“Bearly Asleep”

Why doesn’t this short star J. Audubon Woodlore? This is the only time a park ranger has been portrayed by Donald Duck, Aquatic Sociopath, and I suspect it’s because Woodlore would have had more sympathy for my beloved Humphrey. I suppose it’s also true that people are more familiar with the duck, but it’s not as though the cartoon has to draw dollars the way an actual feature does. You can make the cartoon about whoever you want, and since you’re playing it before a Disney feature, it’ll get seen.

Anyway, there’s Donald, shooing tourists out of a park before closing it down for the winter. He then marches the bears to a cave where they will hibernate for the winter. Humphrey, meanwhile, is happily snoozing in a hammock. Donald kicks him out and sends him to the den. Humphrey asks for a glass of water, which Donald gives him. He then complains that someone pinched him, and Donald throws the glass and yells at him to go to sleep. The other bears kick Humphrey out for snoring, and he ends up hiding in Donald’s cabin as long as possible.

Bears don’t, in general, hibernate. I know; I’ve blown your mind. Apparently they tend to enter a state of torpor, which is different. Torpor is a lighter stage of sleep, where they can awaken and respond to danger. It’s involuntary, controlled by hormones, but it’s true that Humphrey’s snoring would awaken his denmates and prevent them from sleeping the way their bodies were trying to get them to do, or at least I assume it would. As someone who snores pretty heavily myself, I know it can be really annoying to people trying to sleep near you.

However, that doesn’t matter, either, because bears from what I can find out don’t share dens. They’re fairly solitary animals for the most part, so why would that change for torpor? Especially because female bears—not that there are any female bears established in this short—awaken from torpor to give birth. Maternal dens are for a mother and her cubs, and there are no mothers here. I don’t know why we have the impression of a den with multiple bears; it isn’t just here, either, because Fozzie is in a den full of other bears in The Muppets Take Manhattan. It’s a pop culture image with no basis in fact.

This is the fourth Humphrey short, and his character is well established. It’s kind of a shame that he was developed in the last few years of Disney’s releasing shorts at all. Of course, I lament the end of the era for theatrical-release shorts; I resent seeing any Disney movie in a theatre that doesn’t include an animated short before it, and that includes the live-action ones. It’s just a nice little bonus. And Humphrey is probably my favourite character from the era of the shorts, and he’s practically unknown. At least Humphrey generally means well and is just trying to eat or sleep or similar, which is more than you can say for Donald.