What a great story!
The abused, misunderstood, underappreciated zucchini gets its day (or night, rather) in the spotlight.
Too bad we weren’t able to have a garden this year. Just think for much I could be selling zucchinis on eBay or even down at the local farmers’ market.
Oh well. 🙁
But wait. I haven’t even let you read the story yet.
Police say a Montana woman fended off a bear attack with an unlikely weapon — a zucchini.
Missoula County Sheriff’s Lt. Rich Maricelli says a 200-pound black bear attacked one of the woman’s dogs just after midnight Wednesday on the back porch of her home about 15 miles west of Missoula.
When the woman, whom police did not name, tried to separate the animals, the bear bit her in the leg.
Maricelli says the woman reached for the nearest object at hand on the porch’s railing — a large zucchini that she had harvested from her garden.
The woman flung the vegetable at the bear, striking it and forcing it to flee.
Maricelli says the woman did not need medical attention. Wildlife officials were trying to locate the bear on Thursday.
Yup. That’s the story. Exactly as it reads at the above link. Or at least read as of 2:25 pm Pacific on September 23, 2010.
I thought it was a great story. And funny, too! I still do, in fact.
But that next-to-the-last sentence set off my Fish Alert Bells.
The woman was bit by a bear…and didn’t require medical attention?! Please!
🙄
Either that bear is a wimp — and being chased off by a vegetable may verify that — or that woman is mighty tough.
Or something is fishy about the story.
So I read it again.
Go wading into a dog-bear fight and try to separate the animals?
Maybe.
Be close enough to a bear to be bit and close enough to the porch railing to merely reach out for the Attack Vegetable…and then fling said weapon at the bear?
Maybe it’s all just a matter of semantics, but when you’re close enough to a bear for hand-to-paw and leg-to-tooth combat, you don’t fling, you clobber.
Fling, my friends, is for out-of-reach combat.
No sale.
I like zucchini. But not fishy zucchini.
Now, go ahead, tell me how you believe the story. 😯