Germany - 1, Bear - 0

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great sadness I relate to you the news of the terrible tragedy that struck one innocent bear in the Bavarian Alps yesterday. Bruno, the sprightly - if murderous - brown bear on the run in Germany's picturesque south has finally been executed by a pack of German hunters. This is obviously an atrocity of mammoth proportions - devastating news. From my home on the mountain, in between rooting for countries I don't come from against England and the USA in the world cup, and treating my students with brutal disdain & callousness, I confess that I've felt my heart warm to the tale of a plucky bear evading the authorities like some kind of filthy, hairy Dr Richard Kimball. An epic underdog tale; Bruno was released into the wild as part of an Italian program to reintroduce extinct species back into the Alps, and making his way through the mountains eventually arrived in Bavaria. The German Environment Minister, Werner Schnappauf initially welcomed the bear, saying it had nothing to fear, but quickly changed his tac when they realised the beast was savage & uncontrollable. Over coming weeks the bear would run a murderous campaign of butchery & pillage on the area, slaying numerous sheep, goats, birds, a kid's pet rabbit and rooting through piles of garbage like it was going out of fashion. The people of Bavaria, clearly not used to this kind of behaviour, were outraged. The final nail in the coffin was when after a night of chasing residents around the streets of an alpine village, Bruno sat down in front of the local constabulary, gurgled blood and howled in open challenge. This was the last straw, and the powers that be pushed the button on Bruno. The call was out: Bruno had to be destroyed.

From all around the assassins came to try and take him down. Germans, Dutch, Finns. Until eventually he could run no more and he was capped like a bitch by Teutonic huntsmen outside the town of Spitzingsee.

But why? Sure, he was a killer. Sure, he knew no law but his own. And sure, he ate garbage and left giant, glossy shits on the bonnets of police cars, but HE WAS A FUCKING BEAR. That's what bears do. Whose bright idea was it to rerelease one of natures most batshit insane, blood-drinking, death-craving monstrosities into the wild anyway? A bear's place is in a zoo or a laboratory.

And so, that's why this whole story left me feeling a bit down. I can't help feeling sorry for the old bugger. It strikes me that essentially he was killed simply for being a bear. He was only doing what nature intended him to do, and if man can't cope with nature, he shouldn't mess with it in the first place. Species on this planet come and go. Survival of the fittest. Our forefathers and foremothers hunted bears to extinction in Europe precisely because they were a threat to our way of life. And now that we've got sloppy and complacent, and we couldn't fight our way out of an Nsync concert, this is not the time to start reintroducing carnivorous beasts to mainland Europe. And these environmentalist assholes want to reintroduce wolves to Scotland. Sweet Jesus! What next?

Bruno's official website:

http://www.brunoderbaer.de/

And the BBC news coverage of his martyrdom:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5116316.stm