The Life Story of a Black Bear

eater part of the time, but in a deliciously drowsy condition that is halfway between sleeping and waking. It is very good. Of course, you lose

nd the earth is gripped solid in the frost, you are very warm and comfortable. Changes of temperature do not reach you, and you sit and croon to yourself and mumble your pa

sleep again; and wake, and croon, and mumble, and dream. Sometimes you are conscious of feeling stiff, and think you will change your position; but, after all, it does not

re that you have not changed your position for more than a quarter of a year, but have been squatting on your heels, with your back against the wall and your nose folded into your paws across your breast; and you want to stretch your hind-legs dreadfully. But you do

dpecker-rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!-from a tree near by. But even these signs that the spring is at hand again would not tempt you out if it were not for another feeling that begins to assert itself, and will not let you rest. You find you are hungry, horribly hungry. It is of no use to say to yourself that you are perfectly

st you lift your head from your breast and try moving your neck about, and sniff at the walls of your den. Then you unfold your arms, and-ooch!-how they crack, first one and then the other! At last you begin to

moist earth and the resinous scent of the pines almost hurt your nostrils. One side of the gully in front of you is brown and bare, but in the bottom, and clinging to the other side, are patches of mo

turn to the bank at your side and begin to grub; and as you grub you wander on, eating the roots that you scratch up and the young shoots of plants that are appearing here and there. And all the time the day is growing, and the sens

, and the smells are as pungent, and the light is as strong, and the hunger as great. For the first few days you really think of nothing but of finding enough to eat. As

tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat!-overhead. There were several woodchucks-fat, waddling things-living in the same gully with me, and they had been abroad for some days when I woke up. On my way down to the stream on that first morning, I found a porcupine in m

nk of anything except my hunger-be contrasting this spring with the spring before, when Kahwa and I had played about the rock and the cedar-trees, and I had tumbled down the hill. And the more I thought of it, the l

me out of my winter-quarters, and I had no trouble in finding the pl

bt of it. She was squealing just as she used to do when she tried to pull me away from the rock

were. It made me feel awkward, and almost as if my mother was a stranger, too; but after standing still a little time and watching them I walked up. Mother met me kindly, but, somehow, not like a mother meeting her own cub, but like a she-bear meeting any he-bear in the forest. The cubs

YOUNG ONES RAN AND

lar

a stranger, for any friendliness that he showed. He sat up on his haunches and growled, and then came on slowly, swinging his head, and obviously not at all disposed to welcome me. Again I was surprised, to see that he was not as big as I had thought, and for a moment wild ideas of fighting him, if that was what he wanted, came into my head. I wished to stay with moth

er whom they had never seen. Father did not try to attack me, but walked up to mother and began licking her, to show that she belonged to him. I dislike

first night after Kahwa was caught, or on that morning when I saw her dead, that I felt as completely forlorn as I did that day when I turned away from my mother, and went down the mountain-side back to my own place alon

ive and my own way to make in the world, with no one to look to for guidance and no one to help

y, and whom I had vowed some day to punish; and I began to understand in some measure why he was

s, the coyotes, the pumas, or the weasels, which live on the lives of other animals, and which every other thing in the woods regards as its sworn foe. Still, smaller animals are mostly afraid of us, and the carcase of a dead bear means a feast for a number[115] of hungry things. If

the forest folk. I had cause enough, it is true, to know how dangerous and how savagely cruel he was, and for that I hated him. But I had also seen enough of him to have a contempt for his blindness and his lack of the sense of scent. Had I not again and again, when in the town, dodged round the corner of a building, and waited while he passed a few yards away, or stood immovable in the dark shadow of

he water's edge during the heat of the day. My chief pleasure, I think, was in fishing, and I was glad my mother had shown me how to do it. No bear, when hungry, could afford to fish for his food, for it takes too long; but I had all my time to myself, and nearly every morning and evening I used to get my trout for breakfast or for supper. At the end of a long hot day, I know nothing pleasanter than, after lying a while in

in a tree for me to be able to reach it, and in trying I was certain to get well stung for my pains. Once in a while, however, I came across a comb that

ad no one place that I could think of as a home more than any other. I preferred not to stay near my father and mother, and so let myself wander,[118] heading for the most part westward, and further into the mountains as the summer grew, and then in the autumn turning south again

ng on for two years old-in any of the families that I came across. Parents with young cubs did not want me. Young bears in their second year were usually in couples. The solitary bears that I met were generally he-bears older than I, and, though we were friendly on meeting, neither cared for the[119] other's companionship. Again and again in these meetings I was struck by the fact that I was unusually big and strong for my age, the result, I suppose, as I have already said, of the accident that threw me on

by bears at some time or other, though not for the last year or two. There I made my nest with less trouble th