{"id":1210,"date":"2007-06-08T00:48:18","date_gmt":"2007-06-08T06:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mercuryranch.org\/blog\/2007\/06\/08\/friday-snippet-pbotl\/"},"modified":"2007-06-08T00:48:18","modified_gmt":"2007-06-08T06:48:18","slug":"friday-snippet-pbotl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/friday-snippet-pbotl\/","title":{"rendered":"Friday Snippet: PBOTL"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t talked about Polar Bear on the Loose<\/em> for a long time. It’s the first novel I ever wrote. It’s been critiqued, and it’s sitting in my desk drawer awaiting the proper time to rewrite. Told in first person by a young female polar bear named Inuit (pronounced Eye-Knew-It), it’s a story of her adventures living among humans as if she were human. The opening is terrible, and this snippet is the second scene. It still needs a lot of work, and as I read it, I think I see where I’ve grown as a writer over the last four years. PBN is Polar Bear Network.<\/p>\n

While the zoos and polar bears mentioned exist, all accounts are fictional.\u00a0 Feel free to say what does and doesn’t work for you (assuming anything works…).<\/p>\n

My plan is for future snippets to be fresher than this.<\/p>\n

NOTICE: <\/strong>This material is copyrighted, first draft, certainly contains errors, and possibly not even going to be in the final draft of anything. Do not quote or repost anywhere or in any format. Thanks.<\/p>\n

—————————<\/p>\n

The truck comes for me tomorrow.<\/span> <\/span>Gus got my counterfeit research plan planted into the zoo’s research database. <\/span>I’m into the system now and set for the next year and a half. <\/span>This is one of the riskiest parts of the plan. <\/span>Fortunately, PBN should be able to intervene if I become trapped somewhere. <\/span>Chances of discovery are slim. <\/span>The zoo folks don’t know we have the network. <\/span>While we need to be careful, they don’t expect us to have these capabilities. <\/span>Thanks to Gus’ ‘depression’ several years ago, we were able to get everything we needed to build a worldwide, wireless, secure network for captive and native bears to interact with each other. <\/span>We’ve made massive strides in collaborative planning.<\/o><\/p>\n

<\/o>The Central Park Zoo thought Gus was bored, but he was working out the details of how to make the network happen, and he used what the staff thought was repetitive swimming to stay focused.<\/span> <\/span>Then he had to come up with something to throw that shrink they hired off his trail. <\/span>Fortunately, Panasonic just figured the order to airdrop scores of Toughbooks to various arctic regions was for a classified defense project. <\/span>It was a little tougher to get them into zoos, but somehow, Gus figured it out.<\/o><\/p>\n

I move into the Assiniboine Zoo in <\/st1>Winnipeg<\/st1> to begin acclimatizing myself to living within the city.<\/span> <\/span>Debbie, <\/st1>Winnipeg<\/st1>‘s only polar bear, has been lonely. <\/span>Since <\/st1>Winnipeg<\/st1> isn’t far from my home in Churchill, I believe I’ll feel better about making the transition. <\/span>After three months there, I crawl into a truck and head to the <\/st1>United States<\/st1> and the Milwaukee County Zoo. <\/span>The study’s premise is to see how a strange bear integrates with other bears. <\/span>I start with a lone female (Debbie in Assiniboine<\/st1>), then I go to a lone male bear (Zero in the Milwaukee Zoo). <\/span>Then I go back to the Henry Villas Zoo in <\/st1>Madison<\/st1> to see how I do with a male and female (Nanuq and Mischka). <\/span>Then I go to the Bronx Zoo and spend three months with Tundra, Blizzard, and Snow Lilly (two males and a female). <\/span>Lastly, I make a stop at the Central Park Zoo with Gus, Ida, and Lilly (one male and two females). <\/span>Ostensibly, the keepers are monitoring how the captive bears receive an unknown newcomer, and they see how the newcomer bear reacts to the new and varied environments. <\/span>And, of course, they record the actions of everyone. <\/span>Several of the keepers are grumbling about it\u2014they think it puts their bears at risk. <\/span>In fact, that’s going to be our toughest thing\u2014to act surprised to see each other. <\/span>The PBN has carefully selected each zoo, and each participant has given his or her personal OK to the project. <\/span>Ultimately, we need to learn human interaction to ensure the survival of our species.<\/o><\/p>\n

At the Central Park Zoo, I’ll work with Gus, our leader, to ensure the project is on track.<\/span> <\/span>Fine-tuning will take place there. <\/span>After the Central Park Zoo, we enter the next tricky part in our plan. <\/span>We are arranging a temporary exhibit for me in Virginia, either at the Virginia Zoo or the <\/st1>Virginia<\/st1> Living<\/st1> Museum<\/st1>. <\/span>We’d prefer the <\/st1>Virginia<\/st1> Living<\/st1> Museum<\/st1>, but we’re not sure if they have adequate facilities to keep a polar bear. <\/span>This is particularly ironic, because my next step will be to move to a house in <\/st1>Grafton<\/st1>, Virginia,<\/st1> to live with my human host. <\/span>Given that fact, perhaps a facility without enough security would be ideal for our plans! <\/span>I gotta tell Gus. <\/span>We’ve been wondering how to work out this detail. <\/span>I’ll be an escapee! <\/span>Perfect.<\/o><\/p>\n

Polar Bear on the Loose.<\/span> <\/span>This is my story.<\/p>\n

[blenza_autolink 42]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t talked about Polar Bear on the Loose for a long time. It’s the first novel I ever wrote. It’s been critiqued, and it’s sitting in my desk drawer awaiting the proper time to rewrite. Told in first person by a young female polar bear named Inuit (pronounced Eye-Knew-It), …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pbotl","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}