Grizzly Cat

Of course we are challenging nature itself, and, it hits back…. We have to accept that it’s much stronger than we are. ?[amazon link=”0061575542″ title=”Werner Herzog”]

Watching this captive bear playing with a plucky domestic cat in the rustic confines of a mean Russian hunting camp, I thought of Werner Herzog?especially his documentary Grizzly Man (2005), about bear advocate Timothy Treadwell and the dangers of sentimentalizing nature. But I also think of poet Randall Jarrell’s luminous novel [amazon link=”0062050885″ title=”The Animal Family“], which tells the story of a hunter and a mermaid making an unlikely family with a bear and a lynx. The strange zoology of Jarrell’s feral family never seems sentimental?or maybe it’s a reminder that sentiment, as much as savagery, is also a survival instinct. ?via Neatorama