Superman survives cowardly attack with help from Mama Bear.
The Man of Steel, now retired from the comics, has gone to Paradise. Paradise, California that is, where he lives quietly with his third wife Lana Luster and their dog Shemp.
While he lives quietly on most days, that wasn't the case last week when he went for a stroll near his home in this normally peaceful and somewhat remote part of northern California.
Hoping to enjoy the spring sun on a short hike in the Bean Soup Flat area, about a mile from Whiskey Ridge, near Celery Mountain in the Artichoke Backcountry, the Man of Steel came upon a family of bears, one he had encountered before.
Charmed by the mother bear and her two young ones, Superman stood quietly for a few minutes, watching them tussling playfully in the dust. And then something unexpected happened. He was attacked.
Now, you've heard this before. Superman has been attacked by almost every kind of thug, two-bit dictator, and deviant criminal there is. You know how it turns out, or always has. But this time things were different.
First, the attacker was not a petty crook but a mountain lion.
Second, the attack came from behind, without a lot of inflated dialog, or even any warning at all.
And third, the Man of Steel is now 74 and getting rusty.
"I hate cats. Always have. You can't trust the bastards," said Superman, who is more widely known around the retirement community as Clark Kent, mild-mannered old crank. "Cats are trouble. We got two or three that come over from the neighbors' place and crap in our begonias. Pisses me off," he added, while thoughtfully whacking the shrubbery with his cane.
The lion jumped Mr. Kent, as we probably should be calling him, and grabbed his knapsack, ripping at it and growling loudly, possibly trying to get at the tuna sandwich and bran muffins inside. But just as everything looked hopeless, Mama Bear pulled the same trick on the cat, jumping it from behind in turn.
After only a few seconds of growling and hissing, accompanied by some flying fur and a good bit of mauling, the bear managed to pull the cat off Mr. Kent and kick its butt, sending the cat yowling back into the bushes where it belongs.
In gratitude Mr. Kent shared his lunch with the bear, and played pat-a-cake with one of her cubs until the mother began to grow apprehensive about all the inter-species attention her little one was getting.
At that point she abruptly rounded up both cubs and returned to her home in a large rainbow-colored shoe on the verge of Unicorn Lake in the Lollipop Forest, and huffily slammed the door behind her.
Superman suffered only minor injuries, as you probably guessed.
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