IN MEMORY OF WHITEY

His owner said it wasn’t the first time he ran away. A couple of years ago, Whitey crossed the Bering Straits and ended up in the Moscow Circus. He got a job as performing bear, but during the show he had to jump through a fire hoop, so he quit after 3 months. The guy in Nome wasn’t real happy to see that Whitey found his way back. He said the bear was eating him out of house and home and had gulped down his favorite daughter a few weeks before. He also complained Whitey insisted on hibernating in the guest bedroom.

Whitey’s trip South to Florida was a fatal mistake. Tourists sometimes fall into that trap. “We tried to chase him away but he wouldn’t leave,” Baer said, “and I sure as hell wasn’t going to drive up to Nome again. I’m pissed because I wore out my Johnny Horton ‘North To Alaska’ eight-track tape on the first trip up to the 49th state.

But I digress, back here in Hollywood, Florida, when Whitey menacingly charged a group of curious school kids, Baer and fellow officer, Smokey Barski had no choice but to shoot the four-legged visitor from the north. “It was pretty grizzly,” Smokey Barski lamented. “He’s not the first tourist to get shot in South Florida and probably not the last. We usually don’t get ’em this big unless they’re out on the beach in speedos.”

Local descendants of Alaskan Eskimos skinned and butchered the bear and took it by dog sled to “The Igloo Social Club” on Dixie Highway. The hide was turned into clothing for use next winter. “A good polar bear coat can really take the sting out of a frigid Florida winter,” one appreciative club member said.

Luigi Yamamoto, Nome native born Inuit, and manager of The Igloo, was ecstatic. “We had a great dinner, saved the bear paws for breakfast and still have more than a thousand pounds of meat left in the freezer. It made us realize how much we miss our native food. A couple of the ladies even baked a couple of Eskimo Pies. It would have been absolutely perfect, if we’d had a little whale blubber for appetizers. We are crazy about our whale blubber, somewhat like the Jewish people who love gefllte fish.”

Yamamoto said the meat was a pleasant change from the usual South Florida fare. “My people have just never gotten used to chicken wings and pizza,” he said. “If anybody reading this has a polar bear, or a walrus for that matter, they want to get rid of, we’d be glad to come pick it up.”