Sean Keeler: A teddy bear hunt turns social distancing into fun for children.
The hunting party leaves base camp armed with only a pen, a sheet of paper, a bike and a kick scooter.
As we make the turn from West 18th Avenue to Iris Street, Christina Lorenz — flanked by daughters Kayla, 10, and Alaina, 8, and son Nathan, 4 — spot two cold, dark eyes staring back at her from a bay window.
“Is that Winnie the Pooh?” someone asks.
They creep closer.
“It isn’t Winnie the Pooh,” Christina says. “It’s Arthur.”
We’re on a teddy bear hunt. What a beautiful day! We’re not scared.
“My oldest daughter doesn’t like to go on walks,” Lorenz chuckles. “This makes it a little bit more exciting.”
The Lorenzes reside in a bearinfested corner of north Broomfield — only it’s by design, and the bears in question are all stuffed toys. Their neighborhood is one of many around the Front Range, and the nation, to latch on to the social-media phenomenon of putting teddy bears in windows.
Inspired by the classic children’s book “We’re Going On A Bear Hunt,” by Michael Rosen and Helen Oxenbury, the trend has been kicking around sites such as Facebook and Nextdoor for about a week now — an effort to give kids bored with life under coronavirus lockdown a reason to get out of the house.
“Somebody posted it on a Broomfield moms (Facebook) page,” Lorenz recalls. “I have friends across the country, friends in Idaho and Texas, and they were all posting similar things. I thought it would be fun to do.”
So she put the call out, via group text, to friends and neighbors last Sunday. When the Lorenz family went out for a stroll a day later, they counted 33 bears.
“I guess it’s up to each person whether they want to make it a competition or not,” Lorenz says. “Because that sometimes creates a fight (among the kids). It’s just, ‘How many can you find?’ And everyone can decide how they want to handle that.”
Over in Littleton, Leeanne Pallazola decided to make the hunt a little more interesting. After seeing her neighborhood get the teddy bear bug, she went to Facebook to post a custom bear-spotting bingo card — she calls it “Bearingo” — for families
to take with them as they walk.
“I thought that would add a little twist to it,” Pallazola explains. “I said, ‘What if they check them off like a bingo game?’ ”
She drew up a five-square by five-square grid — with categories that include “yellow bear,” “Broncos bear,” “bear with Hawaiian shirt,” “Paddington Bear,” etc. — and shared it Monday.
Pallazola even upped the ante, suggesting on Facebook that her neighbors go out hunting with a set of “bearnoculars” — made, of all things, from empty toilet paper rolls.
“I came up with the word ‘bearnoculars’ because I found a creative site that was making binoculars out of toilet paper tubes,” Pallazola says. “I’d said, ‘Oh, my gosh, they could call them bearnoculars for the bear.’ Who doesn’t have these toilet paper rolls right now?”
Bearnoculars?
No wonder they’re flying off the shelves.
“I’ve lived here 11 years,” offers Brooke Schmidt, one of those Littleton bear hunters Pallazola helped inspire. “I can’t say that I feel closer to my neighbors than I do right now.
“We’ve done things like summer Friday happy hours. But this has a different feeling. It’s a real need right now to have that sense of community.”
A sense of fellowship. Distraction. Relief. Sharing, even.
“The whole thing is just everybody coming together as one to spread some joy,” says Schmidt, whose family owns a dozen teddy bears between two kids. “And the fact that we have 12 teddy bears is a little bit ridiculous. We shared our teddy bears with neighbors that didn’t have them.”
The wildlife in Broomfield come in all shapes, sizes and colors. Along Iris Street, a toy polar bear glares to passers-by from a garden. Another front porch features a little teddy stuffed inside a guardrail, legs akimbo.
“Like he’s doing gymnastics,” Alaina says.
Casa Lorenz has a half-dozen bears on display for neighborhood kids to spot. There’s Pooh. Big Bear. Freddy. Cutie. Boom Boom. Bobby Mcbobberson. B-o-b-b-y … scribble, scribble,
scribble … M-c-b-o-b …
Is that M-a-c or M-c? Is he Scottish or Irish?
“I don’t think we’ve ever written it down,” Christina laughs. “He doesn’t have a back story.” This craze sure does.
“I plan to leave them out until this whole coronavirus thing is over,” Christina says. “I don’t know what my neighbors plan to do. But that’s what I plan to do.”