We Told You So

Sometimes it feels good to be right.

We told you so. When this whole Knut story broke worldwide almost exactly one year ago, we told you so. In case you don't remember, we'll recap the story for you:

- Cute little polar bear is born in zoo in Germany

- Cute little polar bear is abandoned by mother at the zoo; in nature, he would have been left to die

- Stupid people everywhere, whose lives are obviously too boring to care about REAL problems, protest to save the cute little polar bear. They give the cute little polar bear a name: Knut

- Wildlife experts around the world, including the management of this website, confirm that this is a bad idea

- Cute little polar bear is at the center of a media frenzy, still going strong today

Here is what we wrote in our original post on March 21, 2007:

Someday this little white furball is gonna grow up into a 350-pound killing machine that won't hesitate to bite your head off, and then tear what's left of your carcass into a million pieces. This cute little bear isn't gonna be soft and cuddly all his life. Polar bears in captivity live for about 25 years, and as soon as this bear whacks somebody with that massive paw of his, or gets old enough to bite a chunk out of someone's leg, this wacky little experiment is gonna look like a huge failure. Is it sad to kill a little baby polar bear? Sure it is. But maybe it's nature's way of handling these kind of situations. Whoever is up there, calling the shots, whether it's God or Allah or Barbara Streisand, maybe they do these things for a reason.

Knut one year ago; and Knut today.

Now, 12 months later, the problem has literally gotten bigger. One of Knut's trainers at the zoo, Markus Roebke, has spoken out about the troubles that the bear is causing: "The trouble is that he identifies himself as a human and not as a polar bear. We are not allowed to have contact with him and have received letters that if we breach this order our jobs are on the line. He is too unpredictable to play with now."

Mr. Roebke, who works with Knut every day, says that the bear has become a "publicity-addicted psycho." The bear is now mortally obsessed with attention and he "howls with rage" when he does not have an audience.

"He actually cries out or whimpers if he sees that there is not a spectator outside his enclosure ready to ooh and aah at him. Knut must go, the sooner the better."

We told you so. How could you not see that this was a bad idea? And we were not alone in this, not at all. Ruediger Schmiedel, head of the Foundation for Bears, also told you so last year: "They cannot domesticate a wild animal." Wildlife expert Frank Albrecht chipped in his two cents in a more direct manner: "The zoo must kill the bear." And just a few months ago, a prominent animal conservationist referred to Knut as "an animal psycopath."

Another before-and-after picture. Scary.

It should come as no surprise, then, that this whole thing backfired in everyone's face. The comparisons to Shelley's Frankenstein are stunning: We have created a monster. By blatantly disregarding nature, the same self-aggrandizing idiots who wanted Knut saved in the first place are the ones who have caused this whole mess. Why do you think his mother abandoned him? Because she was in a bad mood? Because she didn't feel like raising him?

Of course not! It was natural selection you thumb-sucking, sob-story-loving simpletons!!! Polar bears have survived for centuries because of keen senses and highly developed and innately accurate instictual motivations. If the bear's mother abandons it, that is a strong sign. She loves that damn bear a hundred thousand times more than any of you closed-minded morons, so there must be something seriously wrong with the cub if she abandons it.

Most polar bears don't get to have birthday parties.

So what happens if Knut flips out one day, breaks out of his enclosure, scalps a few children, mauls some grandma, and then terrorizes the zoo until being blasted by a SWAT team? Who is to blame then? Certainly not the experts who knew it was a bad idea all along. The blame will lie solely on the shoulder of all those pathetic, senseless degenerates who brought this un-holy creation into the media with their bickering and their nincompoopery.

Knut was on the cover of Vanity Fair, for the love of God. Ok, so it was German Vanity Fair (meaning it was probably full of pictures of sausages and chocolate and David Hasselhoff), but it's still a famous magazine.

It's not too late. It's not too late yet. It will be too late if Knut snaps and takes a bite out of some German's leg, but until that happens it's not too late. We said it a year ago, and we'll say it again now: Kill the bear.