September 24 - The Bear Tickler

You can say a lot of things about old Dwight Schumacher, but one thing you cannot say is that I didn't tickle me some bears in my time.
You heard me right, by the way. I said I tickle bears and that's exactly what it sounds like. Ain't no euphemism for some untoward brand of hanky panky. Bear tickling is tickling bears, plain and simple.
First question most people ask: Are bears ticklish?
The answer is yeah, but only some of them.
Second question they ask is: Ain't bear tickling more than a little dangerous?
The answer is you bet your butt it is. Shoot, every time you reach up to tickle a bear you may as well be tickling the ball sack of old Death himself (begging your pardon). Hell, I could fill a book with all the different ways a bear could express his dissatisfaction with being tickled when he weren't expecting it. Yes indeed, tickling a bear could get a man (or woman, don't want to discriminate) killed. It ain't for the faint hearted, I tell you that much.
But it is for me because here's old Dwight's philosophy: You gotta die of something. And if you ask me, there ain't a whole lot nobler and badder assed epitaph that could grace your tombstone than "Dwight Schumacher - He died like he lived: Tickling bears."
Yes sir, ask anyone who knows me. They'll tell you. Old Dwight Schumacher never let a bear tickling opportunity pass him by. Whether it was grizzlies, blacks, browns, or polars, believe you me I done tickled them all.
Hell, I even went me to China one time and tickled me a couple few of them there panda bears--in the wild and in the zoo.
I shit you not.
People always ask me, they say, Dwight, which one of them panders were harder to tickle, the ones in the wild or the ones in the zoo? And you know, for the life of me I couldn't scarcely tell you. Getting past the guards and into the cages took an awful lot of guile and subterfuge on old Shumacher's part.
But then again, wandering around the Chinese countryside and foraging on grubs and berries for days on end, just hoping I might happen to stumble upon a wild panda weren't exactly no picnic neither.
Hell, in both cases, gaining proximity to the bear--"setting up the tickle," if you will (Oh, and I do believe you will)--was far and away the hardest part. There weren't hardly a thing to the tickle itself. By the way, this here's a tickler's promise: The panda is certain to be the gentlest and most giving bears out there, every bit as cuddly and warm as you'd expect him to be.
By the way, speaking of cuddly and warm, you want to hear yourself something real surprising? By far the most vicious and pernicious bear I done ever tickled was none other than the Australian koala. Just as mean-spirited and vile as they are cute, which is to say plenty. I ain't never regretted tickling no bear ever. But the closest I ever came was the time when I tickled this one ornery koala bear down under. Cursed thing damn near ripped my finger off me.
By the way, when I say I tickled him 'down under', I'm referring, of course, to Australia.