This Bear With His Head Stuck in a Coffee Can is Seriously Me Every Single Morning

Early last fall, I told readers that a Juneau black bear with his head stuck in a jar of animal crackers was my spirit animal. Well, it now appears I have yet another Alaskan spirit bear, specifically this guy who got his head stuck in an old coffee can near Tok.

I didn't start drinking coffee until my first year of law school, but I must say it was a revelation. "So THIS is why everyone is so awake in the morning!" was pretty much my takeaway. Up until then, I routinely missed my subway stop on the way to work, waking up in Coney Island when I was supposed to be in Battery Park.

So I totally get what this bear was trying to do: The same thing I do every morning. Take my dark hairy ass over to the nearest source of coffee and bury my head inside of it as far as it will go. 

Bears don't have the luxury of easy access to drive-through espresso stands, coffee grinders, French Presses and the like. So they are forced to stave off their morning migraine by foraging around in the woods instead.

I don't feel bad for them though, since a bear's to-do list every day is pretty basic and always the same: look for fish and berries so he can pass out for six months before waking up to eat more fish and berries and have sex with another bear. 

That's a whole lot different from what I need coffee-fuel for: refereeing sibling fights over who "unfairly" got a doughnut last week; managing grownup toddlers of the adult workplace; reading everything I can about a sociopathic closet case who, because he clearly couldn't just fucking deal with himself, had to shoot up dozens of innocent people with a weapon that's easier to buy than imported Gouda; and shaking my head vigorously over the fact that our country might elect to the presidency a hollowed-out, sub-humanoid gourd-husk whose first (and always impulsive) response to everything is to congratulate himself and spew vitriolic hate-speech in a dumpster fire of a political campaign that would make even Stalin blush.

So suffice to it to say I deserve to bury my head in a 16 ounce almond milk latte, and this bear can make do with an old can of Folgers. Other than that, we are totes twinsies.

(Side note: it's kind of a bummer that Fish & Game had to shoot this fella with a tranquilizer dart to get the can off his head, since being tranquilized is exactly what you're trying to avoid when you stick your head in coffee).