Dear Mr. Sinnott,

We don't mean to alarm you -- or call you away from your much-deserved rest -- but we have a situation here. There has been a dramatic increase in bear activity since you left your position as the Anchorage area's chief wildlife conservation officer.

We're not blaming you for it or anything; it was probably just a coincidence how closely your departure correlates to the population growth. Mama grizzlies and papa grizzlies are popping up all over the place now, and the American political landscape is starting to stink like a half-buried carcass -- maybe moose, maybe not. It's hard to tell.

At first, we weren't all that worried about the "mama grizzlies" campaign created by former Gov. Sarah Palin's national political action committee; the movement seemed confined to one side of the political spectrum, and people seemed to be passionate about it. Plus, there's hardly anything we The Concerned like more than movements that increase political involvement and the public's awareness of unequal treatment of women. And no matter how cautious of bears we are, we have to admit that the "mama grizzlies" movement has been doing both of those things. (Besides, we the concerned have found that thinking of ourselves as bears now and then can really make life easier. Stuck pickle jar lid? A quick "Grrrahgh!" ... and presto!)

Anyway, we're not sure whether this whole grizzly-bear thing is succeeding in American politics because it's a classic Jungian archetype -- or because it fits perfectly with American mass culture's ongoing quest to fully dehumanize its members -- but equating humans to bears has proven to be a powerful motivator.

Powerful though it may be, it's beginning to terrify us. A few hundred thousand grizzlies of one gender spread across the whole U.S. is one thing, but the population of political bruins really started exploding recently, and we're concerned the carrying capacity of the political landscape will be exceeded any day now.

At first, there were only conservative, female grizzlies, but then conservative men started turning into "papa grizzlies," and both -- naturally -- started calling their children "cubs." As some would have it, the movement is just generally exploding. But then last week, women of the left started calling themselves grizzlies too, and all sorts of new papa and mama bears came out of hibernation from the left side of the valley. The Concerned is pretty sure most of the grizzlies from the left are afflicted by a condition that causes their tongues to stick to the inside of their cheeks, but still, they're as unsettling as the bears on the right.

We The Concerned have seen bears around the woods, and even fished near them, but they had all sorts of other things on their minds besides us. We pretty much agreed to disagree and leave each other alone. But those were real bears with very specific things in mind. Sincere or spoof, the two subgroups of new grizzly bear are now competing for the same finite food source -- American voters -- from both sides of the aisle, as it were.

We've actually had a tough time figuring out what kind of issues these bears depend on primarily. The objects of the conservative bears' desire seem to shift between federal spending, abortion, the constitution, public school curricula and government regulation. And oddly enough, the leftist bears mirror those choices depending on the situation. It's as if every bear in the Anchorage area decided to occupy the same home range at once and decided to eat everything from willow bushes to cottonwood trees and from chickadees to ravens.