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No. 5197: Garfield, Bear Eater

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Garfield, Bear Eater

First | Previous | 2023-08-11 | Next | Latest

Permanent URL: https://mezzacotta.net/garfield/?comic=5197

Strip by: shiningpikablu252

Garfield: Yep, I've eaten a lot of bears in my time
Nermal: Really?
Garfield: Went to the North Pole once and ate a polar bear
Nermal: Wow!
Garfield: Went into space and ate Ursa Major, too
Nermal: Hey! Wait a minute!

The author writes:

The original strip made the classic North Pole penguin mixup. Quite a few Square Root contributions relocated the penguin to its native South Pole and sent Garfield there to eat it.

But what if Garfield stuck to his original itinerary of the North Pole... but ended up eating something more geographically appropriate for that location? Polar bears are somewhat rare north of 88° N (two degrees south of the North Pole), but are not completely unheard of, meaning Garfield could reasonably have eaten one at that location. Behold, a bear-eating cat! The alteration to Garfield's first line basically wrote itself from there.

Naturally, Garfield's third line had to have him making a far more outlandish claim of bear-eating. So, in an attempt to try to pull one over on Nermal, why not have him claim to eat a constellation? Technically he's eating stars at this point rather than actual bears, but since "ursa" means bear, it still fits the obvious-lie theme of the third panel — after all, if Nermal could figure out Garfield couldn't really eat a pterodactyl, velociraptor, archaeopteryx, dodo, or Stephens Island Wren, I'm sure Nermal would be smart enough to figure out Ursa Major wasn't actually a space-dwelling bear...

Original strip: 1996-01-13.