Thursday, January 7, 2016

Right to Arm Bears

I wasn’t born in New Jersey but did very nearly all of my growing up there (my growing old happened in a variety of locations while the jury is still out on the growing wise part of the festivities). I’ve spent a LOT of my life listening to people react to my Jersey connection with, ‘what exit?’ and then snort derisively at their own cleverness.

Fork you. Not all of us from The Garden State grow up among the refineries off the Turnpike or have last names that end with a vowel. Friendly reminder that all the guidos and guidettes on Jersey Shore were from elsewhere. But I just stumbled across a factoid that helps me better understand why we really do have so much woods and forests, not to mention Charmin’ products,  in New Jersey.

It turns out we’ve got hellalot bears, all over the state. New Jersey’s Department of Environmental  Protection just concluded its annual bear hunt (I’ll wait while you re-read that part again) with the second largest number of bears ‘harvested’ (=killed) since 2010, 510, and that was still below the projected/desired target (perhaps an unintentional pun in there, somewhere).

All my brothers and sisters live there and nearly all of their children live there, too. I grew up worrying about greasers when it was grizzlies I should have kept an eye out for. If this keeps going on, you don’t think we’ll have to worry about Sarah Palin and crew moving to Linden, do you? I’m not sure you can see that Russian bakery near Saint Cecilia’s in Elizabeth from her house. 
-bill kenny

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