The Dancing Bear At Midnight

In the Nature Reserve of Northern British Columbia, a couple of years ago, there was a bear that danced at midnight.  Everybody knew about him.  Not only the forest rangers and the littler collectors and tidy-uppers that worked along the picnic and hiking trails who seldom ever got the job done before midnight . . . there also were the silver pan flutes that danced – it wasn’t just only the bear, you know.  The silver pan flutes danced high over the air, at midnight.  There were quite a few other things and creatures that danced when the clock struck twelve. 

            The bear that danced at midnight had no watch and he did not have clock inside his cave at home either.  He was an animal – of course he did not have a clock inside his cave!  But he went every night fairly close within earshot of the big cukoo clock that the rangers had placed on one side of the clearing.  They had placed this cukoo clock here just for fun you know – they were silly, you could say, I guess.  But I don’t know who was sillier – the forest rangers who had set up their cukoo clock or the bear that danced to it when it began to chime cukooks!  What do you think was worse?

            The moon was overhead and the bear could leap up in the sky when the moon was a full moon.  Only when it was full moon.  It was so beautiful, the bear against the blue of sky on a silver-lit night.  And the tallest fir-tree top a dark silhouette; the round beauty of all ages its pale transparency seeing into feeling. 

            Seeing into feeling – that sounds kind of odd, this is though how it felt to the brown happy bear when he saw the moon.  It was seeing into feeling. 

            I don’t know which started to dance first, if it was the silver pan flutes or the bear.  Maybe they both started at the same time.  And so the bear had music to dance to.  There was nobody to blow these pan flutes though – animals of course can’t play instruments can they?  And forest rangers usually aren’t very musical and only drunk at night around afre.  Aren’t they?  So who played these flutes was the air!  It was the air.  And they played just as the flutes swirled and danced round, up, down, side to side, and just so the drums down below on the earth could catch up to the beat.

            Yes of course there were drums playing.  The lost children of the forest played these.  Where did they come from? the lost children?  Well, I can’t really say, or else they would have to go back home.  But being lost in the forest meant you did not know the way back home.  Soo I guess all that I can just tell you is that these lost children really used to live with their mums and dads.  And that’s why they were called lost – it was their moms and dads who had lost them.  But the forest had found them, and if the children would one day leave the forest and go back to their parents, they would still be called “lost children” – not by their parents but by the forest.

            There was Shirley.  Shirely with straight ginger hair and wide smiling freckles across her face actually came right across the street from where I live.  If you would see her face you’d remember these posters that used to be up everywhere: Missing: Shirley Temple.  I’m afraid Shirley had begun to adapt a little too well to civilisation in this forest in the mountains – a little to much to go back tot the streets to find her missing poster and call home to tell her parents to pick her up.  Her favourite uncle was Dance, the Bear, and he told her she was welcome to stay with the animals In the wild as long as she liked.

            Shirley of course wasn’t the only lost child in this huge expanse of forest, living in caves or whatever it was animal family provided for a home.  There won’t be anything all so fascinating to tell about each and every one of them, but let me tell you a little about Baird who was the funniest laughing boy out of all of them.  He had such a contagious laugh, the forest in the beginning had had to ask the rainbow, after one stormy afternoon, to take him under the rainbow’s bow and that he be quarantined there for a while.  You see, animals in the wild don’t laugh.  They have a sense of humour, but tell me, have you ever seen an animal laugh?  That was why the animals believed that this little boy who laughed all the time was not really laughing.  They did not know what laughter was.

            It was okay once in a while, the animls thought.  Just like they themselves once in a while gave a little sneeze or a human luahg thmesleves once in a while.  But too much was a sickness and it made them start to laugh themselves.  This was because laughter is contagious no matter if you are an animal, a pan flute, a fir tree, a flickering moth over a burning candle or a human being.  Laughter catches everything.  And so, even tough the animals who heard the lost boy Baird’s laughter thought it was a strange sound, they started to laugh too.  They were the first animals that could laugh, I think, since the age of the earth when fables and fairy tales were written.  My Dad said, back in Medieval Ages, animals really talked, like you and me.  It’s face. 

            Baird lived in the starlet’s nest, by the way.

            Dance, the Bear, was my teddy bear, by the way. 

            Before he became a teddy bear, he was the bear living in the wild who was famous for dancing at midnight and leaping high up reaching just below the moon.  All teddy bears have a history.  A past and where they come from.  Where was your teddy bear before when he was a real bear?

            At midnight, my teddy bear catches moon drops from the moon.  I leave my teddy bear outside in the garden once in a while, so he an turn real at midnight.  That is why most of the time when I go to find him in the morning he looks happier and with a twinkle in his left eye.  And he looks healthier.  Baird is still living in the forest, and all the animals are still laughing there whenever he laughs.  And my Teddy Bear catches their laughter too!  That’s why he looks fresh and healthy. 

            Also, I know he was happy and back to being in the wild, dancing in the same forest he used to before he became my teddy bear . . .  Santa Claus asked him to.

            He came to the Dancing Bear one day and asked him, “How would you like to fly in the sky?  Sitting in Sant Clause’s sled?  Would you like to come with me, Dancing Bear?”

            Dancing Bear looked at Santa Clause with sparkles in his eyes and yet he scratched his head in perplexity at Santa Clause.  “Aw,  hey ya santa Clause.  You’re not going to have me sittin’ in you sled and making your sled heavier than any sack of toys you’ve ever carried!”  You must remember, my teddy bear, before he became a teddy bear, was a big wild brown bear, and bears weigh just as much as your house.

            “Santa Claus, you can’t be serious!  I’d never have guess you’d want your sleigh to carry ME!!”  And my teddy bear roared just a loud loud growl.

            Santa Claus was a man with sympathy as warm and ready to give even more than he gave presents.  “Dancing Bear.  Of course I want you on my sleigh.  But to fly around the earth as a wee teddy bear.  A teddy bear.  A bear that can be held in the arms of a little child’s and carried around with them wherever the little child should go.”

            “A teddy bear!” Dancing Bear exclaimed.

            “Yes, a teddy bear for Christmas.  For one special little girl and her Christmas.  How do you imagine sitting inside a red stocking, warm and snug, together with walnuts and a gingerbread man and a striped red and white candy cane and lots more goodies . . . and they all smell really really nice, even better than what you ever find dropped beside the paths here in this National Park of yours.  And there’ll be roast turkey and baked potatoes and a kitchen full of roasting food and you can smell it all in the room you know!”

            Dancing Bear, the bear before he became my teddy bear, sniffed the air and it was only just night air filled with fresh clean air and nothing else – maybe the natural wiff of pine cones and pine branches – but a bear loves the smell of food, of course, and it can be any food.  If only he could be teddy bear!

            “You can view the Christmas decoration, all in lots of different colours and just really really beautiful.  You’ll be able to see all these colours, Dancing Bear.  As a bear now, a wild, real bear, you can only see a few colours.  But as a teddy bear you can see all.  And besides all you can see, there’s lots more you can taste . . . in the air, you’ll smell sausges, cabbage, stew, and this kind of cookie and that kind of cookie, should I go down the list of what might be baking or just baked?”

            “No, that’s alright, Santa Claus – I’m coming!”  Dancing Bear loved al these things.  He loved food.  He was a bear. And he loved being cozy and snug and just wondered how he was going to fit inside a Christmas stocking even as a plush toy teddy bear.  Could he really become that small?

            This is the moral of this story:  You can ask Santa Clause any animal in the wild you would like him to turn into a plush toy for you and he will do it for you!

            “And you know something else?”  Santa Claus said with a chuckle and gave the bear a soft playful punch.  “Lots of children will run to you when they see you.  They’ll stoke your fur and cuddle you and ask if you’re for them.  And then one little girl will step up and say, “Uh-uh.  No.  This teddy bear is for me!”

            “And you’ll be somebody’s cuddly, favourite teddy bear and her best friend in the whole wide world!”

            Dancing Bear of course thought the prospective of being a little cuddly tddy bear and somebody’s best friend in the whole world the greatest and happiest thing he had ever heard of.  He had lost a few of his brothers and sisters going this way to become teddy bears.  One of them had only just the night before talked with Dancing Bear on the telephone saying he was still in the toy store wiaitng to be sold!  Dancing Bear had waited since he was a cub to become somebody’s teddy bear.  He only had forgotten when Santa Claus came to speak to him just now.  But then he remembered. 

            So that was the night, a few minutes past midnight, that my teddy bear became a teddy bear.

By Gudrun Sabrina Hirt