tappen - noun - the plug by which the rectum of a bear is closed during hibernation (Lexico.com)
Okay, I know what you are thinking: Why tappen? Why would anyone wish to include this particular word in his/her/their vocabulary? The answer: bears. If you live in the New York area, since they either are or will be neighbors of ours soon, we should probably know a bit more about them.
If you have been reading this blog, you probably already know that I live in New Jersey. It used to be that here in the suburbs of New York City, we didn't have much in the way of critters. You know, wild life. Squirrels, chipmunks, a skunk, perhaps a groundhog, a few raccoons, a possum, maybe a deer or a fox once a year. Well, those days are long over. We now have all of those animals plus myriad deer (droves of them like wild dogs or mustangs), coyotes (what the heck?) as well as foxes (red and gray) AND bears. Yes, there are huge brown ones running amuck in and out of traffic, twenty-five miles due west of Manhattan. Who would have ever thought?
Well, guess what? The northern woods are getting crowded as bears tend to have cubs that survive extreme circumstances. Naturally, there isn't enough food for everyone, so they have decided to migrate south, like Northern seniors do to Florida, but into the densely populated suburbs of one of the world's largest cities. A bad decision on their part, the seniors and the bears. Ergo, various publications, including the respected New York Times are now printing short litanies of what you should and should not do when in the presence of Goldilock's friends. On two separate occasions, I, another somewhat naive blonde, crossed paths with Papa Bear and Baby Bear, trying to cross busy streets in Califon, a rural hamlet, 30 miles west of here. Yet MaMa Bear was just spotted on Route 22 West in Mountainside, the town right next to mine, right in the thick of suburbia. No doubt, she was trying to hitchhike back to Hunterdon County and wasn't aware there is a law against it. Of course, I jest, but not about the odd occurrences of bears exactly where you would never expect them to be.
I think it was Woody Allen who once wrote in a screenplay, "It's New Jersey. Anything can happen." I bet in the early eighties, he never thought a suburban divorcee/single mom would be featuring a word like tappen in a blog, and it would have any relevance at all forty years later here in Scotch Plains. Neither did I. Needless to say, I am looking forward to winter when the bears will be asleep and their rectums, well stuffed with tappens.
The takeaway: If you come across any one of Goldilock's three, jump up and down, make plenty of noise, but don't look it in the eye. Chances are, the bear will want nothing to do with you, and you will feel very lucky indeed.
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