The investigation report concluded that the man, known as Happy Hunter hopped on an iceberg possibly in relation to his hunting endeavors, but somehow slipped and was unable to get back on it thus ending his adventurous life in the ice cold water. His hat with the recognizable hh initials woven in front was found on the iceberg, but his body was not recovered presumably because it had already been found and dealt with by some hungry animal species. After all, all seasons in the Arctic circle are cold and food is always scarce.
A few months - well, two months and eleven days to be exact - before the disappearance of the happy hunter was brought to the local police attention only due to his absence from the social media on which he was a daily fixture - a man who had never been to or had planned to visit the cold polar area felt an unshakable moral obligation to get involved. He didn’t make that decision, and it wasn’t something that he had ever planned to do or even thought about. The idea, or more so the sense of duty that suddenly possessed him, crossed his mind one morning when he opened the news and saw this smiling trophy hunter proudly posing over a magnificent and heart-brokenly dead polar bear. The bear had the hunter's rifle that shortly before shot and killed him, placed between his front lifeless paws and bloody chest. The hunter thought it was funny and possibly creative and he proudly smiled for the camera. Staring at the picture, the quiet computer programmer who admired Gandhi and had a coexist bumper sticker on his car, and has never as much as raised his voice in the thirty seven years of his life, felt a sudden and powerful urge to punch that polar bear killer in the face. The urge was so strong that he felt his diaphragm cramp up in a gagging reflex, and it was then that he decided to take the kind of action that even the happy hunter would understand. He decided to become a hunter himself. Because he worked best and most productively under deadlines, he gave himself two months to finish the project, meaning that before the end of February he will have found himself in the cold wild with an appropriate weapon. So he joined the gym, stocked up on proteins to gain muscle, bought a handgun - for he thought he should start small - and started frequenting a local shooting range. He also started following the happy hunter on the social media as to know his exact daily whereabouts. Not knowing about his intentions, his family and friends were all surprised to see the computer and math wizard suddenly change his hobbies from book reading and robotics to testosterone charged activities. He bought his expensive hunting suit for cash in a store specializing in party costumes, and then decided to also and just in case, complete his hunting gear with a bulletproof vest. He obtained all the necessary certificates for his gunpowder travel, and a week before the self-appointed deadline, determined and ready, he set off to accomplish his task.
The mother bear and her two cubs were slowly climbing the snowy hill. Every now and then, one of the cubs would slip and roll back a few yards slowing down the group who would stop and wait for it to rejoin them. The happy hunter watched them through the scope. He thought how the mother would be an easy shot and how the two little ones would stay next to her when she falls, and that they would get a lot of likes in his social media. So he held the big, unsuspecting mama at the target point ready to strike. But then at the corner of his eye he saw another bear. It was big, a male certainly, and was kind of dragging himself as if hungry for days. The happy hunter zeroed in on his new target and pulled the trigger. The big heavy-footed bear was hit in the torso and fell down for dead. The hunter got up to finish him off already thinking about the triumphant photograph he was going to post to impress his followers and fans of wild animal killing, when something so bizarre happened that for a moment he thought he was hallucinating. The bear got up, unzipped his fur, pulled a machine gun from inside it and before the approaching happy hunter could even point his own rifle, a spray of automatic weapon bullets made a polka dot pattern all over his chest. He fell flat on his back left face to face with the clear blue sky. He was trying to figure out what had happened but the warm and rising pain were interfering with his thought process and ability to move. Then the bear hunched over him. His white fur already unzipped, he pulled back its bear head and a man’s face appeared underneath. The computer programmer who in his preparations for the hunt even got a bear with me tattoo on his shoulder addressed the happy hunter in a calm and matter-of-fact voice.
I represent the polar bears. Would you like a snap to post on your account one last time? he asked.
The mother bear got to the top of the hill and turned around to give one last look to the big guy they past by. She wondered who was that big weirdo that looked so handsome and fluffy but did not smell at all like any of their kind? Then she rolled down the snowy hill with her two little cubs.
