On a muggy mid-morning in early August, I arrived at the Berks County (Pennsylvania) Heritage Center to celebrate the birthday of a bear.

This was not your run-of-the-mill bear birthday party, mind you. This one was honoring a bruin who wears pants and no shirt (unlike his edgier cousin, Winnie-the-Pooh, who forgoes britches), a campaign hat just like the park rangers’ and who, at age eighty, shows no signs of slowing down.