Caption on a picture in an article about wildlife photos:

BLACK BEAR

The black bear used to be one of the most commonly seen large animals because in Yosemite and Sequoia national parks they lived off of garbage and tourist handouts. This bear has learned to open car doors in Yosemite, where damage to automobiles caused by bears runs into the tens of thousands of dollars a year. Campaigns to bearproof all garbage containers in wild areas have been difficult, because as one biologist put it, "There is a considerable overlap between the intelligence levels of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."

Dogs are for some historical reason extremely angry at cats. I once watched a dog named Edgar spot a cat roughly a hundred yards away and go tearing after it, faster and faster, gaining ground with each step until he was just inches away, at which point the cat made a very sharp right turn, leaving Edgar to run directly, at Dog Warp Speed, into the side of a house. Fortunately he absorbed the entire impact with his brain, so there was no damage, but this incident teaches us that anger is very self-destructive, and that we must learn to control it.

According to the Knoxville News-Sentinel, among the inquiries received by the sheriff's department in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during the weekend of the "storm of the century" in March 1993: One caller wanted to know how'd she know when the power came back on, and another wanted to know how come his power was off when he had just seen a car go by with its lights on.

From: rz02+@andrew.cmu.edu (Rudolph R. Zung)

Subject: State of Intelligence

Date: 14 Oct 92 08:30:05 GMT

This is for real; I am not making this up.

I was driving back to Pittsburgh from Chicago a few weekends ago, and had the CB so that I would be appraised of "traffic conditions." Anyway there were these two truckers talking on the channel. Trucker #2: Metric? Why should we change over to metric? What wrong with (a slight pause here as Trucker #2 tries to think of appropriate system of measurements...) American Standard.

Trucker #1: Metric is real simple. See there's none of these 16th and 32nd measures. Everything is just one through ten. It's real easy.

Trucker #2: Only one through ten, hun? Well, I got a few metric tools in my toolbox. And this here wrench is sized six POINT five... how do you explain that?

From: m89mph@ecs.oxford.ac.uk

Subject: US Navy

Date: 15 Mar 92 09:30:04 GMT

Sworn to be true, but probably apocryphal:

In the mid 80's a cruiser of the U.S. navy put in to port in Catahegna, Spain, for a week's shore leave. (Well, leave for the crew, not the cruiser.) The first evening, the captain was more than a little surprised to receive the following letter from an upper-class Spanish lady:

Dear Captain,

On Thursday, it will be my daughter's coming of age party. I would like you to send four well-mannered, rich, unmarried officers. They should arrive at 8 p.m. - One last point: no Jews - we don't like Jews.

Sure enough, at 8 on Thursday, the lady heard a rap at the door, which she opened to find, in dress uniform, four exquisitely-mannered, wealthy, single, BLACK officers. Her lower jaw hit the floor, but pulling herself together she got out, "There must be some mistake".

"Madam", said the first officer, "Captain Cohen doesn't make mistakes."