Sloth of Bears Reported inside PIKE Fraternity Building

At 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 25, a sloth of American black bears (Ursus americanus) was reported inside the PIKE fraternity house. After getting over our befuddlement at the fact that a group of bears is apparently called a “sloth,” our intrepid reporters quickly rushed to the scene. Dejected PIKE brothers milled about outside as low snuffling and growling sounds emanated from inside the building. Luckily, no one was injured or hurt, but the bears remained on scene, despite the entreaties of all involved for them to “please go away.” Having nothing better to do, we decided to interview UChicago’s top wildlife biologist and neurology expert, Dr. Ivo Lutton, as to the bears’ motivations and actions.

“I have absolutely no clue about what happened just now,” Dr. Lutton told us. “Clearly the bears selected the PIKE fraternity building…perhaps they confused PIKE fraternity brothers with pikes as in the kind of river-dwelling fish? That would imply an ability of bears to read English, which would be somewhat unprecedented. In path-breaking studies conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, the ability of bears to read was measured via neuro-psycho-sociolinguistic-ursological quantitative measurements…” [For our readers’ benefit, we have omitted the following thirty minutes of the interview, as it is an abstruse discussion of statistics that would be incomprehensible and inaccessible to basically anyone.] Dr. Lutton concluded, “I believe further follow-up studies and controlled, randomized trials would be warranted.”

Some observers expressed skepticism at the possibility of getting wild bears to sit down and engage in follow-up studies. However, we proved these observers wrong by sending a very-well-paid intern into the building to interview the bears. “Yeah, we mistook PIKE fraternity brothers for pike fish,” remarked one of the bears despondently. “I wish someone had told us this distinction beforehand. Everyone ran away from us screaming ‘oh no call animal control’ and ‘run for your life,’ but we just wanted to have a nice meal – we didn’t mean to hurt or scare anyone.” The bears then smashed through the back door and disappeared into the woods.