Responsible Bear

So on a walk, little bear discovered some objects which bothered him quite a bit. In amongst all the grass and the trees and the melting snow, little bear came across a coke can, a pepsi cup and a newspaper flyer.

Now little bear is just a little guy, hence his name little bear... so he couldn't really do much with these things. Although they were a pretty colour, they were very out of place amidst the dried grasses. He would very much have liked to pick them up and carry them away but faced two problems.

One, he's just a little bear so can't really carry them without toppling over on his little bum. Two, even if he were to get to the garbage bin, and manage to find a way to climb on top of it... the lids are bear-proof. Yup, bear-proof. Obviously, the planners for the city decided that little bears and little people for that matter, should not be able to toss trash in the garbage.

Which means that... trash pickup is up to the big people. Which includes me and you. Little bear's distress over the trash and his inability to do anything about it, is a good wake-up call to the rest of us. How often do we walk by a piece of trash and think "someone else can pick that up". Or maybe we think "it will decompose eventually"... maybe in a 100 or 1000 years! Let's face it... we think thoughts that convince us that we don't need to do anything about it in the moment. Maybe we even think "I'll pick it up on my way back". Uh-huh... really.


Perhaps if we all picked up a little bit of trash on our walks... the world might be a cleaner, safer place. We all know the dangers of those plastic things that hold a six-pack of cans together. An animal gets its head stuck in those and it is very dangerous. Or a skunk sticks its head in a jar to lick out something sticky and then can't get the jar off. Trash isn't just unsightly... it's dangerous to the little critters around us. So maybe little bear's message today is "If not you... then who?"