ii8 The Black Bear 



But a Black Bear does not, as the boys say, give a 

 continental whether his bluff works or not. If he 

 scares you, well and good. He's gained his point. 

 If he doesn't scare you, well and good again. Nothing 

 has been lost by the attempt. In ninety-nine cases out 

 of a hundred he'll sit and look at you exactly as though 

 nothing had happened, and the inference is, ^^Well, 

 Tve made my suggestion. Now it's your move." It 

 was thoroughly typical of the animal that the old bear 

 that so scared Kerfoot when he was focussing his 

 camera upon her should have simply sat down on her 

 haunches and stared open-eyed at us when we rolled 

 on the ground in laughter. 



Nor is this kind of bluff and this attitude toward 

 failure to make good on the part of the Black Bear, 

 confined to intercourse with strangers. I have seen 

 one of them go through exactly similar actions with 

 another bear. One of the most amusing little inci- 

 dents I ever watched — because it so laughably illus- 

 trated the happy-go-lucky, anything-to-keep-one's- 

 self-amused attitude of these beasts — will serve as an 

 example. I had been watching a Black Bear that was 

 feeding in ignorance of my presence, and after some 

 time it had sat down at the foot of a small pine tree on 

 a side hill and was leaning lazily against the trunk, 

 turning its head now and then as though watching for 

 something to turn up. It was a pretty good-sized 

 bear — three hundred pounds or so perhaps — and when 



