MonkeyPants

Why Bears Hibernate.

I have decided that Tuesdays will be Tall Tale Tuesdays, wherein I report the lies I tell my students. I do always set them straight in the end, though.

Today I had a kid studying hibernation.

“Hibernation is just weird! Why do bears do it?”
“Easy,” I said. “Bears don’t have pockets, so they can’t carry money. So they had to learn to hibernate.”
“What?”
“No, really. If they could carry money, they could go to drive-throughs all winter, and not need to hibernate.”
The kid looked at me suspiciously.
“They could go to McDonalds and get lots of calories. Bears need calories. They’re big suckers, and there’s no bear food in winter. No fish, no berries, no grubs. So it’s either drive-throughs or sleeping. And drive-throughs aren’t an option. No pockets.” I shrugged. “Also, bears can’t really have jobs. So no pockets OR money.”

Eventually, of course, I told the truth about how bears’ food supplies dry up in winter, and so it was smarter to be asleep, rather than hungry, and that they would pass that sleeping-through-the-lean-times on to their cubs. But it’s always fun to spin out a tale and watch them try and figure me out.