Chapter One - by Bilbo

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TO: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
SENT: October 20,2004 9:37pm
SUBJECT: They are crazy here

Hi Herriot:
This is Bilbo here. I have to be quick because Dad gets pissed off when I use his computer. You know what he’s like.
Things are pretty lonely here without you. Gilbert went to Cape Breton with Mom and Dad. Mom and Gilbert are not getting along too well. She got mad at him for giving her the paw and threw him out of bed. Gilbert was very traumatized by this and wants to get into counseling to help him “Work through his feelings of rejection.” Unfortunately, only English Bear has the background to help him and English will not, because he feels he is “Far too important to be bothering with the likes of Gilbert.”
As a result Gilbert has taken to meditation and in his trances he has started to levitate. It is quite scary to awaken at three in the morning and see him hovering about a foot above you. I have spoken to Dad about this and he is thinking about getting Gilbert a leash in case he levitates out of the window when we are asleep. Mom has decided to start watching her diet again. Tim Horton’s called today wondering what was going on as they are now overstocked with double chocolate fudge cookies.
Oh! I am going to leave now as I hear Dad making tea in the kitchen. I will probably hide under the computer table until he goes to bed so that he doesn’t know I have been using the computer.
lol Bilbo

Stayed tuned for further chapters.

I live amongst you. I commute beside you on the train, traipsing with my head at your knees as you swarm to your places of work. I have a job too. My tedious office sits in the heart of London, England, and every weekday morning I pull myself out of my bed in the suburbs, glug down a black coffee (with no honey) and wend my way through the grimy streets amongst you busy humans. Most of you don’t look twice at a 10-inch bear making his way to work. You’re all too caught up in your own worlds to care about a miserable, bored, lonely guy like me. And they don’t make iPod earbuds that fit my ears. I have to wear big stupid headphones.

Let me give you a bit of history. I’ve lived in London for ten years now. I originally came from the country, but the lure of the city lights was too much for me to bear (heh). But what happened? Instead of making my name and becoming the kind of bear you see on TV and the movies, or one of those great novel-writing bears (believe me, you’ve read more novels by ursines that you’d think), I became another soul-destroyed drone in a dead-end job. I actually had a ladybear friend who lived with me for a while, but my depressive mood drove her away and me further into the drink and prescription drugs. Some days I use the booze and meds to take the edge off, other times I use it to sink into oblivion, to forget that I’m a little furry bear in a human’s world, and I sometimes wake up in my own sick.