Chapter III: Part 3

The young cubs at first are delicate and for a week or two the mother never leaves them, but curls around them and keeps them warm and broods them. They seem, however, to have excellent lungs, for one can hear them whimper if one has located a bear’s hiding place and approaches it after the cubs are born, an experience that I have had more than once in the mountains. The Messrs. Lodge, of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, have supplied their bears with artificial hibernating dens dug in the side of a hill where their bear pit is situated. These are supplied with ventilating shafts, and the owners, for a number of years, have been able to determine the exact date of the birth of a litter, by listening for the querulous voices of the cubs. These gentlemen, by the way, have endeavored in all possible regards to approximate natural conditions in furnishing accommodations for their captive animals; with the result that they have been among the few successful raisers of Black Bears. I will have occasion to refer more than once to the records which these gentlemen have kept during their twenty years’ experience.

For some time, then, after the cubs are born, the family continues shut up in the winter den; but, unlike the grizzly, they frequently, toward the end, leave their shelter before they are ready to abandon it for good. I have seen cases where a Black Bear mother and cubs came out in deep snow, and after wandering about for several miles went back again for a full two weeks before coming out for good. In some cases the mother will come out on these preliminary excursions before the young are able to walk. But they do not either habitually or finally abandon the den until they can get down to the bottoms where the snow is gone and the vegetation has started sprouting. This, by the way, if you happen to live in the neighborhood, is an excellent time to keep a sharp watch on your young pigs.

At this stage the cubs weigh about five or six pounds and, although it is some months before they begin to forage at all for themselves, their development is now much more rapid. I have frequently watched old Black Bears with cubs in the early summer, but have never seen the young ones show any apparent interest in what the mother was eating, and hence I believe that in their natural state they are six or seven months old before they begin the process of being weaned. But although about the time the berries are ripe the cubs take to foraging pretty generally on their own account, they continue to nurse right through the summer and until they either den up with the mother in the fall or, as I think is more usual, until they are turned adrift by her before she herself dens up alone. In fact I have seen them, late in the year, and when they were of a size that should have made them ashamed of such dependence, pestering their mother as she walked, and getting occasional cuffs for their persistence.

Ben showed no concern whatever over grown-up bear dishes until the berry season came around, when he suddenly developed an appetite for outside board, and not only seemed to want all the various things the hills provided, but would howl lustily if he did not get them.

The Black Bear, while not much of a traveller, wanders over a fairly wide range in search of various foods in their season; yet, broadly speaking, is pretty apt to live and die in the general neighborhood of its birth. They wander both day and night, although when they are in a region where grizzlies are also to be found they are careful to disappear about the time that the latter, which are much more nocturnal in habit, may be expected to come out. When a Black Bear has young cubs she will stay for a week or two at a time in one place, and will scratch a nest or bed among the leaves or in a thicket and lie up there between feeds with her youngsters.

There are few things more interesting than to watch a bear with her cubs when she thinks herself alone. They are the gayest and most playful little balls of fur, and she will let them maul her and worry her and pretend to fight her. But a Black Bear does not, as the grizzly does, talk to her cubs all the time. A grizzly will walk along through the woods with two or three cubs carrying on what appears to be a connected conversation. She grunts and whines and makes noises at them that sound as though they were full of advice and admonition. They are doubtless merely encouragement or assurances of her presence. But the Black Bear is silent except in cases of danger or emergency. Then she, too, “speaks” to her youngsters, and they never seem to be at a loss for her meaning. At any rate they go up a tree at the word of command, and come down again at the grunt that means, “All right now, come on.”

As the cubs grow larger and stronger the mother wanders farther afield with them, and, from sacrificing all her time and desires to their needs and safety, comes gradually first to tolerate, and toward the end of the season rather to resent, their persistent demands upon her. One imagines that it is with a final indifference and relief that she sends them off to shift for themselves. For, like other animals, a bear, while showing the most devoted and courageous love for her children while they are helpless, has a very short-lived affection for them once they cease to need her protection. In one instance the Lodges tried the experiment of returning some half-grown cubs to their mother after a comparatively short separation, during which she and her mate had been together in the main pit. The two cubs had only been by themselves for a few weeks, and before they were finally returned to the pen with their mother they were kept for some days separated from her by nothing more than an iron grating. Yet as soon as they were put into the pit with her she seized one of them and killed it, and was starting up her exercise tree after the other which had taken refuge there when the owners interfered and rescued the youngster. Here, as I see it, was a case of artificial separation which, once the mother had accepted, placed her, as far as her own feelings went, in exactly the same frame of mind toward her cubs as though she had abandoned them in the natural course of things and their company had afterward been forced upon her.

Neither the Black Bear nor the grizzly is really a sociable animal, but free Black Bears occasionally play together, which grizzlies never seem to do. Under ordinary circumstances, however, Black Bears have a funny trick of pretending not to see each other when they meet. If one of them comes into a marshy meadow or a small open glade in the woods where one or two others are already feeding, he will make the most laughable pretence of not seeing them. He will stop at the edge of the opening and go through all the motions of examining the country, carefully looking, however, everywhere but in the direction of the other bears; all of which is vastly amusing to one familiar with the keenness of his senses and the alertness of his attention, and the practical impossibility of getting within seeing or hearing distance of him without his knowing it. Meanwhile the bears already on the ground play their part in the little comedy with all the good will in the world. They have undoubtedly been aware of the approach of the newcomer long before any human watcher of the scene could have suspected it. But they give no outward sign of being aware of the new arrival. If, however, the intruder had happened to have been a grizzly they would undoubtedly have taken to their heels or taken refuge in the nearest tree with loud puffings and snortings some minutes before he reached the scene. Yet these same bears, once they have fed their fill, will frequently go to playing together as one never sees the grizzlies do. Two of them will stand up and wrestle, roll each other over and over, chase each other about, and generally have a fine romp. As a rule, however, this sort of play takes place between bears of different sizes, and the smaller one sometimes gets well thrown about and mauled.

One of the most entertaining experiences that I ever had in the woods was connected with just such an after-dinner romp between two Black Bears. I was photographing grizzlies in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, and had set up my camera and flash-light apparatus near a likely looking trail. My flash-pan was placed on top of a ten-foot pole stuck in the ground under a small pine tree, and a fine wire was run from the switch that operated the apparatus across the trail and tied to a convenient bush. I had completed my arrangements about half-past four in the afternoon and had concealed myself in a mass of fallen timber some seventy-five or eighty feet away prepared to wait for dusk.

Soon after I got settled I noticed two Black Bears in a little clearing to my left and, for something to do, I set to watching them. For some time they fed quietly here and there and then they took to playing. One of them was quite a bit larger than the other, but the smaller one was game and though he got considerably the worst of the rough sport they kept the play up for quite a while. Suddenly, however, in the very midst of an excited wrestling match, the little fellow drew away, stood up on his hind legs and listened for a moment, and then went up a convenient tree, his companion following his example and taking refuge in another one. I was much interested over this turn of affairs and kept a close watch to see what was going to happen next. But, after quite a little wait, the bears seemed to make up their minds that it had been a false alarm and, coming down from their respective trees, they resumed their rough and tumble fun. Not for long, however. It was only a minute or two before they repeated their former maneuvers, and this time they appeared to have no doubt as to the imminence of danger. They had worked their way over to my side of the clearing, and when they broke for shelter the little bear took refuge in the small pine tree under which my flash-pan stood, his companion selecting a larger tree a little further away. And sure enough, almost as soon as they were well off the ground an old grizzly came stalking dignifiedly out of the woods and down the trail upon which my camera was set. But he had evidently noticed that something questionable was going on, and he walked over toward the tree where the larger bear was sitting. The latter, conscious of his advantage of position, greeted the grizzly’s approach with a volley of puffs and snorts, and after looking around him in a disdainful sort of way, the grizzly sauntered over toward the smaller bear’s tree, where the same performance was gone through. Here, however, the grizzly found something that aroused his curiosity more keenly than a mere Black Bear, for he discovered my pole and flash-pan. He stood up on his hind legs and easily sniffed the top of the pan and then, discovering the wire, he followed it without touching it away from the pine tree and across the trail to where it was fastened. Then, his curiosity getting the better of him, he raised one front paw and pulled the bush toward him, whereupon the charge of powder exploded with a huge puff of smoke, and as I stood up in my retreat to get a better view of the outcome I caught a glimpse with one eye of a big grizzly turning a double back somersault, while with the other I saw a small Black Bear take one desperate leap from the branches of his pine tree and disappear into the wood in huge leaps.

When the last act of this little comedy began I had risen to my feet in order to get a clear view of what took place, and when the smaller Black Bear had disappeared into the woods I saw that his larger companion had become aware of my presence. I once more concealed myself among the branches, but the Black Bear in the tree kept an eye in my direction and when, at the end of five minutes or so, the smaller bear returned cautiously to the scene of his recent discomfiture and began to coax his friend to come down and resume their play, it was amusing to watch the cross-purposes at which they found themselves. For the one up the tree who knew of my presence was afraid to come down and yet unable to explain the circumstances to the one on the ground, and he in his turn was utterly unable to make head or tail of the other’s actions. He finally gave up the attempt to persuade him and wandered away into the woods, and at the end of half an hour or so the other bear, evidently with serious misgivings, came carefully down the opposite side of his tree and made off at the double quick.

The Black Bear’s habits of hibernation are less rigid and apparently less developed than the grizzly’s. To begin with, they are far less industrious in providing themselves with a den, and less particular in having it weatherproof and well concealed. The grizzly habitually seeks out some natural cave or shelter in the rocks, high up in the mountains, often above snow line. This he prepares for occupancy by raking into it whatever he can find in the way of leaves or dried grasses, and sometimes stops up with earth and stones such holes or openings as would expose the interior to the weather. The Black Bear is far less particular. Any old place that offers him some fair promise of protection and privacy seems good enough for him. He dens up at much lower altitudes, goes into winter quarters later and comes out much earlier. One of his favorite devices is to dig a hole under the butt end of a fallen tree, rake a few leaves into the opening, and then crawl in himself. Sometimes, when the tree is a good-sized one and the roots hold the butt of it a little clear of the ground, he is saved the trouble of digging at all and makes a sort of nest in the space beneath the trunk. At other times he will dig a hole in the soft ground, and, of course, occasionally uses caves or other natural retreats if he happens to find them handy. Ben, it will be recalled, dug under the floor of my barn when it came to be his bedtime.

The time for denning up varies with the locality and the weather, and throughout the North-west is anywhere from November 1 to January 1. Unlike the grizzly, however, the Black Bear will often come out for a while if a warm spell follows his denning up. The Lodges note that their bears, once they are settled in their winter caves, never seem to pay any further attention to the weather. But while this is probably the rule, I have seen Black Bears out in some numbers late in December after there had been severe freezing weather during which all bears had denned up.

There is some difference of opinion as to their habits further south, and some authorities claim that at the extreme southern limit of their range the bears belonging to the Black Bear group do not hibernate at all. I incline, however, from what I have seen—or rather failed to see—to the opposite belief; for in parts of Old Mexico where, in the spring, I have seen many bears, I have again in the winter time failed to see either them or their fresh tracks, and upon making inquiry of the Indians have been told that they were asleep.

Moreover, Mr. Charles Sheldon, of New York, who for fifteen years has made a close study of bears in their natural state and has spent four years in Mexico studying bear and sheep, informs me that all the bears den up almost as early in those mountains as they do further north, and that he has never seen bears in Mexico come out of winter quarters earlier than in the United States.

There has been much scientific discussion as to the nature of this long sleep, and also much popular misconception in regard to its outward manifestations. I do not aspire to a voice in the former, but can speak from considerable experience in regard to the latter. Many, perhaps most, people seem to think that a bear that has denned up for the winter is in some mysterious, and more or less complete state of coma; that its breathing is all but suspended, and that it would be difficult, even by violence, to rouse it. They are very far from the truth. Bears sleep, but are easily roused, quick to scent danger, and ready to abandon their retreat and look up a new one if they think it necessary.

Ben, at any time during the winter, would rouse if I called him, and would even come to the mouth of his lair for a moment to greet me. I could, moreover, hear him breathing, and sometimes hear him move and readjust himself to a more comfortable position. He was a very lazy, stupid, sleepy bear; but never too stupid or sleepy to answer my call.

One fall in Washington, near Colville in the Calispell Mountains, while after deer, I noticed a strange mass of dead leaves, small sticks, pine needles, and other forest refuse gathered under the tangled trunks of a windfall, where a number of trees had been blown down crisscross. My curiosity was piqued by the queer-looking affair and I climbed along one of the tree trunks to see what it was. Suddenly, as I got almost over it, the whole mass began to shake and quiver and out came an old Black Bear and two cubs. This was the only time that I ever actually knew of a Black Bear and her cubs having denned up together. And I have never seen more than a dozen cases where it seemed probable that they had. Later on on this same trip I saw seven other Black Bear sleeping places, all in similar situations under tree trunks or tangled down-timber.

Only a year ago, up at Priest Lake, in Idaho, some friends and myself came across the tracks of a cougar, and, having gone back for dogs, we returned and put them on its trail. We were in full chase along the side of a mountain when one of the dogs attracted my attention by the way he acted. He turned aside, rushed to a dead tree that lay along the ground, and began excitedly sniffing at one end of it. I knew that the cougar could not be there and went over to see what was attracting the dog’s attention, and saw instantly that a Black Bear had been denned up under the log, but, disturbed by the dog’s approach, had broken out and made off down the mountain in a foot and a half of snow.

These are merely examples of many such experiences, and I have more than once followed the trail of a bear and seen where it had made itself a new retreat.

We know, since they lay up no store of provisions, that the bear does not eat during its long retirement, and although, in the north, it would be possible for it to provide itself with water by eating the snow that shuts it in, we know that bears hibernating in captivity (a thing by the way that they do not often do) neither eat nor drink.

One odd fact about the whole proceeding is that all bears of the same class in the same locality go into winter quarters and emerge from them within a few days of each other. In the Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia, I have seen where six grizzlies had broken their way through several feet of snow out of six different caves on the side of a single mountain all in one night. In localities where both species are found, the Black Bear come out from one to two months earlier than the grizzlies, and in both species the males emerge two weeks or more before the females with new cubs. But all of each kind come out within a day or two of each other.

I incline to the belief that in the majority of cases the Black Bear, when in freedom, breeds every year. Most authorities on bears who base their opinions upon observations made on captive animals, claim that both the grizzly and the Black Bear breed annually. But a long series of observations and the closest possible attention given to this point has absolutely convinced me that it is the very rare exception when a free female grizzly breeds oftener than once in two years. I have seen many hundreds of grizzly mothers with cubs in the open, and fully as many of them were followed by yearling cubs as by spring cubs. But although (the Black Bear being much more numerous than the grizzly) I have seen many more Black Bears with cubs than grizzlies with cubs, I have never seen more than a dozen Black Bear mothers followed by yearling cubs.

I have therefore been forced to conclude that it is the habit of the Black Bear to wean its cubs and abandon them before denning up the first fall. In the case of the grizzly the mother and the cubs den up together the fall following the latter’s birth, and run together during the following summer, and it is not until late in the second season that the mother turns the cubs adrift to shift for themselves. This family of young grizzlies then usually den up together and continue to run together the third summer, at the close of which the litter disbands and the individuals belonging to it take up their separate lives. I have also seen a few litters of yearling Black Bears still running in company without their mother; but as this is by no means a common sight, I believe that ordinarily Black Bear cubs den up separately after they leave their mother at the close of their first summer.

Inasmuch, however, as I have seen a few Black Bear mothers followed by yearling cubs, I assume that in these cases the mother and cubs had denned up together in the same manner that the grizzlies habitually do. And I once actually found an old Black Bear and two cubs so settled for the winter. I have also tracked an old grizzly and her cubs to where they had gone into winter quarters together, and have seen where a grizzly mother and her year-old family had emerged from hibernation in company the second spring. I have also often seen where a litter of two-year-old grizzly cubs had wintered together in one cave after leaving their mother in their third fall, but I have never seen any actual evidence of young Black Bears wintering together in this manner.

I believe that the explanation of this very striking difference of habit between the Black and the grizzly bears in the matter of breeding annually or biennially, is to be found in their different degrees of fierceness, and in the resulting fact that the Black Bear cubs are not so long in danger from the evil tempers and bloodthirsty dispositions of the grown males of their kind.

A new-born cub of either species would be instantly killed, and probably eaten, by any old male that got the opportunity; and, unnatural as this seems to us, it is true of many or most carnivorous, or partly carnivorous, animals. It is true of rats, as most boys who have bred white rats have had occasion to discover. The memory of the habit, at least, survives in the fierceness with which even a pet dog with puppies will keep the father of them away from her basket. In all zoological gardens it is necessary to separate the male bears from the female at and after the birth of cubs, and the habits of mother bears in the woods show that their instincts warn them very effectually of the wisdom of this course.

But while the Black Bear mother shows no great concern for the safety of her cubs after they have reached the age of five or six months, the grizzly mother continues, with good reason, to evade or resent the approach of other members of her tribe till well into the second year. I have on two different occasions known of a male grizzly’s killing and eating a cub that had been left fastened by a chain near a camp; and in one instance I came upon a grizzly that had just killed a female and had eaten her two cubs. She had been caught in a steel trap set by a trapper, and her two cubs were with her. The male, finding her in this predicament, had doubtless attacked the cubs, and when, hampered as she was by the trap and clog, she had attempted to defend them, he had killed her too.

A female grizzly with young is one of the most dangerous animals in the world. She will allow no other bear of either sex to approach either her or them. And this invariable attitude of her fully accounts, to my mind, for her failure to breed while the young are still with her. But the Black Bear mother is not only a comparatively inoffensive animal at all times, but she seems to have no such lasting distrust of other members of her own species. I have often seen an old Black Bear asleep in the branches of a tree with her five or six-months-old cubs frisking around on the ground, when she must have been well aware that there were Black Bears of the opposite sex in the neighborhood. This is not to be put down to indifference on her part. It simply means that the necessity for watchfulness has passed. It therefore becomes easily understandable that the Black Bear mother can afford, without risk to her half-grown cubs, to breed every year in the open; while the grizzly does not, until her young are fully able to take care of themselves unaided, dare to associate with their possible enemies—the cantankerous males of the tribe.

The records of the Lodges contain one or two interesting notes relating to these matters. The first time that their original pair of Black Bears bred they did not separate the mother and father, and the first intimation that they had of the birth of cubs was the appearance of the father at the mouth of the den with a dead cub in its mouth. After that they took care to give the female separate quarters. Again, the only two occasions during the last sixteen or eighteen years on which this female has failed to breed have been in years when her cubs were allowed to remain with her throughout the summer, and when, as the owners state, she was so taken up with them that she refused to have anything to do with her mate.

This is exactly the attitude that my observations have led me to assume as habitual on the part of the free grizzly. And I imagine that the Black Bear mother adopted it in this case because, in the narrow quarters of a twenty-foot bear-pit, she was afraid to relax her vigilance, as she doubtless would have felt justified in doing in her natural surroundings.

Another point of difference between the two species that agrees with the earlier abandonment of its young by the Black Bear is the fact that these appear to breed at least a year earlier than the young of the grizzly. The latter, as we have seen, only separate and den up individually at the end of their third summer and breed the following year at the earliest; but I have seen Black Bear mothers that could not have weighed over a hundred pounds, and that made the most amusing and appealing picture of youthful responsibility.

There is a widespread notion that bears are given to travelling in company; that they are sociable animals, and that bear families—father, mother, and children—are not only to be met with in the woods, but den up together for the winter. This is not true. Only mothers and cubs or occasionally half-grown cubs of one litter ever travel together. I have never seen the slightest evidence that grown bears, male and female, ever travel in couples, even in the mating season; and I have never known a case where full-grown animals of any bear species denned up together. These statements apply no less to the Black Bear than to the grizzly.

Another point on which there is much popular misconception and disbelief is the extreme smallness of bear cubs at birth. This, at first glance, is not only astonishing, but to many people seems almost incredible. “How is it possible,” they ask, “and why is it advantageous for an animal as large as a bear to have young so small? Why, the puppies of a forty-pound dog are as large as the cubs of the four-hundred pound bear!” Yet the fact remains, and in the case of the grizzly, where the mother sometimes weighs twice as much as the Black Bear mother, the cubs are, if anything, a trifle smaller at birth on the average. I have never heard the matter explained, but it seems to me that when we consider the yearly habits of the bear they tend to suggest how this peculiar race-habit was developed. A dog mother with three or four puppies, weighing six or eight ounces apiece at birth, will eat three huge meals a day and grow thin as a rail nursing her hungry youngsters. What, then, would become of a bear mother who had to nurse three or four cubs for six weeks or two months, with never a meal at all, if the cubs were born weighing five or six pounds? It looks very much as though Nature, with her usual skill at making both ends meet, had so arranged matters in the bear family that, as these animals developed the hibernating habit, the size of the cubs was reduced in proportion to the reduced ability of the mother to nourish them. And that three or four eight-ounce cubs do not make any undue demands on the resources of a three-hundred or four-hundred-pound mother is proved by the fact that both she and they are normally in excellent condition when they first come out in the spring.

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FOOD AND FEEDING

THE Black Bear is described as omnivorous. Literally, that means that he eats everything; and this comes pretty near to being literally true, for he has democratic tastes, a magnificent appetite, and nothing much to do between meals. Technically, however, the term means that the Black Bear is both carnivorous and herbivorous; that he eats flesh like a wolf, grass like an ox, fish like an otter, carrion like a coyote, bugs like a hen, and berries like a bird. In short he eats pretty much everything he can get, and pretty generally all he can get of it.

One would naturally imagine that so thorough-going a feeder would emerge from his long and complete winter fast ravenously hungry and ready to fall tooth and claw upon a hearty breakfast. But this is not so. Indeed, when we stop to think of it, we can see that even a bear’s cast-iron constitution and digestive apparatus would hardly stand such treatment. I have examined the stomach and intestines of a bear killed just as it came out in the spring, and not only found them utterly empty, but flattened with disuse. These organs have, therefore, to be treated with consideration and coaxed back gradually to the performance of their accustomed functions. Shipwrecked sailors, rescued at the point of starvation, have to be forced by their friends to go slowly until their stomachs again get the habit of digestion; and while bears have no friends to do them a like service, they have practised long fasting for so many generations that they have developed instincts that serve the purpose.

When they first come out of the winter’s den they wander around for a day or so showing little or no inclination for food. Then they make their way down to where the snow is gone and the early vegetation has begun to sprout, and eat sparingly of the tender grass shoots. But their appetites are not long in returning. By the end of a week the old saying, “hungry as a bear,” is more than justified and they start in in earnest to make up for lost time. At this season they are especially fond of the parsnip-like roots of the skunk cabbage, and I have seen marshy bottom lands so dug over by bears in search of this dainty that they had almost the appearance of having been ploughed.

Here again the experience of the Lodges with their captive bears exactly confirms my own observations in the open. Mr. William R. Lodge writes me that, “When they first come out they are not hungry, and the first day or two only partake of a bite or two of parsnip or similar food that we always provide and that seems to be their most satisfactory diet after they acquire the habit of eating again.” Later on these Cuyahoga Falls animals are given young dandelion leaves, clover, scraps from the hotel tables, berries, watermelons, sweet corn, and acorns. I have no doubt that this diet, so carefully approximated to the natural food of the animal in its free state, has had much to do with the success of the owners in inducing them to breed.

Wild white clover is another favorite dish of the Black Bear, and they eat the buds of the young maple shrubs and other tender green stuff. They do not, however, do nearly so much digging as the grizzly. I have seen acres of stony ground literally spaded up by the latter in search of the bulbs of the dog-tooth violet and the spring beauty. But it is only here and there, where a thin layer of earth covers a smooth hillside or ledge of rock and supports a meagre crop of small roots, that the Black Bear will scoop these up and eat them; and apart from the easy work of turning over the soft swamp earth for skunk-cabbage roots they are little given to such systematic labor.

Here indeed one sees one of the most striking differences of habit and disposition between the Black Bear and the grizzly. The grizzlies work for their food like industrious men. The Black Bear will work hard at any kind of mischief, but seems to hate to work steadily for business purposes. The grizzly will dig for hours and heap out cartloads of earth and rock to get at a nest of marmots or ground-squirrels. The Black Bear may show an interest in a marmot burrow and do a little half-hearted scratching near the entrance, but never digs deep or long for them. As far as I have ever seen, they kill nothing larger, in the way of small game, than field-mice and such small fry. But they are both quick and clever at catching these. They will turn over stumps and roll logs aside and up-end flat stones and catch an escaping mouse before it goes a yard.

Frogs and toads are also favorite tidbits of theirs and they spend much time looking for them. They will walk along the edge of small streams and pin down a jumping frog with their lightning-quick paws; and I have seen one, when a frog escaped it and jumped into the creek, jump after it and land like a stone from a catapult, splashing water for twenty feet.

Practically nothing in the insect line comes amiss to them. They are everlastingly poking and pulling at rotten logs, old stumps, loose stones, and decaying trees, looking for caterpillars, squash-bugs, grubs, centipedes, and larvæ. Their sense of smell is wonderfully acute and one can hear them sniffing and snuffing over the punky mass of an old tree trunk they have ripped open, searching with their noses for crawling goodies.

Like all bears they are extravagantly fond of ants, and they are not only experts in finding them, but know how to take advantage of the habits of the various kinds in order to catch them. Their greatest feasts in this line are obtained when they discover the huge low hills of what, in the West, are called Vinegar Ants. These are only moderate in size, but are extremely vicious. They get their name from a strong odor, resembling that of vinegar, that they exhale when aroused. They build large hills, sometimes several feet in diameter, made up for the most part of pine needles, bits of wood, pellets of earth, and such like stuff. They are red and black in color, have powerful jaws, and rush by the thousand to give battle to any intruder that disturbs their home. It is this latter trait that makes them an easy prey to the Black Bear. When he discovers an ant-hill belonging to this species he walks up to it, runs one of his fore-legs deep down into the inside of it, gives a turn to his paw that effectually stirs things up below, and then stretches himself out at ease to await results, with his front legs extended to the base of the hill.

Out rush the ants by companies and regiments and brigades; mad as hornets, brave as lions, smelling like a spoiled vinegar mill, and looking for trouble. They get it, almost immediately. They discover the bear’s furry paws and, struggling and tumbling in the hair like angry and hurrying warriors in a jungle, they begin to swarm over them. And as fast as they come the bear licks them up. When the excitement dies down, he gives the inside of the hill another poke. This results in another sortie of defenders, and when these have stormed the hairy heights and been eaten for their pains, he repeats the operation. I believe a bear would eat a solid bushel of these insects at a sitting. On the other hand, a bear will by no means despise a single ant, and one of the best ways of making friends with a young cub is to catch a stray ant and offer it to him. He will lean forward, sniff at your fingers, and then grab the dainty as eagerly as though it weighed a pound.

There is another variety of ants, larger than the so-called Vinegar Ants, which are black and live, for the most part, under flat rocks. These the bear will lap up with his tongue after uncovering their retreat. And there is still another variety of huge black ants that nest about the roots of trees and spend their time exploring the bark and branches. I have seen them sixty feet above ground busily pursuing their affairs. Of these, too, the Black Bear is fond, and one sees him snuffing and smelling around the cracks in old trees in hopes of locating a colony of them. I have seen where bears have scratched and gnawed at the edges of a narrow opening in the lower trunk of a decaying tree, in a vain endeavor to get into the open heart of it; and again, where they had ripped off a rotting slab and gained a feast. For in cold weather these ants gather in sluggish masses and later even freeze solid—I have seen what would make a quart of them so frozen—and seem to take no harm from the cold storage. By the way, the bear is not alone in liking this peculiar diet. I have seen French Canadian lumber jacks pick up handfuls of these frozen black ants and eat them. One of them once informed me that they tasted “just the same like raspberries.”

The Black Bear is also fond of bumble-bees, yellow-jackets, wasps, and hornets. He is the bear that is, when occasion offers, the honey-eater; but in the Rockies and Western coast ranges there are few wild honey-bees, and so his taste in that direction is seldom indulged, but he makes up for this by hunting out and eating such bees as he can find. He will dig up bumble-bees and eat them and will lap yellow-jackets off his fur exactly as he does ants. Of course the bear is fully protected by his thick coat from any attack by the bees, and if the latter sting his mouth or tongue as he swallows them, he manages to disguise the fact very thoroughly. I have never seen one shake his head or otherwise advertise a mishap of this kind.

But all these bugs and bees and ants and mice are, after all, but the luxuries and dessert of the Black Bear’s diet. He is, for the most part, a vegetarian, does far more grazing than is ordinarily supposed, and has his real season of plenty and stuffing when the berry season arrives. He will travel miles to get to a berry patch, and even when tamed and half domesticated will often try to escape to the open for this annual feast. A chain that has proved amply strong enough to hold a Black Bear captive during the spring and early summer is very likely to turn up broken when the blueberries ripen. Their favorites everywhere are blueberries and huckleberries, and the black and red haws, called thorn-apples in New England. The sarvis berry is another of their staples. They will reach up one paw, draw down a laden berry bush, and grasping it between their forefeet will rake the fruit into their open mouths. But the Black Bear is less particular in regard to berries than the grizzly. He will eat pretty much anything in that line, even feeding on the Oregon grape in the Rockies, a food disdained by the grizzly.

In the East they also feed greedily on acorns and beechnuts, and in the West they eat the seeds that drop out of the pine cones. In the higher ranges of the Tetons and Bitter Roots, and indeed throughout the Rockies down into Mexico, there is a tree locally called the Jack Pine that bears a curious cone two or three inches across the butt and only two or three inches in depth—as broad as it is long, in fact. These cones contain very large and meaty seeds and the Black Bear is very fond of them. The Indians also cook and eat the young cones of the Jack Pine.

In addition to this the Black Bear has a great habit of peeling the bark off of balsam and of Jack Pine saplings, and of lapping the juices and gum from the wounds. They also scrape the gummy pulp from the inside of the bark and eat it. The grizzly never does these things. This pulp, however, is used by some of the Indians, who make a kind of bread out of it.

The Black Bear is fond of fish, but here again shows himself less clever and less industrious than the grizzly, who is an expert fisherman. On the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains almost every stream has, or used to have, its runs of salmon, these fish making their way to the upper reaches of the smaller rivers for the purpose of spawning. There are several varieties of these fish, and they enter the river and start on their long, up-hill journeys at different seasons. But one and all they are moved by a single desire—to get as far up stream as it is possible to go; and are driven forward by so strong an instinct that neither wounds, nor weariness, nor exhaustion, nor the fear of death itself, deters them from attempting (and sometimes accomplishing) what seems like the impossible.

They come from undiscovered regions of the sea in uncountable billions. In untold millions they enter the mouths of the great rivers. They turn off into each tributary stream by hundreds of thousands. They fill the tributaries of these tributaries. And finally one finds them, still in their hundreds, filling the pools of the smaller rivers, leaping, floundering, all but crawling through the riffles and shallows of the smaller creeks, thousands of feet above the sea, and still undaunted.

And few of the invading millions ever find their way back to the ocean from which they came. From the moment that they enter the mouths of the larger rivers, every living creature, from man downward, begins to take toll of them. Those that pass the nets and salmon wheels of the canning factories, that elude the talons of the eagles and ospreys, that are missed by the paws of the bears and the cougars, the teeth of the otters and the mink, arrive at the head-waters of their selected stream in a pitiable condition of wounds and exhaustion. Their fins are nothing but bare spines. Their sides are torn by rocks, they are thin from fasting, and when they have deposited and fertilized the eggs that they have come so far to find fit hatcheries for, they are, for the most part, utterly unable to manage the long return journey. Then they fall an easy prey to any animal that finds them. And many animals gather to the feast. Here is the free-lunch counter of the wilderness; during the salmon runs everything in the mountains lives on fish: bears, cougars, coyotes, wolverines, lynx; in Alaska the very geese gorge themselves on salmon; and the Black Bear gets his share of the loot.

The grizzly, as I have said, is an expert fisherman. I have seen one toss out seventeen big salmon in less than an hour, and after eating his fill bury the rest of his catch for future use. But the Black Bears only fish on their own account occasionally and in very shallow water. They will wander along the trails on the banks of the small streams, and if salmon are struggling over the riffles, will jump in and catch one or two. But they are too much lacking in patience to wait for the fish as the grizzly does, and too improvident to do more than supply the need of the moment when the opportunity comes unwaited for. And they are quite satisfied, for the most part, to take the leavings of others or to feed on stranded or dead fish. They often get crumbs from the table of the golden eagle, the bald eagle, and the osprey; and sometimes, when one of these birds catches a fish too heavy to fly away with, a Black Bear will drive the fisherman away and eat his catch for him.

But we began by saying that the Black Bear was in part carnivorous, and so far, we have not justified the claim by anything more fleshy than a field-mouse. The truth is that the Black Bear much prefers to have his meat “well hung,” as some sportsmen express it. That is to say, he really prefers carrion. Any kind of a carcass makes a strong appeal to him, and I do not believe that meat can be too putrid to suit his taste. Ben, when he was out walking with me during the time we lived in Missoula, would turn aside to sniff over any dead cat or hen that he came across—even if nothing remained of it but dried skin and bones. And he would actually lie down and roll on the find, and, if allowed, would then pick it up in his mouth and carry it home for a nest egg.

But in spite of his preference for carrion, the Black Bear soon learns to take advantage of easily procurable live meat. They are remarkably adaptable animals, take kindly to civilization, and accommodate themselves readily to the conditions and opportunities that follow in its wake. They very soon realize it if they are free from interference, and will, with the slightest encouragement, begin to impose upon you. They will live under your barn with the best will in the world. And they’ll learn to steal sheep. In some localities they get to be a serious nuisance in this way. But their favorite civilized dish is young pig. In some regions the ranchmen in the spring turn their hogs out into swamps to feed on the roots of the skunk cabbage; but if Black Bears happen to be plentiful in the neighborhood they are very likely to get not only the skunk cabbage but the pigs as well. There appears to be something about a shoat that appeals directly to the Black Bear instinct. They learn to be sheep thieves; but they appear to be born pig thieves. The summer that I caught Ben, as we were returning to Spokane across the Palouse farming country, we stopped at a ranch over night and left Ben tied under a small shed while we unpacked and stabled our horses. It happened that there was an old sow with a litter of young pigs in a pen at the rear end of the shed, and that there was a hole in the pen for the young ones to come and go by. And when we came back to get Ben we found him lying by this hole with one paw stuck through it, waiting for a pig. And just as we arrived he actually slapped one on the nose and almost caught it. And he was only a little larger than the pig himself.

Of course the diet of the Black Bear, like that of the grizzly, and of most other wild animals, depends largely upon the locality in which they live. There are regions where, of necessity, the bear are largely if not altogether vegetarians; and others where, at certain seasons, they live almost wholly upon fish or largely upon carrion. It is never safe to generalize from localized observations as to the food habits of any animal, and it is only very carefully and as the result of a broad experience that one should venture to ascribe to any species the traits that one has observed in individuals. There is one feeding habit of the Black Bear, however, that I believe to be universally typical. They never make caches of food. The grizzlies will, as I have already said, bury the fish they cannot eat for future use. They will also drag away and bury or hide the carcass of any animal they have found and will return to feed on it until it is all consumed; or they will carefully cover it where it lies with earth and leaves and branches to prevent other animals from finding it in their absence. The Black Bear does not look so far ahead. He will carry away a few pounds of meat or bones in his mouth, but beyond that appears to take no thought for the morrow. When he has sated his appetite on a carcass he will leave it where and as he found it. He lives from hand to mouth and is the Happy Hooligan of the woods.

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THE HAPPY HOOLIGAN

In this chapter I would like to give some notion of the Black Bear at home. I do not mean “at home” in the society sense of being dressed up “from four to seven” to receive callers; but in the good old backwoods sense of being in your shirt-sleeves with your feet on the table. There is a good deal more difference between the two attitudes than appears in a book on etiquette.

If you meet a man at an afternoon reception you see one side of him—the outside. If you are a member of the local vigilance committee and call on him officially in the course of business, you get a specialized insight into another phase of his character. But as an old hermit with a rat-tailed file for a tongue once said to me in the hills, “You never really know a man till you’ve watched him through the transom when he thinks himself alone.”