I was having a discussion with Walt on his birthday about Time’s article regarding polar bears and the shrinking glaciers, etc, when I mentioned that Alaskan hunters found a hybrid-polar/grizzly bear mix. Everyone thought that I was pushing the proverbial envelope of believability when I mentioned the Prizzly sightings and that a hunter had killed one last month; just as a matter of luck and coincidence I found this article on MSNBC. Apparently a hunter killed the bear last month, but the ranger noticed that “Yogi” was not completely characteristic of a polar bear-having brown spots on its’ grizzly-esque humped back, claws of a grizzly and a strong attraction to the pic-a-nic baskets ah Boo-Boo.
As it turns out, the hybrid bear was killed in Canada near the Sachs Harbor. The DNA test did show that the bear was a 50/50 mix between a polar bear and a grizzly bear. Obviously, this a relief to Jim Martell, the 65-year old hunter who bagged the Prizzly, paid $50, 000 to hunt polar bears because he was facing a year in jail, and a grand in fines for shooting a bear that he did not have a permit for. By the way, if I am the first person to use the phrase Prizzly bear, I want royalty money. Yeah right.
(Photo from the Canadian Wildlife Service/AP via MSNBC)
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