually the stories are idle chatter, who’s cheating who, who is whose baby daddy and what recent afflictions have been diagnosed.  For the most part I don’t buy into it and keep my nose out of other people’s privates…unless they are paying me to be there.  Sometimes however the tales are bigger than this town and to that prattling I pay attention.

I was heading out the door to go to work this morning and my husband got up (he’s on late shift so he sleeps in) to see me out and flash me his boobies as I pull out of the driveway…turnabout is fair.  He told me he had some stuff to tell me.  I rolled my eyes as he usually tells me shit I don’t need to know…like about his poop or what the temperature is…or what the temperature of his poop is.  

“Four things.” he paused in what I can only assume was an attempt at building anticipation.

“Some chick OD’d yesterday.” he began.

He didn’t know her name but our first client this morning…and in fact every client today knew the girl and the details of her death.  Some thought she killed herself, one heard that she died mid-party and nobody did anything to help her, another heard that her mother found her dead on the floor and yet another claimed she heard the mother killed her.  What we do know is that it was an overdose of crack and that she was only 25 years old.  She left behind a three year old son whose father (also an addict) was killed in a car accident a little over a year ago.  The details are irrelevant, the outcome itself is tragic.

“Someone has been putting used hypodermic needles in the handles of gas pumps so when you fuel up your car you get stuck with aids.” Heiny continued his revelations.

“Here?”

“Yes, here.”

“Here in this town???”

“Yes, here!”

I found this a little hard to believe but two of my clients had also heard the warning, one said that there have been ten people infected in Canada.  When I got home I checked it out on the internet…the great and powerful all-knowing Google and it appears it was a hoax.  One of those stupid emails forwarded to everyone and their blog and believed by every(gullible)one who passed it on.

“Someone has been offering kids pop rocks that are really strawberry flavored meth.”

I totally thought this was bullshit.  Trixie said they sent notes home from both elementary schools warning parents to reiterate what they have been told at school…don’t take candy from strangers?!  Apparently some guy…it’s always ‘some guy’ has been hanging around the schools and skate park offering his ‘pop rocks’ to kids.  If anyone has actually accepted (their parents should be beaten for not drilling into their heads to never take anything from strangers) or taken the drug we’ve not heard about it but there are flyers all over town warning people to be ware. I still think this is bullshit.  First of all who would find that shit funny, secondly what meth dealer or addict for that matter would waste their drug of choice on children and thirdly people don’t really push drugs on little kids, not in the real world, sure it would be easy to get a kid addicted but they can’t afford to keep buying so it’s not really creating a demand…or at least not a lucrative one.  Still it pisses me off that people start this shit and create panic in the masses…or the few in the case of this hamlet.

“Someone killed a black bear and hung it over the side of the bridge.”

Somehow I knew this one was sick enough to be true.  Sure enough it was all over the news today.  The brief goes a little something like this…

*places and names have been changed to protect the innocent places and names.

By Associated Press

British Columbia (AP) – A dead bear has been found hanging from a pedestrian bridge.

RCMP officer Dudley Doright of the Rocky Mountain detachment says that surveillance videotape showed three men stringing up the bear early Monday, shortly after midnight.

Dudley says an area resident found the animal and called a conservation officer who told him to cut down the bear and let it float away down the Kicking Horse River.

As a result, authorities don’t know how the bear died before it was strung up.
<they aren’t assuming it wasn’t self inflicted?>

Police have asked that those who participated in the bear hanging come forward.

I just have to say to start by mentioning that the AP press release was terrible.  I edited a bit and I was going to re-write it completely but I think it is kind of funny this way…subject matter aside.  It’s worded badly, there were commas where there shouldn’t have been and they had the location of the town on the wrong side of the Rockies and seriously, like the three culprits are going to read this and suddenly come down with an attack of conscience and come clean.  I don’t fucking think so, not even if the police had said please with sugar and a big hairy cherry on top.

As for this act itself, despicable is the first word that comes to mind.  People are afraid of bears, I get that.  I even understand when someone feels threatened enough by a black bear (which incidentally are more dangerous and less afraid of humans than Grizzlies) that they feel they must kill it in defense of their family, property, pets, livestock or person.  I don’t like it but I get it.  If we all did our part to ensure that there was no food for the bears in town (keeping garbage locked up, not leaving fruit on trees etc.) they would move on to where they could find other sources.  People are stupid though and they forget that we are infringing on their territory, the bears are just doing what they have always done in a place where they have always done it.  That’s why it’s called ‘nature’.

Due to cutbacks a few years ago our local conservation officer was removed from this area and the nearest substitute is two hours away…and obviously not the most useful tool in the shed telling whoever found the bear to cut it down and let it float down the river.  In the old days when an unwelcome four-legger appeared in ones space one would call the CO who would have the critter trapped and relocated to a safer, more remote, less inhabited area.  Now however we are pretty much left to our own defenses.  We can call the police but their options are limited, they tend to just shoot the animal.  Most people either try to shoo the beasties away or kill them themselves.  It’s a very sad situation.  

There is a Bear Aware lady here but I think she is insane and her methods only make her seem madder.  She puts big stickers on people’s garbage cans if they put them out for the truck too early.   If you get three stickers she gives you a fine…which really she is not authorized to do.  She has gone so far as to put people’s garbage back in their garages or yards if she deems they have placed it by the curb prematurely.  She drives a station wagon with a big “Bear Aware” sign on the door and she patrols the streets and alleys, day and night looking for infractions and trespassing wherever and whenever she chooses.  I am sure her motives are honorable but her methods make a mockery of something that should be taken more seriously.  People won’t take “Bear Aware” seriously if the woman in charge is a whack job fanatic self proclaimed bear aware enforcer (like the love child of Yogi and Nick Nolte…with stickers) instead of the educator that she should be.  

Now as for the three wads who committed this heinous act I would like to see them hung from the same bridge by their nads and poked with very sharp sticks.  It is one thing to deem it necessary to kill an animal that is perceived as a threat, it is quite another to drag it to a public place and hang it like some kind of fucked up pinata.  What was the purpose of this?  A prank? Shock value? A warning to other ursine?  They were just being assholes.

The good thing about a town this size is that it is fairly easy to round up the usual suspects and figure out who dunnit.  The shitty thing is that they’ll likely get little more than a slap on the wrist anyway.  Where the fuck are those psycho pricks from PETA when they could really be useful?!

I can’t wait to tell my husband that his source steered him wrong on at least two counts though I am sure that by tomorrow we’ll hear new versions of all of these stories…and probably a few new ones as well.  Sadly that’s just the way it is in a small town.  Apparently that is our nature.