The Bears
Once upon a time there was a bear who lived peacefully in the woods near a rushing stream. He liked where he lived. He liked the fresh, clean air, the abundance of fish in the nearby stream, the dappled sunlight beneath the tall pine trees, the open meadows, and the cool damp forest. Every day was filled with quiet time snoozing in the sun on his favorite granite rock; the challenges of searching for food; and romping with his mate.
One day as he was ambling down to the stream for a drink of water, something happened. WHACK! A searing pain pulsed through his foot. He lunged forward to escape. THUD! He was trapped by a pair of steel jaws and a thick metal chain pounded into the earth. "No!" shouted the brown bear. "It's a bear trap." His paws weren't built to spread the jaws of a bear trap, and his brain wasn't really built to figure all this out. He was in a really bad situation.
After several hours of painful struggle, the brown bear had mangled his foot. There was blood everywhere. He called for his mate, but there was nothing she could do either. So she sat patiently next to him to give comfort, crying quietly and hoping for a miracle.
Finally, after several more hours of struggle, the bear's mangled foot jerked out of the trap, and he crawled painfully away from that place and back into the woods. His mate stayed around for awhile to try and understand how this happened, but nothing came to her. Her brain wasn't really designed to figure these things out either.
At last, she returned to their den where her mate was nursing his foot as best as he could. They stayed up most of the night discussing what had happened to them that day, but neither of them could make sense of it. So with what brain capacity they did have, they simply decided never to return to that place in the woods again. And so, they didn't.
~author unknown