Awhile ago, two of our neighbors said they saw a black bear doing a little nighttime shopping at their garbage cans.

The neighborhood association’s president promptly mailed a cautionary letter to all residents. I sent the following letter to him.

Dear sir,

Perhaps the bear suit prank wasn’t such a good idea after all. It was funny at first thought and would liven up our community a bit, but it may have sparked too much excitement.

I should have known better when the costume shop’s clerk gave it to me in a tied-up garbage bag. The stink was nearly unbearable. Leaving it inside a car’s hot trunk all day didn’t help it either, but they had my money, so why not pull the prank?

Wriggling into the fuzzy outfit for the first time was really strange. Its shoulders were snug but the waist was much too large. Stuffing the inside with newspapers only made it noisy and got my clothes all smeared with ink. I finally struggled it off, pulled on a couple of sweaters and my old wool pants, then slithered back inside. Now the shoulders were really tight, but the middle looked much more bearish.

It was awfully hot in there, but I wouldn’t be wearing it for long. Besides, things would cool down when the sun went down.

Cutting through the woods kept me pretty much out sight, so off I went to the neighbor’s house, figuring to spook them first. After a couple of stops to catch my breath and readjust the stuffing, I was there and ready for action!

Surprisingly, the couple ignored my bearish whoofs and growls. Peeking through the living room window confirmed the suspicions: they were caught up in an NFL game. I watched a couple of plays from their window, then ambled up the street to another neighbor’s house.

Their dogs didn’t make a sound until I was nearly on top of them, but they sure made up for the delay! It was too dark to see very well, so I didn’t notice their food bowls until stepping in one tumbled me across the doghouse roof.

Lights came on everywhere and the man of the house charged out on the deck ready to take on the world! With him shouting from the porch and the dogs trying to eat me, I took off toward the woods. Suddenly a half-hidden root sent me rolling! Every time I tried to get up, their biggest dog knocked me back down!

All that bouncing shifted my padding around so much that I couldn’t stand up straight enough to run, so I scrambled as fast as possible in a crouching, crawling, roll, trying to put more distance between me and the attacker. Unfortunately, it’s hard to scramble very fast when all you can see is by looking out through a bear suit’s mouth. Having a bloodthirsty mutt in full chase really complicated things. Then it hit me that even couch-potato dogs should be afraid of bears!

Spinning around amongst the leaves and sticks, I sort of crouched and rushed toward the mutt that ran me halfway to Stone Mountain.

Fortunately, he took off like a shot! I finally made it back home again, got cleaned up, and hit the sack. Since I had one more day’s use of the suit, I chose another home to be the next night’s victims.

Preparations started after supper and went pretty much like the night before, but rearranging the padding let me stand almost upright. By nine o’clock I was chuffing up the long, steep hill.

Beating on the home’s bird feeder dumped a bunch of seeds down my shirt, but it made enough racket to bring the homeowner charging out of the house to flap his arms wildly and yell at me. Just for a lark, I sort of hissed and charged toward him. He scooted back inside faster than his neighbor’s scaredy-cat dog! He was still watching through the window as I shuffled on home, laughing all the way.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined pulling such an incredible prank.

Unless, of course, you actually believed all this made-up nonsense.