A taxi-bear picks up a fare for Radio City.

#23239 - Taxi-bear! (ursus hackney-carrigus)

Taxi-bears were originally normal grizzly bears who began migrating to New York from as far away as Maine, New Jersey and Yonkers in the late 1960s. After they ran out of old rope, molasses and children to eat, they turned to taxi driving as a means of survival, as it was the only occupation open to bears at the time. Taxi-bears have a highly developed sense of direction.

Number of legs: 4

Physical appearance: Like a normal bear, but driving a taxi.

Size: Bear-sized. Taxi-bears often develop a small pot belly and a fat can after a few years at the wheel.

Habitat: New York.

Diet: Hot dogs covered in warm honey, which they get from radiator-bees (op. cit), a species of bee that lives in New York taxi-cab engines.

Social grouping: Taxi-bears are mostly loners, driving their cabs for up to eighteen hours a day in an effort to make ends meet. They sleep in their cabs. Occasionally, a group of taxi-bears congregate in a diner, and have coffee and pie together in silence. Then they get in their cabs and melt into the city night.

Useful byproducts: Taxi-bears are often the cheapest rides in town. Taxi-bear pelts fetch a good price in Eastern Europe, where they are made into snug hats.

Threats: Taxi-drivers have no natural predators, although they compete fiercely with other taxi-drivers for business.

Reproduction: Taxi-bears are not thought to mate. They generally die in their cabs, sometimes in a crash or pile-up, but often they simply begin to hibernate at the wheel and smash into a bridge. Their numbers are replenished by grizzly bears from the surrounding countryside who are drawn to the city by the thrill of becoming a taxi-bear.

Relationship with man: Taxi-bears are excellent cabbies, and many New Yorkers hail a 'big yellow grizzler' in preference to a normal cab. However, this has lead to resentment among human taxi-drivers, with the result that they will never pick up a bear.