Viewpoint : Several realtors showed little interest in helping the bear in his quest. : Dread Follows Bear’s Pause in Suburbia

The encounter of a Northridge homeowner with a huge black bear earlier this month was big news in the San Fernando Valley the next day. Apparently, the hulking creature was in search of a home and drifted like a mirage through some residential streets.

All the papers gave the story big play. But, perhaps blinded by their obsessive focus on a newsy follow-up, none of the press reports explored the full economic, political or mythic implications of this imposing visitor to the Valley.

For example, the day before the bear was seen, the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time high of 1885.90. But, right after the bear appeared, the Dow plunged 45.75, its biggest one-day drop ever.

Coincidence? Hardly. Has anyone reported seeing a bull wandering through Reseda? But the bear’s role as a harbinger of hard times on Wall Street (as well as Main Street) wasn’t limited to the shadow it cast over the Dow, although that is a convenient measure of the creature’s symbolic weight.

Bears symbolize cold, for example, the most dreaded of phenomena in Southern California. They also symbolize a certain Eastern nation where blue jeans are close to legal tender, and thus to many Americans bears are synonymous with communism, the second most dreaded phenomena in Southern California.

Too, everyone knows bears are fat. They load up on high cholesterol foods (no teen-agers are yet reported missing, but there are other sources of fat) so they can sleep through the winter. Certainly, fat is the third most dreaded thing in Southern California.

The bear therefore trailed in the three Cs of subconscious terror in Southern California: cold, communism and cholesterol.

The bear’s international significance wasn’t wasted on freedom-loving Americans in the Valley either. In this mecca of shopping malls and shoppers, might not the sight of a wintry-looking bear stumbling sullen and heavy-pawed through the land suggest the beginning of the “long, twilit struggle” John Kennedy referred to? Might not a bear wandering through the Valley mean the end of the American century and the beginning of some more ominous age?

And, if anyone doubts that vestiges of Victorian morality remain entrenched in the Valley, consider the homonymic dimension of the bear incident, which no doubt suggested “bare” to the fibrillating subconscious of local newspaper editors.

Besides reacting to the hint (gasp!) of actual nudity, these editors probably responded to the suggestion of psychological nudity as well--the idea that they might be forced to bare all and then bear the consequences. How many furtive glances did the bear provoke in the direction of supervisors and expense reports?

Police claim they couldn’t find the bear and soon gave up, but their story seems farfetched, given that the bear was out looking for a home. Preliminary reports, in fact, indicate that the bear was cruising in search of realtors’ signs and actually attended several open houses Sunday afternoon, where the creature unfortunately was received coldly.

All of a sudden, those eager sellers claimed that they’d already had bids on their cozy cottage, their charming ranch or their sprawling split-level. Several realtors showed little interest in helping the bear in his quest, and one went so far as to suggest that a bear might be more comfortable elsewhere.

The bear was black, after all. Who can say for sure that its color played no role in the reaction to its presence in upper Northridge? A homeless black bear wanders the streets of a middle-class, white neighborhood, and the authorities immediately appear with bullets and hypodermics.

Let’s face it, a polar bear could have bought a house anywhere it wanted. Interest rates are down, and For Sale signs are cropping up all over the Valley.