lOO 



MAMMALS OF AMERICA 



common — are born in the winter den of the 

 mother between January and March, and from 

 six weeks to two months before the mother 

 comes out. They are ahiiost naked, toothless, 

 and their eyes do not open for some time. Single 

 cubs vary in weight from eight to eighteen 

 ounces. Usually, though not always, the Black 

 Bear mother leaves her cubs to shift for them- 

 selves at the close of their first summer. 



In the matter of food the Black Bear is easy 

 to please. Centipedes, bumblebees, and hornets ; 

 wild white clover and skunk-cabbage roots ; 

 frogs, toads, and field mice — all are acceptable 

 to him. He is, too, inordinately fond of ants. 

 He will run one of his forelegs deep down into 

 an anthill, give his paw a twist, and await 

 results. " Out rush the ants, mad as hornets 

 and looking for trouble. They get it almost 

 immediately. They discover the Bear's furry 

 paws and begin to swarm over them. And as 

 fast as they appear the Bear licks them up." 



One characteristic of the Black Bear in feed- 

 ing is that it does not cache its food. The Grizzly 

 will store fish and hide a carcass ; the Black 

 Bear never does. The latter will learn to steal 

 sheep, and is said to be a born pig thief. 



As mentioned above, the Black Bear is pre- 

 eminently a tree-climbing bear. Mr. Wright 

 says : " He can climb as soon as he can walk, 

 and his mother takes clever advantage of the 

 fact. She sends her cubs up a tree whenever 

 she wants them ofif her hands for a time — uses 

 trees, indeed, very much as human mothers, who 

 have no one to watch their children while they 

 work, use day nurseries. The first thing a Black 

 Bear mother does when any danger threatens 

 is to send her cubs up a tree. . . In all my 

 experience I have never known cubs, when thus 

 ordered into retirement by their mother, to come 

 down from the selected tree until she called 

 them. . . . Later in life the Black Bear comes to 

 regard trees as its natural refuge from all 

 dangers. . . They can climb, and that with almost 

 equal ease, any tree that will hold their weight ; 

 from a sapling, so small that there is just room 

 for them to sink one set of hind claws above the 

 other in a straight line, to an old giant so big 

 that they can only cling to its face." 



In the wild state. Black Bears will play 

 together, and they " have a funny trick of pre- 

 tending not to see each other when they meet." 

 They are not given to systematic labor in seek- 

 ing their food ; will " work hard at any kind of 

 mischief, but seem to hate to work steadily for 

 business purposes." Probably no animal is so 



quick to evade the hvmter. A recent writer 

 asserts that on a highway in New Hampshire a 

 Black Bear kept ahead of his automobile for a 

 short distance when going at the rate of nearly 

 thirty miles an hour. 



The fur of the Black Bear is a valuable 

 article of commerce. In the early part of the 

 nineteenth century, in a single year 25,000 skins 

 were imported into England, where they were 

 used chiefly for military accoutrements. 



There are so many tame Black Bears, and 

 their tricks and antics are so familiar that it is 

 scarcely necessary to refer to them here. It may, 

 however, be of interest to cite an occasion when 

 a well-known stunt was given with an unexpected 

 variation. Mr. W. H. Wright, when in Mis- 

 soula, Montana, had nailed up the door of the 

 shed in which his tame Black Bear, Ben, was 

 confined. Some boys broke it open, w-ith seri- 

 ous results for one of them. The Bear's owner 

 writes : " In front of my house a mob was 

 gathering. ... At first I could make neither 

 head nor tail of the clamor, but finally gathered 

 that that bloodthirsty, savage, and unspeakable 

 Bear of mine had killed a boy ; and upon asking 

 to see the victim was told that the remains had 

 been taken to a neighbor's house and a doctor 

 svuiimoned. ... I found the corpse sitting up 

 on the kitchen floor holding a sort of impromptu 

 reception. ... I could not help admiring the 

 youngster's pluck, for he was an awful sight. 

 From his feet to his knees his legs were lacer- 

 ated and his clothing torn into shreds ; and the 

 top of his head — redder by far than ever nature 

 had intended — was a bloody horror. 



" It developed that the two Urlin boys had 

 broken open the door of the shed and gone in 

 to wrestle with the Bear. Ben was willing, as 

 he always was, and a lively match was soon on ; 

 another of the boys joined in the scufifle. Then 

 one of them got on the Bear's back. This was 

 a new one on Ben, but he took kindly to the 

 idea and was soon galloping around the room 

 with his rider. Then another boy climbed on 

 and Ben carried the two of them at the same 

 mad pace. Then the third boy got aboard and 

 round they all went, much to the delight of 

 themselves and their cheering audience in the 

 doorway. But . . . after a few circles of the 

 room Ben suddenly stopped and rolled over on 

 his back. And now an amazing thing happened. 

 Of the three boys, one happened to fall upon 

 the upturned jjaws of the Bear ; and Ben, who 

 for years had juggled rojie balls, instantly under- 

 took to give an exhibition with his new imple- 



