Blackbear 1071 



A Chicago traveller, whose identity I cannot learn, re- 

 lated the following to a reporter for the Record-Herald, August, 

 1901 : 



"When I was in Michigan a few weeks ago I had just this 

 experience. I was passing through Harmon City, which is a 

 pretty wild sort of country. A couple of men from the village 

 were doing some work on the outskirts when they caught sight 

 of Bear tracks. They followed for a while and then set a 

 heavy trap. Later they returned, and they had a Bear, sure 

 enough. She was a large brute with dumb, beseeching eyes, 

 from which the tears rolled as they might have rolled from 

 a human being. I went with others and was a witness of the 

 tragedy. The men simply shot her to death as she lay there 

 with her right fore-paw held in that awful grip of steel. 



"Then the men waited around until the old Bear, her 

 husband, came in sight. He wasn't trapped, but he was 

 killed just as expeditiously. The poor beasts had no show. 

 But the most pathetic sight, to me, was the three little cubs 

 which had followed their mother to the scene of her death, and 

 which whimpered like sorrowful babies over the killing of their 

 parents. 



"When the big Bears were killed one of the little chaps, 

 about the size of a small shepherd dog, climbed to the branch 

 of a tree on which their bodies were suspended and looked 

 down in wonder at the still, dead faces. Another little Bear 

 sniffed feebly at the swaying body of his mother, while the 

 third put his paws, trustingly and pathetically, upon the knees 

 of one of the men whose rifles had done the work. I'm not 

 much of a sentimentalist, but those three little orphan Bears 

 kept me from talking out loud for half an hour." 



Notwithstanding her courage and strength in their defence, 

 and her cleverness on their behalf, the mother Bear is some- 

 times separated from one or more of her cubs; the young ones 

 are lost in the woods. A case of the kind is thus recorded by 

 Dr. Merriam:" 



"Mam. Adir., 1884, p. loi. 



