Last week, we published a story about baby bears rescued from a construction site in Peterborough.
A construction crew had been putting in a septic tank, and a bear ran out when a tree the crew had cut down landed on a brush pile. New Hampshire Fish and Game Conservation Officer Shawn MacFadzen was called to the scene, and he realized that the mother bear probably wasn’t going to come back to pick up the cubs, given the proximity of the house and the construction to the den.
So he and Fish and Game’s biologist arranged to move the cubs to Kilham Bear Center in Lyme, where founder Ben Kilham said they’re doing well. They’ve been named Fitz, Willa and Billie – after Fitzwilliam, where the center was told the cubs originally came from – in preparation for rehabilitation and being released into the wild.
We know from our website analytics that many of you read this story. And rightly so. Who wouldn’t enjoy a story of adorable bear cubs being rescued and nursed back to health?
And who couldn’t enjoy a story of people coming to college, falling in love and getting married? Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we shared stories of people who met their spouses while students at Franklin Rindge University.
There’s the couple who were friends all through college but didn’t date until after graduation, with a Disney theme throughout their entire relationship, and the pair whose plans to sow their respective oats once they got to college went down the tubes as soon as they met.
One of the couples grew up 18 miles apart in New York and New Jersey, but it took them coming to New Hampshire – back when the school was Franklin Pierce College – for them to find each other. Finally, there was the student whose friend recommended her for a job at Sage Auto Supply in Peterborough … and she eventually married the shop’s owner.
The appeal of these stories is that they’re happy, and happy stories don’t care about how old you are, where you’re from, your politics or even if you’re normally all that enthused about bears or marriage. Everyone can relate to happy stories, and while there are unhappy stories out there we can’t ignore, it’s nice to sometimes just have a reason to smile.