12 The Black Bear 



and a female. The other two were males. Spencer 

 named his bear George, Jack decided to bring his up 

 without any name, while I called my wee cublet Ben, 

 after ''Ben Franklin," the pet grizzly of one of my 

 bo3^hood's heroes, old James Capen Adams, the tamer 

 and exhibitor of grizzly bears who, in the fifties and 

 sixties, became famous as Grizzly Adams. 



But now that we had caught our cubs, housed them, 

 parcelled them out, and named them, we had to face 

 another problem. How were we going to feed them, 

 and, worse still, what were we going to feed them? 

 Old Grizzly Adams, when he caught his ''Ben" as an 

 even tinier cub than mine, had induced a greyhound 

 that he had with him and that happened to have 

 puppies at the time to nurse the foundling. But 

 Jack's dog could not help us that way and we had to 

 make other arrangements. 



We began by taking a frying-pan, a little flour and 

 water, some condensed milk and a pinch of sugar, and 

 stewing up a sort of pap. When this had cooled off 

 we each took a teaspoon and a squalling, kicking cub 

 and began experimenting. The cubs, small as they 

 were, had sharp claws, teeth like needles, and a violent 

 objection to being mollycoddled; and so, although we 

 each had on heavy buckskin gloves, and each held a 

 cub under one arm, its front paws with one hand and 

 a teaspoon with the other, the babies took most of their 

 first meal externally. The little rascals looked like pasty 



