Lesson learned from the bouncing bear

It was almost two years ago that a single bear fell from a single tree and made one of the greatest video clips of all time.
This week in Missoula, Mont., state government officials showed they have learned some important lessons from the "bouncing bear" as they avoided a similar incident.
For those who have forgotten, the bouncing bear was a 2-year-old black bear who made his way down from the mountains surrounding Missoula and found his way into a tree in a residential area. After being shot with a tranquilizer by Fish, Wildlife and Parks officials, the bear fell from the tree. Unfortunately for the bear, somebody had the idea of placing a trampoline to break his fall. What ensued was the bear catapulting into the air and onto the ground (it's okay to laugh at it because the bear wasn't injured).
The clip aired all over the country and likely embarrassed the FWP people to no end. Monday, FWP had its chance for redemption. According to the Montana Kaimin, a young female bear had once again wondered into town by accident, this time with two fellow bears. My guess is they were paying homage to the bouncing bear so close to the two-year anniversary. They probably wanted to re-enact the event that mad that bear more famous than Smokey.
Or maybe these bears were trying to become famous themselves by doing the same thing. You know the kind of bears I'm talking about. The ones that think they are so Hollywood.
Officials rounded up the other two without incident, but the baby was resilient and made its way into a tree. Before stunning the bear with a "jab stick," I'm sure FWP officials had a meeting to discuss their course of action.
Okay, we need to avoid the embarrassment of the bouncing bear that replayed all over the world last time. So how can we get 'R done this time?
Well, how about a trampoline, surrounded by smaller trampolines to help break the fall. This way, the second trampoline hit will only create a minor bounce.
Yes, yes, I like it.
Um sir, how about we just catch it with a net?
Hmmm...
Pure genius. Instead of using something designed to make things bounce, the officials went for something that is designed to catch things. The bear plummeted again, 25 feet, but landed safely in the net. She was then placed in a carrier for large dogs.
Unfortunately for the FWP, there were apparently no cameras around this time to catch the successful capture. The bouncing bear and the trampoline that made him famous will live on forever.
As for the new bouncing bear wanna be, the smart thinking of the FWP ruined her plan for fame and fortune. Sometimes fortune shines upon you and sometimes it stabs you with a jab stick.

An afternoon in the Park County Courtroom

By spending one afternoon in a courthouse, you can see the whole spectrum of human behavior, emotions, and acts of desperation by reasonably desperate people.

As the cops/courts reporter at the Powell Tribune newspaper in Wyoming, I write about crimes and the justice (or lack thereof, depending on who you ask) that follows on an almost daily basis. But between the weekly trip to the district courthouse and typing up the police report (chock full of animals running at large), the topic can get rather boring.

Until you spend some time in court, observing the legal process in action. In my more than a year on the job, I have yet to cover an actual jury trial here in Park County. But even the simplest of hearings can say so much about the people involved in the case and the problems they have caused to themselves or to others.

Today was no different. The hearing I was there to cover, a preliminary hearing for a 17-year-old young man (boys don't move out of the house) accused of setting fire along with another to a local state criminal investigations office in Powell.

For starters, the hearing was delayed one and a half hours because the defendant was in transit from the nearest jail that had the capability to house a juvenile, hundreds of miles away in Lander, Wyo. That speaks volumes about the limitations of the justice system in Wyoming. Not only that there are no closer facilities to hold juveniles in, but that somehow, this transit issue wasn't taken into account when the hearing was scheduled. This isn't the first such blunder I've seen with inmate transportation to the courthouse (one time, the wrong inmate was shackled up and brought over by mistake).

So before the hearing, I sat in on a sentencing hearing for a man who admitted to and was found guilty of domestic battery. Though the crime was a misdemeanor, domestic violence is taken seriously by the courts, the defendant represented himself. A bold move, considering court-appointed counsel is free to those who truly cannot afford it.

So by himself, the man pleaded his case to the judge on how he was sorry. In reality though, he wasn't alone in the courtroom. His wife, the woman he admitted to beating, was sitting right behind him in the first row of the public seating area. She even spoke on his behalf, pleading with the judge to let her husband return home rather than serve more time. She said here sons and elderly mother needed the man's support, as did she, having recently been in a coma. She also said she had forgiven him for what he did. But that didn't seem to be the main issue.

The man, while quiet and seemingly embarrassed, showed no real remorse for what he did. But what was his wife to do other than accept him back. Live soley off welfare and whatever Medicaid she was eligible for? Poverty was forcing her to take back an admitted wife beater. When the judge sentenced the man to one year probation instead of jail time, his wife seemed pleased, but certainly not overjoyed.

The judge himself seemed as though he wanted to be harsher with his sentence, what could he do? Deny this family their only plausible source of income? But what message does this send to the man's sons (their ages were not discussed)? That as long as you bring home the bacon, you can slap mom around a little when you get angry? Ultimately, the wife will have to make the decision to cut the abuser out of there life, because a provider is not worth living with the degradation, both physical and mental, of being married to an abuser. At least that's easy to say from my removed seat across the courtroom.

A blog about advice, not an advice blog

Somebody once said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. I definitely agree with that. Believe me, no part of my mind ever goes to waste. I have to use all of it to complete daily menial tasks, like walking and remembering to eat.
But almost as tragic as wasting a mind, good advice is a terrible thing to waste. And I fear my 23 years of wisdom and experience are currently serving no greater good. Because in order to give advice, you need someone to take it.
I am an older brother, but my brother Corey doesn’t usually take my advice. For example: I went to visit Corey at college in Indiana recently and tried to get him to flirt with this girl who was totally flirting with him. Well, I guess it’s debatable if she was flirting with him or just talking to him. And she was working in a customer service field at the time, checking out sports equipment. But people who flirt (talk) with you even if they’re working aren’t just doing it because they sort of have to, are they? Like waitresses? If that’s true, I’ll be crushed!
Sean’s brain: Of course that’s not how it works. Waitresses flirt with you because you are a cool guy. Here, let me release some endorphins.
Okay, good, that’s better.
Anyway, I think the reason Corey often ignores my advice is he’s seen my body of work. Sure, I’ve made my fair share of not-so-smart decisions. And my brother knows about most of them. But the way I see it, somebody needs to benefit from my trial-by-error experiences.
Just because I wasn’t necessarily a “ladies man” in college doesn’t mean I don’t know how to react when a girl is flirting with you. I told my brother he just had to be confident and ask the sports equipment girl what her name was, where she lived, etc, and get her phone number. Unfortunately, as I was giving him this advice, she was still standing directly in front of us. But that just provided more trial-by-error advice for him: tact is very important.
But really, I’m surprised Corey doesn’t want to be a younger version of me because in many ways, we are very alike. First of all, no matter how reluctant we are to admit it, we look a lot alike. Yes, there is another person out there blessed with these looks (you can stop laughing now). Case in point, when I was visiting my brother I told him I wanted to see if I could still blend in as if I were a college student at age 23 (which I’m sure would work, since most people seem to think I’m either an NWC student or, more frequently, a high school intern). So I told him for this weekend, I wasn’t his brother visiting, I was his cool friend. Five minutes later, a lady in the dorm cafeteria asked us “are you guys twins?” It didn’t take long for that cover to be blown.
Me and my brother even share the same enormously gigantic head (thanks to our dad). You think I’m exaggerating, but that photo of me above had to be shrunk by 500 percent to get it to fit. Our head size leaves us both susceptible to head injuries. It’s a proven fact. He’s lived a relatively head-trauma free life so far, but not so for me. I think it’s just that our heads are so big, the odds of something happening to them increase exponentially.
That’s why the only person who’s ever randomly had a light fixture fall from the ceiling of a parking garage and hit them in the head is yours truly (about five years ago). The gravitational pull from my head must have caused it to come crashing down. This is yet another area where my advice could be helpful: recovering from head trauma.
Though I wish my advice had an outlet, the truth is, Corey is doing fine for himself without it. Except maybe in the girl department. Instead of actually asking out the sports equipment girl, he “facebooked” her. For those who don’t know, Facebook is a popular Web site where you can post a profile about yourself and list other facebookers as your friend, and see if they respond in kind and list you as theirs. Last I heard, sports equipment girl had yet to respond to my brothers’ facebooking.
No worries, though. The final piece of advice I gave my brother was: “There are plenty of girls out there who would be ecstatic to be facebooked by you. If sports equipment girl doesn’t want to facebook back a good looking, albeit big-headed guy like yourself, that’s her loss.”
See what good advice I give? But since my brother doesn’t really listen to me, I’m available as a mentor if anyone’s interested. Just facebook me, I promise I’ll facebook you back.