The following editorial published on June 9 in the Orlando Sentinel:
He was young and wild, showing off for the paparazzi in downtown Orlando and causing a stir as perhaps the only adolescent male in the city to refuse a tasty pile of doughnuts. Countless local residents tagged him on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms. Two of the area’s most popular politicians gave him hashtag-worthy names — with Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer opting for BooBoo and State Rep. Anna Eskamani going for Blaze.
But the juvenile bear who spent three days tree-hopping in Lake Eola Park finally succumbed to the lure of pastry after wildlife officers added syrup, and his teenage dream of an influencer career ended with the snap of a trap door closing. As the Sentinel’s Jeff Weiner reported, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission plans to release him safely in the Ocala National Forest and, presumably, into the humdrum life of doing whatever it is that bears do in the woods.
That’s where Blaze McBooBoo really belongs. But the ultimate plot twist of his brief brush with fame is that he really isn’t that unusual. A map listing hundreds of bear sightings over the past five years on the FWC website reveals that bears go pretty much everywhere — hanging out like the world’s shaggiest Uber Eats driver on the porch of a Winter Garden apartment; chilling by a pool near the Orlando International Airport or side-eyeing a sleek black SUV in Maitland.
The same goes for other once-shy wildlife. It was once a rare wonder to glimpse sandhill cranes engaged in their graceful, leggy mating dances; now they get their groove on in the parking lots of Hobby Lobbies. Wood storks and roseate spoonbills can be spotted hanging out in roadside ditches, opossums stand their ground in apartment laundry rooms and it’s not uncommon to be confronted by the OG urban wildlife: Gangs of cute but vaguely menacing racoons.
Nice hamburger you got there. Be a shame if something happened to it.
This may not be the way things should be. But it’s the way things are, and humans have to learn to live with it in two ways.