Nice pic-a-nic basket. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

Well, it's finally happening. Bears are starting to copy the mafia's protection rackets. This is what happens when you don't even need HBO to watch The Sopranos.

RENO -- Dozens of residents at Lake Tahoe have been making backcountry food drops in an effort to help hungry black bears, and Nevada and California wildlife officials are unhappy about it.

People feeding bears is always a recipe for more trouble down the road. But if you owned a cabin in the Tahoe area, it could make sense to pay the bears off. Keeps 'em out of the neighborhood.

Also, if you own a cabin in the Tahoe area, I will never feel sorry for you. Bears could kidnap your children, ransoming them for a metric ton of delicious grubs, and I would laugh as you frantically searched E-bay and nearby rotting tree stumps. Have a good bug-hunt, yuppie!

The feeding effort comes amid a record number of bear complaints around Lake Tahoe this year, when a drought has drastically reduced their natural fare of berries and nuts. State wildlife officials say feeding bears could make them more closely associate humans with food, but bear advocates say the recent food drops have led to a sharp drop in home break-ins in some areas.

I wonder what kind of food they're leaving for the bears. They'd better start off simple, because each year you gotta up the ante. By 2010 the bears will be demanding bucketfuls of organic risotto and free-range beef, with some mixed greens on the side.

And the Tahoe yuppies will have no choice. Pay off the bear syndicate or deal with this guy busting into your cabin:

Badda bing, my friends. Badda bing.