I read with interest a headline in the January 2008 issue of Missouri Conservationist. The headline said: "Be Bear Wise in Missouri? Yes! Don't let handouts, intentional or otherwise, create a 500-pound menace."

The story described how a well-intentioned southwestern Missouri couple had done just that. Awakened one night by strange sounds coming from the kitchen, the wife went to check it out [I wonder why the husband didn't?]. While making her way to the kitchen, the wife tripped over something warm, fuzzy, and large -- a bear.

Turns out the couple had been feeding the bear, and its changed behavior because of the "free" food created a 500-pound menace. The bear had to be killed.

Isn't there a moral to that story? What have we created with a certain class of people by simply giving them, for lack of a better way of putting it, "free food?"

Graciousness extended to some is not graciousness at all; it is something not good and it produces a "500-pound menace."

"Free food," whereas it might meet basic needs also has a tendency to create dependency. On the other hand, teaching a person how to get his own food creates a productive, helpful citizen.

We should be "Bear Wise" in more sense than one, particularly as we think about giving welfare to people, or free medical insurance, or free anything!

Jack Rollins is the managing editor of the Daily Dunklin Democrat.