‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’

By Phil Cobb | April 3, 2020 |

Aubrey Sanders, 6, daughter of Ashley Sanders, shows that bears can even be seen in cars around town. This bear is relaxing in a car at Sanders Automotive, 29777 U.S. Highway 71.

MARYVILLE, Mo. — Like people around the world, the Nodaway County community has put its creativity to good use and set up a bear hunt as an opportunity to help chase away the quarantine blues for families stuck in their homes.

Based on the 1989 children’s book “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” by Michael Rosen, the 2020 hunt provides a chance for children to pull out their binoculars and peer out the windows of their family vehicle in search of bears.

In the book, a family encounters several obstacles to overcome; doing so they push on saying, “We’ve got to go through it!”

The same could be said for the COVID-19 disease itself, and members of the Maryville community recognized it as a way to cheer up children cooped up at home.

Brandy Pitts, who works at Mosaic Medical Center – Maryville started the #MaryvilleBearHunt event on Facebook after hearing about it from her mother.

With her children out of school and staying with their grandmother, Pitts said keeping them entertained and learning has been a bit of a task.

“We’ve been scouring the internet looking for different activities and things to do,” Pitts said.

She heard about the hunt idea, from her mother and decided posting it to Facebook might get more people involved.

“I didn’t expect to reach as many people as I did,” she said. “I have lost count, it’s well over a hundred.”

Since she’s still working, the family travels a fair amount back and forth to grandma’s.

“We’re still doing the social distancing, but we’re in the car quite a bit,” she explained. “Every time we get in the car they’re looking for bears.”

Pitts was aware of Rosen’s book, having started college as an education major, but had never read it to her children. Her family has looked online and talked about the story.

The story involves a family leaving the safety of their home and traversing through numerous difficult environments such as long wavy grass, a deep cold river, thick oozy mud, a big dark forest, a swirling whirling snowstorm and finally a narrow gloomy cave to find a bear.

That bear then chases them speedily back through all those difficult locations. Having learned about each on the way to the cave, the family has no problem splashing, squelching and swishing back through them all to reach the safety of their home.

“I think people are kind of starving for some connection right now, so maybe this will help just a little bit,” Pitts said.

With the world working to learn more about the coronavirus and treading carefully through the difficult situation, the book offers a positive, forward-thinking message: “We’ve got to go through it.”

Easter egg hunt

With bears popping up all over Maryville and Nodaway County, children have ample opportunity to hunt for them, but not only bears. New things have started showing up in windows, like Easter eggs and hearts.

“People are now starting to put out Easter eggs,” Pitts said. “You can look for all kinds of things in people’s windows right now.”

Maryville Superintendent and Lions Club member Becky Albrecht said the community response to the bear hunt has been great, and she wanted to continue providing children out of school with the opportunity to hunt for something.

“I’ve asked our school staff to start by making paper eggs for window display, and inviting the community to join us, throughout the week so they are ready to be hunted by Saturday through Easter,” she wrote in an email. “We’ve just started the process.”

She thinks it has a lot of potential to even become a scavenger-type hunt, with parents making a list of specific things to look for such as an “egg with a word on it,” or “a blue egg.”

Easter eggs will even start showing up in this newspaper. A specific number of eggs will be positioned throughout the April 9 newspaper. To participate, children ages 12 and younger may submit a guess with a picture holding up the newspaper, along with name, age and town of residence, to The Maryville Forum at [email protected] and then be entered to win an Easter prize.

Editor’s Note

COVID-19 has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. To help our community combat the outbreak, we are providing this content for free. Please consider supporting our efforts in providing local coverage by subscribing to The Maryville Forum.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Cody and Renee Schimming have not only decorated their windows with bears for the 2020 Maryville Bear Hunt, but also with Easter eggs in preparation for the April 12 holiday.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
LaDean Gray and her daughter spent two days painting these Care Bears onto their large picture window viewable at their house from the South Vine Street. The lit window makes the scene viewable day or night.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Cara Colville placed this bear in her front window at 407 W. Second St.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Ellie Spire’s teddy bear is located in Ravenwood.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Bears come in all shapes and sizes. Be on the look out for some of the smaller ones popping up, like one at 616 S. Dewey St.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Maria Spinnato placed her bear in the window at 319 W. 12th St.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
A couple bears can be seen at 1158 Julie Drive.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
These superhero bears may be seen in the window at 603 S. Buchanan St.

SUBMITTED PHOTO
Bears come in all shapes and sizes. Be on the look out for some of the smaller ones popping up, like one at 725 W. Third St. in Maryville.