Cajsa's Choices: Amazing Pics of the Many Virtual Bears of Second Life

Cajsa Lilliehook covers the best in virtual world screenshot art and digital painting

Calvin Lyle’s “We’re On the Road” captures one of the more common man and bear encounters of the modern world, on the highway. These bears seem to be helping Calvin flag down a truck to help him with his broken-down car. 

Bears were on my mind recently after my great niece shared a pic of the bear that comes to inspect their yard every evening. She seems content to watch the kids play and has not once tried to use the swing. Bears are common where I grew up and I had plenty of encounters. The worst that ever happened was a mama bear and cubs hogging the spring where I had hoped to refill my water bottle. This got me curious about bears in SL.

Oddly, it seems man and bear encounters are much more common in real life than in our Second Life. A search for “bears in Second Life” returns mostly teddy bears or gay bears. I had much better luck searching for Jian bear, specifying a creator who created a slew of bears. 

For more fun with bears in Second Life, click here:

Bryan Werefox notes that “Camping can be dangerous…” It seems he has taken to heart the airline instruction about seeing to your safety first before helping others. Of course, if she stays still, the bear is more likely to go after him. It’s just the chase reflex. By running, he becomes the shiny object. Bears are playful and the runner is just much more fun. (Could also be a whole new twist to the "man or bear?" question.)

Rimgal Kirax is trying to outclimb bears. This is a terrible strategy. Bears climb trees better than humans. I have climbed a tree to safety once, but that was to escape a pack of feral dogs and wolves. The best way to escape a bear is to do nothing. Of course, I have never seen so many bears in one place at one time, though there are videos of crowds of bears fishing.

In my family, three generations of children have begged for the several stories of Uncle Hubert and Blue Bear, an orphan cub who turned blue from eating too many blueberries. They had all sorts of adventures, going to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, panning for gold on the Yukon, and fleeing a forest fire along the Rainy River. A few years back, I “illustrated” a few of Uncle Hubert’s stories with Second Life. There’s about a dozen more stories that my niece has collected that I should try to capture in SL, but it’s not so much fun since he died and can no longer tell me what I got wrong. 

I wish there were more bear pictures in Second Life. They really are clever creatures and unless they are polar bears or grizzlies, they are likely to be more afraid of you than you are of them. I’ll never forget our neighbor picking blueberries with her husband and telling him to stop picking off her bush because he was shaking it. He didn’t move and didn’t move until she got so mad she smacked his arm away…but it wasn’t his arm. It was a bear! And sure enough, the bear ran away terrified by an 80-year-old lady.

Now, take more pictures with bears! 

All images copyright the various artists.

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Cajsa’s Choices is devoted to unique, artistic, and innovative virtual world-based images and screenshots that showcase the medium as an art form and Second Life as a creative platform. (Generally not images that fit on this Bingo card.)  Cajsa Lilliehook is a sixteen year resident of Second Life, where she owned a photo studio, spent several years as a DJ at The Velvet, and for her first SL job, cleaned up prim trash. She co-founded and runs the It’s Only Fashion blog with her best friend Gidge Uriza. She also has a book review blog, Tonstant Weader Reviews and a cooking blog, Single Serving Recipes. She spends a lot of time researching and reporting on Republican sexual predators. In her first life, she is a retired grassroots leader who has worked for economic and social justice issues most of her life. She is also the minion of a cat named Nora.

Comments

[Linn Darkwatch]

The bear in the Uncle Hubert picture looks like one of the old prim bears by Wynx Whiplash. I have a Tiny version of that one somewhere in my inventory.