Did you hear about the unfortunate incidents of bear attacks in California? On three separate occasions, a bear broke into luxury cars and thrashed around and scratched up the nice leather seats and the fancy doors and the dash with its big sharp claws. And the vehicles weren’t your average Dodge Caravans or Kia SUVs, the damaged whips included a pricey Rolls Royce and two schmancy Mercedes to the tune of about 142,000 U.S. beans (app. 9 million Canadian dollars).
But when four fellows came to claim the insurance money on the ruined rides, officials started to think things seemed a little fishy.
Or in this case, a little bear-y.
You see, the guys brought along a video of the incidents to the insurance company as proof that a wild beast had either decided that he wanted to trash an expensive vehicle because one almost hit his cousin when she was crossing the road or that he wanted to drive a fancy car and got really mad when he couldn’t figure out how to start it. It turns out the video wasn’t all that smart of an idea. In fact, it was un-bear-ably stupid.
Because, as has been reported enthusiastically all around the world, authorities noticed something odd. And stupid. And bear-ly believable, you might say. To quote from many various news sources: “Upon further scrutiny of the video, the investigation determined the bear was actually a person in a bear costume, the department said in a statement.”
That’s right; four brilliant nimrods hatched a fool-proof, impossibly stupid plan. They’d get a bear suit and Nimrod 1 would put it on and Nimrods 2, 3 & 4 would videotape whilst N.1 (aka Fake Bear) would crawl into the car and try to look like a bear attempting to destroy the expensive interior. And the oh so clever piece de resistance was the wielding of multi-pointy metal hand tools designed to simulate claws on account of them dull plastic bear claws on the bear suit just wouldn’t scratch upholstery real good like one of them real bears.
Of course, when the four Nimrods presented their multi-moola damages claim it took the fuzz about 10 seconds to deduce that a human wearing a fuzzy bear suit was doing an extremely poor impression of an ursine mammal, crawling awkwardly around inside a car, attempting to scratch stuff. I’ve seen the video, and the true highlight is when Papa Bear, in an attempt to exit, unceremoniously fall-flops fake headfirst out of the passenger side of the car.
Detectives raided their house and found the elaborate bear suit, complete with big snarling head and metal claw tools. The Bogus Bear Boys have been arrested and charged with insurance fraud, and are now up for an Oscar in the category of “Worst Lead Performance in a Bear Suit”. I would say that they should throw the book at them but I don’t believe in bothering wildlife.
I can’t help wondering where these boys were when all that “footage” of Sasquatch was going around. But I guess if they couldn’t pull off masquerading as a beastly bruin, they couldn’t possibly step into the costumed feet of Bigfoot. The fake video would be unbearable.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer author and filmmaker. Reach out to Harley with any thoughts or ideas at harleyhay99@gmail.com.
