i totally believe in drunk bear stories - being a wisconsin native i am very familiar with the crafty black bear antics.

many years ago when i was a child, before i was of legal drinking age - it was not totally unheard of for drunk people to wrestle with declawed black bears for money - its now illegal, of course. but a good friend of my grandfather's was known for his bear wrestling prowess and his secret trick was to feed the bear a bunch of beer before they wrestled...

cute stories...thanks.

I have been seeing black bears in my back yard more this year since the thinning of nearby acres past our woods last winter. They havent caused any harm and I dont mind them being back in the woods away from our home. And no, never shared the brew with them or thought to wrestle. lol

LOL...a twelve-step program for bears...sounds like a Farside cartoon.

gggg- we hope those bears dont discover your garden! - they like fruits and vegetables - especially those really good organic ones that have so much more flavor ....

the bears hang out in the blueberry barrens down the road from my home. Good that there were no chemical applications this year, or so rumor has it.

The blue blueberries of Maine and the organic market....sounds like a new stephen King movie.

I dont really have a veggie garden at my camp....its all ornamental types. My prize veggie garden is at the home where the family business is located. INstead of worrying about bears there are employees and relatives that visit my veggies and fruit trees! I hardly got enough cheeries to make 1 pie this year AND THE TREE WAS LOADED. Perhaps I should supply all my relatives and employees with beer and wrestle them for my gardening efforts.

Hey the bright side, those around me are eating well!
Cheers-
GardenX4

GX4, that sounds like a good solution.

I was looking at the evening paper. It seems beer guzzling animals are an international problem.

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Rampaging elephants in India kill people, guzzle local beer
Wasbir Hussain, Associated Press
November 13, 2004 ELEP1114

GAUHATI, India - Wild elephant in herds are terrorizing India's remote northeast, killing people, flattening houses and even guzzling local rice beer supplies, prompting villagers to retaliate against the pachyderms with firecrackers and bonfires.

With an estimated 5,000 elephants, Assam state has the largest concentration of wild Asiatic elephants in India, said M.C. Malakar, Assam's Chief Wildlife Warden.

The big herds, faced with shrinking forest cover and human encroachment of their corridors, venture into human settlements looking for food and attack those who try to stop them.

The wild elephants have stampeded across the region, stomping down houses and feasting on standing crops, Pradyut Bordoloi, Assam state's forest minister, said Saturday.

Rice beer is an attraction. Workers in tea plantations in Assam make rice beer at home and store it in drums.

``There are many instances of wild elephants guzzling the brew and returning for more,'' Bordoloi said.

Wild elephants have killed at least 22 people so far this year in the state, wildlife authorities say. A rapidly shrinking habitat is the main reason for elephants killing more than 600 people in the past 15 years, the authorities say.

On Oct. 26, wild elephants guzzled rice beer kept in drums in Marongi, a village about 175 miles east of Assam's main city of Gauhati, and then went on a rampage, trampling three people to death and wounding two others, India media reported.

Wildlife officials and villagers use firecrackers and bonfires to scare away the large herds, Bordoloi told The Associated Press. Villagers also beat on drums.

Officials also use electric fences and dig trenches, but these are meant to protect people from elephant attacks, not to scare the elephants.

In 2001, at least 19 wild elephants were poisoned to death by angry villagers, Bordoloi said.

Satellite imagery showed that as many as 113,315 acres of thick forests were cleared by human encroachers in 1996-2000, leading to the breakup of traditional elephant corridors and their habitat, Bordoloi said.

A government ban on capturing elephants and restrictions on sending them to other states has aggravated Assam's problem.

The state has created buffer zones to tackle the menace. An area on the periphery of villages is cultivated with plants found palatable by the elephants, and the second layer has plants like mustard that elephants shun.

Authorities are encouraging the farmers to buy crop insurance and are raising compensation to the families of those killed by elephants.

``The idea is to prevent angry villagers from retaliating and attempting to kill raiding elephants,'' Bordoloi said. ``The elephants are a part of our heritage and we have to coexist.''
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That story was also in the paper here this morning and I couldn't help but think that self-anesthetising has crossed species. Maybe they can call the new chapter AAA (animal alcoholics anonymous).

Or EEE (elite elephantines eponymous). Each new elephant to join the club can choose a name of his favorite hero or village.

I saw that elephant story in my paper also plus one about how honey bees are being studied at Ohio State University to understand the effects of alcohol on the brain. The researchers found that, like humans, bees also get dopey on alcohol and forget things and suffer from impaired learning. But instead of the "mean drunk" of marauding elephants and bears, bees have a dreamy lazy drunk where they spend more time grooming than working and after a large amount of alcohol, keel over on their backs and sleep it off.