We Are All This Sad, Lost Polar Bear

Earlier this week, residents of Tilichiki, a village on the far Eastern coast of Russia, reported an relatively unusual wildlife sighting: a polar bear dragging its furry body across the town’s coastal snowbanks. Though the bear presumably hails from Chukotka, a location some 434 miles to the north, environmentalists suspect that the bear wandered onto an ice floe, got lost, and collapsed on Tilichiki’s shores.

A video, presumably captured in Tilichiki, shows the exhausted bear heaving its emaciated paws to drag itself out of the water. Its face, with the angular cheekbones usually reserved for models and Kardashians, appears woozy. Villagers, sensing a deep melancholy in the unnamed bear, have begun to throw fish at it its head, willing it to survive.

“Today it felt better and went hunting,” one Tilichki resident told CNN.

The wanderings of “starving” polar bears are a mainstay of environmental news, where the walking carcasses serve testament to the hellfire of climate change. But in the pissing contest of sad polar bears, this sad, lost bear is definitely the saddest—an even more relatable sadness today, when sad bear is one of us. He is tired. He is hungry. He sees nothing around him that’s familiar. He has all but given up the fight for fresh fish.

Sad bear, we are rooting for you!