Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Don’t look now, but Summer is just around the corner, and the change in seasons might be making you want to get up and out. But don’t take it from us, because an alligator and a bear, both in Florida, decided to leave their normal habitat, going from door to door in a community in one case and a Lowe’s Home Improvement store in another.
We’ll start with the more outlandish of the two stories, which involved a bear casually walking around the home improvement store in Wildwood, Florida. Lowes employee Steve Warren, who works there part-time, was probably not prepared to see a black bear inside the store, inspecting the flower department. So he did what anyone would do, which is immediately capture the bear… on his phone to upload to social media.
The woods? Why would I s**t there? (facebook/steve.warren.980)
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission told the Miami Herald that the bear was spotted at about 7 am at the store, an hour after it opened. “FWC staff were notified by local law enforcement of a juvenile bear enclosed within the outdoor garden center section of Lowe’s Home Improvement in Wildwood,” Ryan Sheets, a spokesman for the FWC Division of Habitat and Species Conservation, said. “An FWC bear management contractor arrived to trap and relocate the bear if necessary, but the bear exited the enclosure and left the area on its own. FWC staff will respond to additional reported sightings as needed.”
So basically, the bear can just come and go to the store as it pleases, which must be a relief to the many shoppers it will later devour. We caught up with the bear, who said he was just taking care of business. “I really wanted to redo my den before the Cubs game was on,” the bear stated. “Plus, the new season of The Bear is going to be coming out too. After foraging for nuts and berries in the forest, I figured I’d pick up some nuts and bolts, and all of a sudden, the paparazzi are all over me like I’m Smokey or Yogi. Do I have to take my business to The Home Depot?”
Meanwhile, a few hours south in Tortuga, the alligator was actually going door to door, according to a posting on the Lee County Sheriff’s Instagram page. “Our 3rd precinct deputies responded to a call this morning of a suspicious…. Gator knocking on doors within the Tortuga community,” the post says. “Thankfully, he was secured and handed over to the trapper safely.”
Embarrassingly for the alligator, he wound up entangled in a lawn chair that likely impeded his progress. Even worse, according to the gator, he later lost his job as a door-to-door salesman. “If it isn’t one thing, it’s another, the dejected gator told Odd News. “The quota is way too high in the first place, and I don’t even really know what a solar panel is, so it’s hard to try to pitch them.
“I can take getting the door slammed in my face, but the final insult was when someone called me a crocodile, then called the cops,” he continued. “Cops need solar panels too, right? I figured that’d be the perfect time to work on my elevator pitch, but then I get tangled up in a lawn chair while they film the whole thing. This totally ruins my plans for the rest of the day. Now, how am I going to get to Lowe’s?”
This article is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
