Watched by Wild Animals Part 8

Realizing that the cubs would stay in the tree, no matter what happened, I concluded to capture them. Though they had been having lively exercise for two hours they were anything but exhausted.

Climbing into the tree I chased them round from the bottom to the top; from the top out on limbs, and from limbs to the bottom--but was unable to get within reach of them.

Several times I drove one out on top of a limb and then endeavoured to shake him off and give him a tumble to the earth. A number of times I braced myself on a near-by large limb and shook with all my might.

Often I was able to move the end of the limb rapidly back and forth, but the cubs easily clung on. At times they had hold with only one paw--occasionally with only a single claw; but never could I shake them free.

The affair ended by my cutting a limb--to which a cub was clinging--nearly off with my hatchet. Suddenly breaking the remaining hold of the limb I tossed it and the tenacious little cub out, tumbling toward the earth. The cub struck the earth lightly, and before I had fully recovered from nearly tumbling after him came scrambling up the tree trunk beneath me!

One spring day while travelling in the mountains I paused in a whirl of mist and wet snow to look for the trail. I could see only a few feet ahead. As I looked closely a bear emerged from the gloom heading straight for me. Behind her were two cubs. I caught an impatient expression when she first saw me. She stopped, and with a growl of anger wheeled and boxed the cubs right and left like a worried, unpoised mother. They vanished in the direction from which they had come, the cubs being urged on with lively spanks.

Like most animals, the black bear has a local habitation. His territory is twenty miles or less in circ.u.mference. In this territory he is likely to spend his years, but in springtime he may descend to feed on the earliest wild gardens of the foothills. I have tracked black bears across mountain pa.s.ses, and on one occasion I found a bear track on the summit of Long's Peak.

The black bear eats everything that is edible, although his food is mainly that of a vegetarian. He digs out rich willow and aspen roots in the shallow and soft places, and tears up numerous plants for their roots or tubers. He eats gra.s.s and devours hundreds of juicy weeds. In summer he goes miles to berry patches and with the berries browses off a few inches of th.o.r.n.y bush; he bites off the end of a plum-tree limb and consumes it along with its leaves and fruit.

During summer I have seen him on the edge of snowfields and glaciers consuming thousands of unfortunate gra.s.shoppers, flies, and other insects there acc.u.mulated. He is particularly fond of ants--tears ant hills to pieces and licks up the ants as they come storming forth to bite him. He tears hundreds of rotten logs and stumps to pieces for grubs, ants and their eggs. He freely eats honey, the bees and their nests. He often amuses himself and makes a most amusing and man-like spectacle by chasing and catching gra.s.shoppers.

In a fish country he searches for fish and occasionally catches live ones; but he is too restless or shiftless to be a good fisherman. I have seen him catch fish by thrusting his nose in root entanglements in the edge of a brook; sometimes he captures salmon or trout that are struggling through shallow ripples.

Occasionally he catches a rabbit or a bird. But most of his meat is stale, with the killing of which he had nothing to do. He will devour carrion that has the acc.u.mulated smell of weeks of corruption. He catches more mice than a cat; and in the realm of economic biology he should be rated as useful. He consumes many other pests.

The black bear is--or was--pretty well distributed over North America.

His colour and activities vary somewhat with the locality, this being due perhaps to a difference of climate and food supply.

Everywhere, however, he is very much the same. Wherever found he has the hibernating habit. This is most developed in the colder localities. Commonly he is fat at the close of autumn; and as a preliminary to his long winter rest he makes a temporary nest where for a few days he fasts and sleeps.

With his stomach completely empty he retires into hibernating quarters for the winter. This place may be dug beneath the base of a fallen tree, close to the upturned roots, or a rude cave between immense rocks, or a den beneath a brush heap. Sometimes he sleeps on the bare earth or on the rocks of a cave; but he commonly claws into his den a quant.i.ty of litter or trash, then crawls into this and goes to sleep.

The time of his retiring for the winter varies with the lat.i.tude; but usually all bears of the same locality retire at about the same date, early December being the most common time.

The grizzly bear is more particular in his choice of sleeping quarters and desires better protection and concealment than the black bear.

Bears sometimes come forth in fair weather for a few hours and possibly for a few days. I have known them to come out briefly in mid-winter.

With the coming of spring--anywhere between the first of March and the middle of May--the bears emerge, the males commonly two weeks or more earlier than the females. Usually they at once journey down the mountain. They eat little or nothing for the first few days. They are likely to break their fast with the tender shoots of willow, gra.s.s, and sprouting roots, or a bite of bark from a pine.

The cubs are born about mid-winter. Commonly there are three at a birth, but the number varies from one to four. At the time of birth these tiny, helpless little bears rarely weigh more than half a pound.

I suppose if they were larger their mother would not be able to nourish them, on account of having to endure the hibernating fast for a month or so after their birth.

In May, when the cubs and their mother emerge from the dark den, the cubs are most cunning, and lively little b.a.l.l.s of fur they are! By this time they are about the weight and size of a cottontail rabbit.

In colour they may be black, cinnamon, or cream.

As with the grizzly, the colour has nothing to do with the species.

With black bears, however, if the fur is black his claws are also black; or if brown the claws match the colour of the fur. With the grizzly the colour of claws and fur often do not match.

Few more interesting exhibitions of play are to be seen than that of cubs with their mother. Often, for an hour at a time, the mother lies in a lazy att.i.tude and allows the cubs to romp all over her and maul her to their hearts' content.

The mother will defend her cubs with cunning, strength, and utmost bravery. Nothing is more pathetic in the wild world than the attachment shown by the actions of the whimpering cubs over the body of their dead mother. They will struggle with utmost desperation to prevent being torn away from it.

In the majority of cases the mother appears to wean the cubs during the first autumn of their lives. The cubs then den up together that winter. In a number of cases, whenever the cubs are not weaned until the second autumn, they are certain to den up with their mother the first winter. The second winter the young den up together. Though eager for play, brother and sister cubs do not play together after the second summer. When older than two years they play alone or with other bears of the same age.

Young black bears have good tempers and are playful in captivity. But if teased or annoyed they become troublesome and even dangerous with age. If thine enemy offend thee present him with a black bear cub that has been mistreated. He is an intense, high-strung animal, and if subjected to annoyances, teasing, or occasional cruelty, becomes revengeful and vindictive. Sometimes he will even look for trouble, and once in a fight has the tenacity of a bulldog.

Two bears that I raised were exceedingly good-tempered and never looked for trouble. I have known other similar instances. I am inclined to conclude that with uniformly kind treatment the black bear would always have a kind disposition.

For a year or two a dissipated cruiser and his loyal black bear were familiar figures in the West. The pranks of the bear easily brought drinks enough to enable the cruiser to be drunk most of the time. Many times, when going to my room in the early morning after work on a night shift, I found the cruiser asleep in the street entrance to my lodging house. The faithful bear--Tar Baby--sat by the cruiser's side, patiently waiting for his awakening.

The black bear has a well-developed brain and may be cla.s.sed among the alert animals of the wild. Its senses are amazingly developed; they seem to be ever on duty. When a possible enemy is yet a mile or so distant they receive by scent or by sound a threatening and wireless message on the moving or through the stationary air. Therefore it is almost impossible to approach closely a wild bear.

With the black bear, as with every living thing, every move calls for safety first; and this exceedingly alert animal is among the very first to appreciate a friendly locality.

The black bear has never been protected as a game animal; through all the seasons of the year, with gun and dogs, the hunter is allowed to pursue him. As he is verging on extinction, and as he gives to the wilds much of its spirit, there ought to be a closed season for a few years to protect this rollicking fellow of the forest.

CHAPTER IX

ON WILD LIFE TRAILS

A skunk pa.s.sed by me going down the trail. In sight was a black bear coming up. Which of these wilderness fellows would give or be forced to give the right-of-way? There must be trail rights. I sat near the trail an innocent and concealed by-stander--a b.u.mp on a log--wondering about the wilderness etiquette for the occasion.

The black bear is happy-go-lucky. This one was pre-occupied until within two lengths of the skunk. A three-length side-leap and he stood watchful and ready to escape. The solemn, slow-moving skunk held the right-of-way and pa.s.sed by without a turn of his head toward the curious and watching black bear. The skunk ever has his own way. His influence is most far reaching.

The wilderness has a web of wild life trails. Many of these are dim.

The un.o.bserved of all observers, I often sat in hiding close to a worn, much-trampled wild life trail--a highway--where it crossed a high point.

Before me just at sunrise a grizzly and a mountain lion met. The grizzly--the dignified master of the wilds--was shuffling along, going somewhere. He saw the lion afar but shuffled indifferently on. Within fifty feet the lion bristled and, growling, edged unwillingly from the trail. At the point of pa.s.sing he was thirty feet from his trail-treading foe. With spitting, threatening demonstration he dashed by; while the unmoved, interested grizzly saw everything as he shuffled on, except that he did not look back at the lion which turned to show teeth and to watch him disappear.

It was different the day the grizzly met a skunk. This grizzly, as I knew from tracking him, was something of an adventurer. His home territory was more than forty miles to the southeast. He had travelled this trail a number of times. On mere notion sometimes he turned back and ambled homeward.

But this day the grizzly saw the slow-walking skunk coming long minutes before the black and white toddler with shiny plume arrived.

The skunk is known and deferred to by wild folk big and little.

Regardless of his trail rights the grizzly went on to a siding to wait. This siding which he voluntarily took was some fifty feet from the trail. Here the grizzly finally sat down. He waited and waited for the easy-going skunk to arrive and pa.s.s.

The approaching presence of the solemn, slow-going skunk was too much and the grizzly just could not help playing the clown. He threw a somersault; he rolled over. Then, like a young puppy, he sat on an awkwardly held body to watch the skunk pa.s.s. He pivoted his head to follow this unhastening fellow who was as dead to humour as the log by the trail.

Along the trail friend meets friend, foe meets enemy, stranger meets stranger, they linger, strangers not again. The meetings may be climaxes, produce clashes, or friendly contact; and in the pa.s.sing high-brows and common folks rub elbows. To meet or not to meet ever is the question with them.

One old trail which I many times watched was on a ridge between two deep canons. At the west the ridge expanded into the Continental Divide and the trail divided into dimmer footways. The east end terraced and the trail divided. Stretches of the trail were pine shadowed, s.p.a.ces were in sunlight.

Where the trail went over a summit among the scattered trees travellers commonly paused for a peep ahead. Often, too, they waited and congested, trampling a wide stretch bare and often to dust. On this summit were scoutings, lingerings, and fighting. Lowlanders and highlanders, singly, in pairs and in strings, stamped the dust with feet shod in hoofs or in claws and pads.

One of the meetings of two grizzlies which I witnessed was on this ridge trail. A steady rain was falling. Each saw the other coming in the distance and each gave the right-of-way as though accidentally, by showing interest in fallen logs and boulder piles away from the trail.

Each ludicrously pretending not to see the other, finally a pa.s.sing was achieved, the trail regained without a salute.

A meeting of two other grizzlies revealed a different though a common form. Each saw the other coming but each held to the trail. At less than a length apart both rose and roared--feigned surprise--and soundly blamed the other for the narrowly averted and well-nigh terrible collision. But no delay for the last word. Each well pleased with the meeting hastened on, too wise to look back.

One day nothing came along this highway and I looked at the tracks in the wide, dusty trail. The mult.i.tude of tracks in it overlapped and overlaid each other. A grizzly track, like the footprint of a shoeless primitive man, was stamped with deer tracks, st.i.tched and threaded with mice tails and tracks and scalloped with wolf toes. But its individuality was there.

For three days I had been a b.u.mp on a log by this place and no big travellers had pa.s.sed. The birds, chipmunks, and a squirrel were entertaining as ever, but I had hoped for something else. I had just started for camp when dimly through the trees I saw something coming down the trail.