Today, you may have noticed a lot's been happening in Iraq. I have not been a part of it, however, since I've decided to confine myself to my quarters until the sandstorms in southern Iraq subside. I hate getting sand in my fur.

I did have an awkward incident with a Navy SeAL the other day. I was a little confused about the concept (silly Navy stuff) and when I heard the word, "SeAL," I assumed he was brought over as a snack for me. Luckily, I spit the SeAL out quickly when I realized there was really a human in the wet suit. In the Arctic, I enjoy eating seals for breakfast, so how was I supposed to know that the Navy ones were a little different? Ah well - I learned my lesson. I've sent a message back to my headquarters in the Arctic to let them know that they should add that piece to training so that no other polar bears embarass themselves in such a way.

Anyway, here is a photo of Josh and me on the C-130 that flew us from Kuwait to Iraq. We had to fly in the dead of night with no lights on. In order to avoid anti-aircraft fire, the large cargo plane zigged and zagged during our trip. Many of the soliders on the flight, not used to flying in complete darkness and in such a turbulent manner, got sick. Luckily, neither Josh nor I got sick, even if we were uncomfortable for most of the flight. This photo was taken before we took off (I'll post more pictures when the sandstorms die down):

Posted by Stone Cold at 01:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Things are going pretty well. I got in a little trouble yesterday when I tried to kill and eat a camel, but fortunately our interpreter was able to talk to the camel herder and smooth out the situation. Josh talked to the local Kellogg, Brown, and Root chief about bringing in some seals for me and he said that KBR would definitely be able to do that - for $1.5 million apiece. It sounds like a lot, but when you look at their contracts I think that's the same price they charge the government for a potato chip.

Posted by Stone Cold at 01:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The temperature here is quite bearable for the humans - it is February, after all. I am still having trouble, though. If you thought it was amazing that a male polar bear could eat 160lbs of food in a single meal, you should see how much water we drink when you put us in the desert! All of the soldiers usually carry around a 1.5 liter water bottle and when they go outside the base they have a 3-liter “Camel-bak” that we drink from. I think I may have to start pulling around one of these 500-gallon “water buffalo” trailers.

I enjoyed the flight in to Iraq. I’m grateful that Josh was able to convince the loadmaster on the C-130 that I didn’t need to be strapped down to a pallet. What was most fun is that we were blacked out for most of the flight. Some of the soldiers on board got a little dizzy because of this, and because the C-130 made a few hard turns that you would never see a commercial jetliner do. But I enjoyed it.

That’s all for now. Oh - someone please write to my division back home and tell them not to issue the other bears any additional cold weather gear. I will never need to wear that polar fleece, and when I tried to eat it, it tasted terrible!

Posted by Stone Cold at 01:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)