In 1925, a terrible thing happened to…

…Dorothy Craig…but what happened?

So let me get this straight. James Craig trades his car for two bears. Then he chains them up in a tent in his backyard. Then he charges money for people to gawk at the abused bears…sort of a make-shift zoo. He also lets Dorothy play in the backyard. The bears break free, and one attacks Delores. Stop underestimating bears!

Solomon…

…and Sheba were killed. How would you like to be James Craig keeping two wild animals as pets, only to have them attack and kill your daughter? Talk about guilt. If the father forgot about the bears and kept his car instead, Dorothy would have been just fine.

Again, the bear pays with his life for stupid things that humans do.

Caress? And we now know that Jiggs entered the house and attacked Barbara while she was sleeping in her cradle.

Who was the irresponsible owner?

So much for Carl Bendel, who doesn’t know that it is stupid to keep bears in a shed. I just have gardening tools in mine. And the bears? What happened to them? Well, the above clipping suggests that they were sent to college to become veterinarians.

The sad thing is that whereas only one bear attacked Lorrayne, both bears were put down. Now I like coincidences…very much. In Moscow, Idaho there was a young girl named Lorrayne Olesen of the same age…

If this is the right Lorrayne Olesen, then it’s odd that the name of her school yearbook is…Bear Tracks.

…David Dobsen. And this happened at a summer resort, of course. And as hard as it is…I will avoid making a joke out of the fact that Ralph Hines beat the bear off.

But! There’s good news…

I’m sure why, but it seems that children don’t understand the concept of not being close to a cage with a bear in it.

I wonder how the grandparents felt knowing their bad decision cost their grandson his life. Add another detail…

There was confusion about Palmer teasing the bear with a stick? The fact that it was brought up at all speaks volumes.

If you thought I’d miss the next guy, you are sorely mistaken…

Such is the story about the death of 8-year-old Richard Strand.

But what happened?

So, the bear was fine until Richard fell on it. It reminds one of Johnny Longo. However, it is clearly the case that bear interpreted this as Richard attacking it, and so it fought back.

The bear was Russian. It’s fitting, seeing how the bear was a symbol of Russia…

And how bizarre this is! For some reason, a Russian ship captain gave the bear to Earl Coffrin as a gift! And Richard wasn’t the only one playing with the bear…

Good Ole Bobby Docka. Jumping up and down on the bear’s hutch isn’t very smart.

He fired over the heads of the children? And he had a dangerous bull? Coffrin won’t be getting the neighbor of the year award.

You aren’t safe getting out of the school bus anymore. Wooly the bear. And what a hero Wayne Hughes was!

Now for the tale of…

…Grant Taylor Jr.

You know the old saying…be sure to bite the hand that feeds you.

Cup and Saucer…odd names for bears. And apparently Cup didn’t get involved when Saucer launched her attack. And it doesn’t help to head for a tree when being chased by a bear.

But was it simply food? Or was something else involved?

Yes, the bear was jealous of the raccoon. If I can’t have him, no raccoon can. Garnder Murdock was charged with homicide. Grant’s mother said something remarkable…

So, people behave very stupidly around bears. There are some violent attacks against people who are caught by surprise, but it would seem that many victims have brought the attacks on themselves.

That said, can the process go in reverse? Yes, it can…

Having eaten five chickens, he appears to have been looking for dessert. And the door shouldn’t have been left open. Despite the attack, Angelo Locati opted to keep the bear as a pet. Although it isn’t specified in any news articles I’ve seen, the child appears to be Carlo Charles Locati, born October 13, 1907. This involved a cub, and he may have wanted to play. But Locati wasn’t a particularly upright kind of guy…

Where is a safe place to keep your pet bear? I know!

Outside of your garage! That is where you should keep Queenie the bear. Now I would venture a theory that explains why the bear did what she did. The brilliant Paul Trudeau went out to feed Queenie. But Ernest went with him. I suggest that the bear suddenly decided that Ernest was coming over to steal his food, and so he acted in a way we might expect.

Twisted his nose? Maybe he should do what Moe always does…

A good eye poke is far more effective than a nose-twist. It is so often the case, that the bear is killed following one these events. In mind, it’s nothing more than act of revenge.

Now, it is never good to keep wild animals as pets. And the next case is mindboggling. Meet a genuine hero…

Yes, Zachary Wiley, a true Boy Scout.

So this farmer keeps a pet bear named…Killer? And children will be around it? Why not name the bear…Child Eater?

If you thought you were safe walking down a road in your neighborhood on a Monday afternoon, you’d be wrong. Well, in 1903…

So the grizzly bear suddenly shows up in the neighborhood turning a humdrum day into an exciting one. Thankfully, the worst that happened was that the 10-year-old girl got her clothes torn.

So, the 10-year-old girl wasn’t the only one to get her clothes torn.

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen garment, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind.

Or so the story goes in Mark 14: 49-52, and Lazarus loses his clothes.

As far as dangerous goes, this bear puts in a very poor performance. He seems to have been more interested in fashion. But it is certainly justified to be puzzled about where the bear came from. He either made his way through various small towns, apparently without causing much of a stir, or he was an escaped dancing bear, and so we blame the Italians. But if we follow the…sons of Italy…speculation, an abused dancing bear seeks revenge!  I get the escaping idea, but a Son of Italy simply turning it loose seems highly unlikely. But there does seem to be a connection between bears and Italians…

A satchel? Although not stated, it would appear that the correct name is William Racoosin, whose daughter was named Hannah, who later married a lawyer named John Sacks. William Racoosin…was a Russian-born who resided in Manhattan, New York, and is listed as a…druggist...

I’m glad he’s not around to see the birth record of his son Theodore Robert Racoosin, as it appears in Ancenstry.com…

I’m sure that he wouldn’t appreciate being called a…draggist. In 1910, William was residing in Fallsburg, New York, where he is listed as a physician, and Hannah’s name appears as…Johanna. Interestingly, the family lived on Centerville Road, which may suggest that the bear belonging to the two Italians with the big satchel was on Centerville Road when it attacked Hannah. When William died in 1911, the town was called Centerville Station. Following William’s death, his widow…Fannie, married Leopold Kehlmann in 1926, widower of Rose Kehlmann and moved back to Manhattan. Hanna Sacks was living with them. What one can say is that if you’re going to get attacked by an Italian bear, it certainly helps if your father is a physician.

Now that’s a headline!

Of course…

Cookies! Dutch cookies. They were feeding the bear cookies, and it became enraged when they ran out. Don’t feed the bears! Don’t you have bears in Holland? And it would have been best to have avoided this area. Why? There’s a gang of 22 angry bears roaming around looking for cookies…or Dutch families…I’m not sure which tastes better. And if the Dutch family wasn’t driving a silly, tiny foreign car, they may have fared better.

This is good stuff. Three-year-old Durris Renner and his father are along the highway. Suddenly, there’s a roadside stand advertising a bear. And there was indeed a bear! Now some bears like cookies, and some bears like ice cream…which is the case here. Durris goes up to the cage, and his father buys two ice cream cones, one for the boy, and one for the bear. Poor Durris, he eats too slowly, resulting in a good beating from the bear. We’ve also seen that bears like cookies…and who doesn’t like cookies and ice cream? This terrible incident could have been avoided if the ice cream cone given to the bear had two scoops. This could have been all that much worse if it happened at the local Baskin Robbins. I wonder if the bear knew that old adage…a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.

Scout Younger was a man who entertained audiences with wild animals, including bears. He used a gimmick…the Reformed Outlaw. However, he wasn’t always so careful…

This one stumps me. Why are you allowed to have a bear doing funny stunts on Main Street? Surely, that’s a public hazard. Why isn’t this happening in a zoo or carnival? Scout Younger…

Scout Younger was an entertainer who focused his role…the Reformed Outlaw. He starred in a few movies, and used wild animals in his show. He also teamed up with…

…Emmett Dalton, member of the infamous Dalton Gang, Emmett being the one outlaw of the group to survive the manhunt… You would think that he would know enough not to let a bear perform funny stunts to attack a child on the street. Oddly enough…

You would think that he would know enough not to let a bear perform funny stunts to attack a child on the street. Oddly enough…

Now to pop over the pond…

It is certainly possible that they began messing around with one of the bears.

And you think beaches are safe? Well, ask Titania…

Why would you have a bear on a pier?

Polar bears and beaches don’t go well together. And kids and bears definitely don’t go well together.

Pet bears can be friendly, or friendly then they go off the deep end. But would you keep savage, vicious bears at pets? This guy did…

…the beastly Roman emperor named Galerius.

But Galerius, chosen by Diocletian for his son-in-law, was worse, not only than those rulers whom our own times have experienced, but worse than all the bad rulers of former days. In this wild beast there dwelt a native barbarity and a savageness foreign to Roman blood.

 Galerius, a bad and mischievous man, and so proud and stubborn that he would never acknowledge the rank of his father or father-in-law. As a result, he was hated by both.

Historical legend portrayed him as an uneducated, gluttonous, vicious, cruel, and sadistic monster. This was passed down in the works of Eusebius and Lanctantius, two Christian writers who wrote exaggerated descriptions of the terrible deaths of Roman rulers who persecuted Christians…such as Galerius.

The story told by Lactantius is as follows…

What should I say of Galerius’s idea of entertainment? He kept bears that were as savage as himself. He acquired these over the course of his reign. When he chose to indulge his ideas of entertainment, he ordered a bear to be brought in, and men were thrown to that savage animal, and when their limbs were torn apart, he laughed with glee.

However, Galerius wasn’t the only emperor to have bears for pets…

…Valentinian I. Following the death of the emperor Jovian, Valentinian was proclaimed emperor by the army. Like Galerius, he was a brutal man who enjoyed having servants and attendants executed for minor mistakes. He had two pet bears…

…Innocence and Gold-flake (Mica Aurea). He took great delight in feeding…

…those who crossed him to his two bears. In later history, this idea of two bears kept for the express purpose as executioners, was applied to…

…Ivan the Terrible of Russia. It’s not certain whether this was true or not, there being a lot of mythology surrounded Ivan the Terrible. But it is clear that bears were popular animals in the medieval period.