Wilderness: over thirty years have passed since a teddy bear was captured in Vallelonga (Marsica) which the then management of the Park, in full judicial storm, decided to call "Sandrino" in honor of the President of the Republic Sandro Pertini. "Sandrino" is still alive, although, it is said, almost dying, in an enclosure not far from the town of Villavallelonga and the place where he was captured.
The characters at the top of the Abruzzo Park have changed, but according to the latest press reports, they are making the same mistakes, in the same place. In thirty years we will have another bear, it is said female, dying, semi-domestic and absolutely dominated by man, but alive: dead walking, as they say in the plots of mafia novels for certain characters. Just hoping that at least being female it can serve to procreate some cubs, albeit in captivity and with all the problems that we will then have to insert them in their natural environment. Unless you decide to bring her back to her valley, as wisdom would like and with the necessary precautions. When the fact of "Sandrino" happened, the undersigned wrote that he should not be captured and put in captivity, but left in place, perhaps in an enclosure, where his mother could find him. Today, as for “Sandrino”, they did the same thing: that is, he was prevented from waiting for his mother, if alive, to go and retrieve him, having also transferred him to the Pescasseroli zoo; therefore, history repeats itself: no attempt to leave him in his own world. After all, to close it in a zoo there would be and always would be time. If nothing else before, it would have been at least a good idea to try, securing him in a temporary enclosure there or near the place where he was found. Instead it was decided to take it immediately to Pescasseroli, and almost certainly with the same excuse as "Sandrino": it had to be treated. In Pescasseroli, where it will certainly become a tourist attraction! What if the teddy bear was simply lost and the mother was still looking for him? Perhaps it is the case that he reprints the story of that ancient crime, "rewarded" but never communicated, for obvious reasons: the same ones that would be alleged today!
But are these "experts" really wild animal experts? Or are they just in front of computers where they can process the data they receive from a satellite thanks to the radio collars with which they have equipped almost all the remaining Marsican bears?
The writer, in a similar situation, always in those distant 80s of the last century, took four months of suspension for not wanting to reveal where he had met a teddy bear who, also in May, had evidently left the den where he was born to follow his mother, and being lost. Traces of that teddy bear disappeared after a few days, perhaps found by his mother or perhaps even starved or preyed upon by wolves; but I certainly saved him from the thirty-year imprisonment to which Sandrino was "condemned"!
Let's just hope that this new puppy does not call him "Sergina" from the name of the current President of the Republic; at least that is spared him!
Murialdo, 21 May 2015
Frank Zunino
(25.05.2015)
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