given that every other obvious candidate for the boar who screwed up 32 chunk’s face has rolled into brooks falls looking fine, am i wrong to start getting worried about 747’s conspicuous absence
i think a lot of people are worried, and it's definitely something I'm thinking about also.
This is gonna get away from me a bit, just as a warning. it's gonna be long.
One of the hardest parts of watching the bears cams is the fact that there are things that we will never know. Bears do sometimes just disappear for a year or two and then come back, or return in a different season than usual (fall bears arriving in early summer, early summer bears arriving in fall). In 2017, 747 didn't show up until late August, and no one knows why or where he went. All we know is that he was somewhere else, and wherever he was, he was really successful -- he came back huge.
But, also, sometimes bears don't show up one year, and they never come back. Sometimes those bears are old and we presume that they have passed, like 410, who we last saw when she 29 years old. Sometimes those bears are young adults that we assume have moved on to somewhere else, like 902 Peanut, who we last saw when she was 6 years old. And, sometimes, those bears are adults that have used the falls their whole lives and we have no idea what happened to them, like 409 Beadnose, who we last saw when she was about 20 years old.
747 right now would be roughly 23-25 years old, since he was first seen as a subadult in 2004. So, anything could have happened to him. Maybe he's just fishing somewhere that we can't see. Maybe he passed away and it is fully unrelated to 32 Chunk's fight. Maybe he fought 32 Chunk and is off somewhere else, nursing his wounds and healing. Maybe he fought 32 Chunk and passed on from his injuries. We don't know, and we may never know. All we can do is wait and see if he turns up again.
The waiting is the worst part. Different people will have different thoughts and feelings; some will begin grieving while others are still hoping, and some will put it out of their mind entirely & just try not to think about it.
But for now, i guess...we don't know. We just don't know, and we may never know. And it sucks. And it hurts. And it would be way easier for a lot of people if we could just know. But we can't. So, we deal with the uncertainty as best we can. We speculate if that helps us, we don't if it doesn't. And we wait. And we see.
