Grandma goes to great lengths to save battered bruin

It isn’t difficult to understand the attraction a teddy bear holds for a small child. Soft and cuddly, quiet and calm, trusted and loyal, a teddy bear does whatever you wish it to do and makes no fuss about it.

You never need to worry about your teddy bear swiping your snack when you’re not looking, knocking down the castle of blocks you’ve just constructed or walking off with your favorite toy. Teddy bears are considerably more wonderful than big brothers in each of those regards. As a matter of fact, according to our grandson Max, teddy bears are the best.

Given all these positive attributes, what’s not to love about a teddy bear? If you’d ask the typical family dog, the response might be, “Pretty much everything, based on all the above.”

From the pup’s perspective, the bear is simply playing the role of mindless dolt and subservient nitwit as all the while it silently works to usurp the dog’s rightful place at the center of a child’s life. That seems the only explanation for the targeting of Max’s little stuffed “Bear-Bear” by the family’s dog Beasley.

An arm here, an ear there, a little polyester pudge drawn toothily from the center of the bear’s chubby belly — Beasley didn’t shred Bear-Bear all at once, but instead seemed to draw pleasure in the slow and painful torture of the helpless creature. The bear would show up in some random spot about the house missing an eye, a limb or worse. In a house filled with stuffed creatures of every shape and size, Bear-Bear alone suffered such wrath.

Ultimately, Bear-Bear’s tattered carcass was quietly placed in the “out box” — the last stop before dumpster or donation. That’s where Kristin found him and was instantly overcome by “grandmotherly instinct” as she puts it.

And so, on a hot August day, I walked into the kitchen to find a full-blown surgical unit. The patient, a gaunt and armless Bear-Bear, lay under the glare of a sewing machine light while a bespectacled surgeon worked feverishly to transplant a pair of new limbs. Noting Bear-Bear’s new arms were considerably darker than the dusty gray of the rest of his body, I asked the surgeon about the “donor.”

“I went to the thrift shop to find a similar bear,” Kristin said, looking up from her task. “But I felt so bad about pulling the arms off of one bear to save another that I bought this instead and made my own arms.”

With that she held up a dark-brown pair of stuffed deer antlers, the type zany Aunt Gladys might wear at the family Christmas party. Each side was missing a 4-inch segment she had scavenged for the bear.

Max didn’t question for a moment the oddball mismatch of Bear-Bear’s limbs when he welcomed him back into his own loving arms, but the world is certain to wonder how a stuffed bear ended up with a pronounced farmer’s tan and a single dark-brown ear. I’m certain a proud “Dr. Frankengranny” would be happy to talk them through the procedure.

Kristin and John Lorson would love to hear from you. Write Drawing Laughter, P.O. Box 170, Fredericksburg, OH 44627, or email John atjlorson@alonovus.com.