05 Mar 2006 How Did They Know The Bears Were Episcopalian?

There is a bizarre story in the Washington Post today about the city of Richmond apparently spending tax dollars to search a landfill for the rotting carcasses of two decapacitated black bears in order to give the bears a proper sendoff. Cremation followed by placement of the bears’ ashes into bronze urns. A funeral featuring the mayor, former Virginia governor Douglas Wilder, as the eulogist. A prayer by an Episcopal priest. A color guard. 500 mourners, some sobbing.

The bears were zoo bears who were killed after one of them (no one knows which) bit a four-year-old boy. City officials determined that rabies tests, which require destroying the animals, were necessary to protect the boy.

But, says the Post:

But residents and the mayor have been unforgiving.”Our job is to protect them,” Wilder said in an interview. “It’s the same horror you have if someone says to an urchin on the street, ‘Let me take you home, adopt you, keep you — and then beat you, abuse you and kill you.'”

The same horror? Apparently Mayor Wilder and I experience horror differently. Urchins first in my book.