NORTHAMPTON — In recent days, teddy bears have appeared in the windows of some homes in the city. A white teddy bear sat on a rocking chair on a porch on Sherman Avenue, a brown one with a red bandana rested in the window of a home on Bridge Street, and one person went slightly off theme on Cherry Street and put a large penguin in the window.
Welcome to the teddy bear hunt.
With schools closed and play dates canceled, parents are coming up with creative ideas to keep their kids entertained, including walking or driving around the neighborhood to embark on a scavenger hunt for teddy bears. All around the world, people are putting stuffed bears in their windows to create fun in a time of isolation. Many have cited the 1989 children’s book “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt,” written by Michael Rosen and illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, as inspiration.
“We often hear the kids yelling when they see them,” said Evan Horton, whose neighborhood — which includes Grove, Chapel and Laurel streets — is full of stuffed bears.
He takes his toddler, Esmé, out to search for the toy animals. “We have day care out of Easthampton, which, obviously, our 20-month-old daughter is not able to attend … With the weather lately, and also the social distancing impact, we’ve been trapped.”
They have gone bear hunting every day this week, he said on Friday. “It’s been a nice reason for us to go out,” he said. “She wants to go look for them. It becomes interactive immediately.”
On Sunday, Sarah DeJesus put her bear — a small, classic white teddy bear — in the window of her Florence home for kids to spot.
“It was actually the only teddy bear I had in my house,” she said. “I was so excited because if I didn’t have a teddy bear, I’d have to go out and buy one because I wanted to do it so badly.”
She read about the trend in an article online and thought about kids, like her niece and nephew, who are stuck at home. “I thought this was such a great idea to have something fun,” she said.
Alison Berryman heard about it from friends in Greenfield, where she said the trend has taken off.
“I just was, like, what a cool way to sort of connect when we are so disconnected,” Berryman said. She put a black bear in a flannel shirt — a gift from a former neighbor inspired by the real bears that would wander in their neighborhood — in the window of her above-garage apartment in Northampton.
And then there is Theo: a giant bear about four feet tall that’s dressed in changing costumes by Caitlin Willard and her grandmother Cindy Willard. On Friday, he was wearing an apron and chef’s hat and holding a bowl, spatula and rolling pin.
The bear has worn baseball hats, bathrobes and birthday tiaras. He has even taken a bath — the Willards put him in an old washtub, complete with a shower cap and bubble wrap for bubbles.
Caitlin Willard, 13, and her cousin in South Hadley brainstormed Theo’s outfits. “He fits into our clothes,” she said. “We did have to do a little surgical procedure on our clothes to make it fit. He’s a little plump in the stomach area.”
He can be found in their window, or, on a nice day, sitting outside at the corner of Bridge Street and Sherman Avenue.
“I think it can bring people’s minds off of what’s going on right now,” Caitlin Willard said. “We get comments from people who will walk by with kids.”
It’s also a welcome distraction for them. “It’s something small and trivial, but it takes your mind off things,” said Heather Willard, Caitlin Willard’s mother. “It gets the creative juices flowing.”
Greta Jochem can be reached at gjochem@gazettenet.com.