The Unfortunate Incident with the Polar Bear

Ooops. Oh shit. WTF!

I stood frozen in horror as the deep burgundy wine trickled down the grimacing polar bear’s leg, soaking into its yellowish white fur. It looked like blood. It wasn’t that I was worried that he’d charge at me and tear me limb from lim.  I was safe from that at least. He’d already been shot, stuffed and mounted, and frozen in that grimacing expression for a very long time in his place on a pedestal in the museum. Still, I knew that natural history museums would rather present their artifacts, shot or not, in a more sterile, bloodless presentation.

           Well, it really wasn’t my fault, was it? Maybe I should sue the museum to put them off balance? And while I was at it, maybe I should sue the stranger too? The stranger who had bumped into me, causing me to trip the light fantastic over the electrical cord running across the floor in front of the polar bear’s pedestal. First of all, the museum shouldn’t have had the polar bear out there naked on display, without a glass case. Second of all, the museum itself was holding the exhibit opening and they were the ones serving wine and food inside the museum, so, not my idea. And they had obviously chosen to serve red wine – white wouldn’t have harmed Mr. Bear, it would’ve just made him smell a little boozy for a while. Plus, it looked like the museum had deliberately placed the orange cord on the floor, as it was taped down to the marble floor with black tape. Or maybe the caterer had placed the cord: it looked like it led to the skirted tables that held their hot appetizers. But the museum would have authorized the caterer, right? And what about this stranger who had run into me from behind, causing me to lurch forward and deface the poor bear with a full glass of burgundy? Wait – wasn’t he wearing a nametag? (The stranger, not the bear.) I think he worked for the museum: so double, or triple or quadruple jeopardy for them. I was looking more and more innocent in my own mind.

           Maybe I could deny culpability? But alas, several people were nearby and had seen the fateful spill, and were giving me a wide berth so that they would not be associated with the accident. Could I slip away into the night and deny having been there, say it must have been someone who looked like me? Someone who was wearing the very same distinctive off-the-shoulder burgundy dress with white fur trim? What were the odds? It kind of showed up loud and clear, against my polar opposite, as though I had dressed for the color-coordinated crime.

           Okay, but wait, there was another angle for deflection. What was the museum doing displaying a member of an endangered species, anyway? Here was a representative of a species, right here in this very room, which was vanishing due to global warming and the melting of sea ice. What was the museum thinking, shooting him and bringing him here, selfishly, just for their own glory? (Odds were 100 to 1 that he hadn’t been shot in Memphis.) Shame on them!

I glanced over at the bear. The wine stain had soaked deep into his yellowed fur. He was still grimacing. But, he’d been grimacing before I added the contrasting color to his coat. He’d stood there grimacing, holding the pose, one paw lifted and turned back, as though he’d just pawed the surrounding fake snow—he’d stood there like that for maybe a hundred years.

He was probably tired and needed to lay down. There was an idea! Maybe they could reposition him lying down, with his giant head resting on his left front paw, hiding the wine stain. The perfect solution. Hmmm. I wonder if a hundred-year-old taxidermied animal was pliable enough to change position? Also, would the fur stretch to accommodate a new pose? It was already thinning in patches, and seemed kind of brittle—dry-rot? (I knew this because when I’d instinctively reached out to grab the bear to steady myself, a few hairs came off in my hand and they didn’t feel exactly soft.) Probably if they tried to spray him with a stain remover, or rub the spot out, it would just do more damage than the wine had done.

           Perhaps a cast? Did they even put casts on bears? Well, just a thought.

Full disclosure: I should add that I knew this bear, had known him for a long time. Kind of. But that means admitting to my age, which is, let’s just say, seventy plus. I had been visiting this museum since I was five or six on many trips with my great aunts. So, for, say, seventy years I’d been seeing this bear, but not on the sly—our relationship wasn’t illicit. He was, after all, the museum’s star attraction, and was the thing we always rushed to see first, looking up in awe at this behemoth. The bear was here even before I started coming to the museum. A local hunter, let’s call him Barry Bruin, had gone on big game hunting trips and brought back a large number of carcasses of African mammals and birds, including a few from colder climates. In his defense, shooting rare animals as trophies and for display in museum wasn’t frowned on in the early twentieth century. It was considered heroic. Since there weren’t yet that many zoos, museums were the only places most people could see these animals, so it was even considered educational.

           But, back to my predicament. I pictured myself in jail: no privacy, terrible food, worse company. But surely, they couldn’t imprison me for abuse of a dead bear? It wasn’t pre-meditated. It wasn’t fatal. But, abuse of a valuable museum artifact, they might have a case there. Surely that would just be a small fine. Oh, lord, how much was a hundred-year-old endangered dead polar bear worth? Was he like a priceless work of art? The Rembrandt of dead bears?

           All this thinking about the bear’s fate and my fate was really just an attempt to distract myself from thinking about my husband’s reaction. He was going to be furious and inconsolable at the same time. He had a temper, but normally he was reasonable. Except that he worked at this very same museum. He was the Chief Preparator. He took a personal interest in the welfare of all of the museum’s artifacts and of the museum’s cleanliness—a much greater interest than he took in our home’s furniture and its cleanliness. He regarded his job as a sacred trust. I don’t know how he got to be this way about museums, but he was. He was in awe of museums. When we visited museums, it was a tedious nightmare.

           Once, when I had worked at the Children’s Museum, I’d had to drive an exhibit to Washington, DC, install it at the Capital Building, stay there a week, then take it down. Chuck being a museum professional, I enlisted his help with the driving and the exhibit installation. Fun, I thought, a whole week in DC to see the sights, eat at some good restaurants. Wrong. Alas, we saw as many museums as was humanly possible in those five days. I soon discovered that Chuck felt the need to read every single piece of text that accompanied the exhibits, and trust me, there are some large and wordy museums in DC. The Air and Space Museum? The Smithsonian itself? The National Gallery of Art? And so on. At each one, I would say, after an hour, my eyes already bleary, my feet aching, “Okay, I’ll meet you in an hour in the gift shop, or the coffee shop.” One hour turned into two, three, then four. And none of the museums had a place to lay down. Lord have mercy.

           So, Chuck, though he hadn’t known the polar bear as long as I had, felt even closer to him, and felt personally responsible for his well-being. He was on the top of the security guard’s list to call if something went wrong. One morning we were awakened early by a security call. “Chuck, there’s a leak and the polar bear’s getting rained on!” I’d never seen him get dressed so fast. What was he going to do, put a poncho on the bear, or crawl up on the roof and fix the roof himself? And there was the fact that he’d been very vocal at museum staff meetings about NOT serving food or drink at openings. He’d go ballistic when he’d find a glass or a plate or even a napkin on a museum pedestal. A wine stain? Hell hath no fury like a Preparator whose polar bear has been stained. By his wife. This wouldn’t end well.

           Unfortunately, Chuck was the first museum staffer on the scene. When he rounded the corner, he took in the scene. A crowd had surrounded me but was kind of standing back in shock and disassociating themselves from the culprit. I stood there, dazed, empty wine glass still in hand. And poor Bruno, his yellowed whitish fur despoiled by a dark red liquid. Chuck’s face turned paler than normal, then bright red –in sympathy for the bear? “Someone’s shot the polar bear!” he said somewhat softly, as though the truth was too horrible to say out loud. Stupidly, I reassured him, admitting my guilt. “No, no, it’s just a little wine, he’s fine, I just tripped.”

           The Chief Preparator glared at me and stormed off. It appeared worse than if I’d said I’d slept with the polar bear. Divorce seemed imminent.

           Luck was with me after all. As you may have guessed, I’m neither in jail, nor destitute from having to pay a million-dollar fine. The incident did make the papers, but that turned out to be in my favor. It drew the attention of PETA and other animal rights’ groups, who protested the shooting (a hundred years ago) and display of an endangered animal. The polar bear, already looking a bit mangy, and now with a big wine stain, was removed from exhibit.

           Chuck took his anger out on the museum’s board, for serving wine and food in the exhibit, instead of on me. I swore off red wine, which was probably a good thing anyway. The moral of this story is, don’t drink wine around dead polar bears, or if you must drink wine, drink only white.