A Window
World
to the
BY JEANA DURST
Across the U.S. and in more than 10 other
countries, something remarkable is happening.
You’ve probably noticed it on your street, or you
may have already participated. If you haven’t, we
bear hunt, that is.
It’s not clear how this phenomenon got
started, but what is evident is that when families
started placing stuffed bears and other animals
in the windows and inviting us all to spot them,
there was a sense of comfort in this pandemic—
one collective “aww” if you will. This universal
symbol for nurturing care is on display, a
nonverbal way of expressing camaraderie and
love from a safe social distance.
Hoover resident Scott Stantis, an editorial
8 Bham Family May 2020
cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune and creator of
the comic strip Prickly City, drew a bear for The
Tribune that was part of a story in which people
could download a pdf to cut out their own bear or
submit their photos of bears. “We got hundreds
and hundreds of responses—it’s just so darn
nice,” Stantis says. (If his name sounds familiar,
it’s because Stantis spent 13 years drawing editorial
cartoons for The Birmingham News.)
He has an even deeper connection to bears. “I
have a teddy bear that I gave to my wife for our
a pot-bellied bear and we call him Pot’s.” Stantis
was inspired to do the newspaper illustration after
a friend said she would be coming by the Stantis
house on a teddy bear hunt. “So, of course, I ran
and we put Pot’s on the front porch on a chair,”
Stantis says, explaining that “the way you hunt
them is that you wave to them.” Since that time he
and his wife have gone on long walks and driven to
other neighborhoods to do their own hunting. It’s
just this kind of thing that has the power to make
us all—young and old alike—set aside the worries
of the pandemic, even if just for a while.
Stantis decided to draw this special bear you
see above just for our Bham Family magazine
community, and we hope this inspires you to
share photos of your stuffed bear or the ones you
spot by sending them to our Facebook page.
Teddy bear hunt reminds us
that we’re in this together.