Not All Bear Beat Stories Are Bad News

When I was maybe seven or eight years old, my parents took me to a zoo that had a snake-pit. It was a circular hole in the ground, ten feet deep or so, with a cement floor writhing with rattlesnakes. It was totally cool, I remember you could hear the rattles rattling. Looking down, leaning over the fence, I turned to my father and said, “What would you do if I jumped in there?”

“Don’t,” he said.

“I know,” I said. “But what would you do if I did?”

“Well,” he said, “if you jumped in there, I would have to do something I really wouldn’t want to do and jump in there to get you.”

I found this very comforting. (My little sister had just been born; I guess I was having a crisis of faith.) That memory is maybe why I find this story of a man jumping into a bear’s pen at a German zoo to save his daughter a little extra touching. Also, we needed some brighter bear news today. Also, it reminds me of those stories of kids falling into gorilla enclosures and being saved by friendly gorillas-which are always somehow so much more emotionally moving than when humans save humans. Why is that?