If the TV has taught us something, bears love two things – honey and salmon.
But for this big guy over here, there’s something magical about the crisp plucking and the melodic strumming of the guitar.
Ben the Bear, as he’s more commonly known on YouTube, is such a gentle giant. This 300-pound ball of chocolate fur can easily intimidate anyone or anything just by his sheer size but don’t let that fool you. This bear loves music as much as he loves Starbursts.
Ben the Bear is always being featured on Christopher Ameruoso’s YouTube channel.
Ameruoso, besides being a bear charmer, is also a musician and a photographer who’s well-known for celebrity portraits. His creativity, however, has branched out into different kinds of content. His YouTube channel is an avenue for music, love for animals, and entertainment.
This is how he ended up having one of the unlikeliest of audiences.
It doesn’t know how to sing, it doesn’t know country music, it doesn’t even know if this song is included in today’s best hits. All Ben knows is that the sun is warm, the Starburst is sweet, and life should be experienced with good music.
For this video, Ameruoso graced Ben with Hank Williams’s classic “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”, a song from the B-side of “My Bucket’s Got A Hole in It”. The 1949 classic reached the fourth top spot in the country charts and has resonated with countless performers through the years.
While humans have covered the song with varying degrees of success, the song still held up its charm to audiences outside our species.
To whether if Ben is heartbroken or just like the saddest tunes, we can’t say. In another video, Ameruoso channeled melancholy and nostalgia with Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”. And just like all the performances that Ben sat through, he loved it as much as the next animal does.
Yes, Ameruoso’s audience is not Ben. He also shared his talents with other animals like a donkey named Hazel and a baby goat.
They all seemed to enjoy the free concerts especially Ben who even leaned in every now and then to give Ameruoso a kiss.
Unfortunately, age got to Ben. In one of the recent videos posted by Ameruoso, he performed a final concert for Ben. The man who took care of the bear for over 20 years requested Ameruoso’s presence as these songs accompanied Ben in his later life.
He sang “The Dance” by The Mick Lloyd Connection while Ben was being soothed. The songs he enjoyed back then were the same songs that comforted him through his last hours.
For all we know, Ben might be hanging out with the country legends who graced us with their amazing talent and poignant musicality.
Ameruoso didn’t leave Ben until the end. And as the final notes came on, Ben rested easy knowing that the man who took care of him will always have these songs to remember him by.
Watch how this artist serenaded a bear with a Hank Williams classic and a Starburst.
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