Bearly A Crime

A gas station in Connecticut displays and sells some chainsaw bear statues produced by a New York artist. This little sideline has been satisfactory for both parties for a while now. The artist sells bears, the gas station owners makes a few bucks (and even buys one of the bears for himself). There hasn't been a problem until recently. Someone drove up, loaded up a bear and drove away. Without paying.

Not to be confused with the tale of the three bears, Westport has recently become the locale of another story — that of the stolen bear.

Exactly four weeks ago, an unidentified person, described as a white male in his 20s or early 30s, was seen at about 10 p.m. loading a 4-foot-tall wooden bear from in front of the BP gas station at 1510 Post Road E. into a white Jeep Cherokee and driving off with it.

After footage of the theft from a surveillance camera was aired Aug. 27 on a local news station, someone reportedly called the gas station at 11:45 that night and said there was an envelope on a bench outside the place and said, "That's for the bear," before hanging up.

Ken Kronberg, who has owned the gas station with his wife, Helene, for the past 22 years, said that is the first time one of the bears, which have been selling outside the store for the past eight months, has been taken, not to mention voluntarily paid for after being pilfered from his place.

"I can't say this has ever happened," he said.

The Kronbergs notified the police of the theft the next morning and gave them the surveillance tape, but decided not to press charges after receiving the money for the bear, which weighs about 200 pounds.

"We were like, 'No harm, no foul,'" said Kronberg, who has bought five of the statues himself. "We were hoping something good would come out of this. Perhaps he'd think twice about doing a bad deed."

Well, at least it ended well. The bear was paid for, no charges were filed and that's that. But the artist, Chuck Jennett (misidentified in the story as Chuck Gennett) has a website. And he is very, very good. No, I mean seriously good at this. I have seen any number of so-so chainsaw artists. Mr. Jennett is one of the best I have seen. A lot of his work is really unusual - it is not all bears. He has pictures here. I wonder if he does armadillos?