282 The Wilderness Hunte7\ 



will knock out the salmon right and left when they are 

 running thick. 



Flesh and fish do not constitute the grisly's ordinary 

 diet. At most times the big bear is a grubber in the 

 ground, an eater of insects, roots, nuts, and berries. Its 

 dangerous fore-claws are normally used to overturn stones 

 and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the 

 small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and 

 in the other. It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and 

 an occasional luckless woodchuck or gopher. If food is 

 very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged 

 to be very industrious, it being no light task to gather 

 enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts 

 to satisfy the cravings of so huge a bulk. The sign of a 

 bear's work is, of course, evident to the most unpractised 

 eye ; and in no way can one get a better idea of the 

 brute's power than by watching it busily working for its 

 breakfast, shattering big logs and upsetting boulders by 

 sheer strength. There is always a touch of the comic, as 

 well as a touch of the strong and terrible, in a bear's look 

 and actions. It will tug and pull, now with one paw, now 

 with two, now on all fours, now on its hind legs, in the 

 effort to turn over a large log or stone ; and when it 

 succeeds it jumps round to thrust its muzzle into the damp 

 hollow and lap up the affrighted mice or beetles while 

 they are still paralyzed by the sudden exposure. 



The true time of plenty for bears is the berry season. 

 Then they feast ravenously on huckleberries, blueberries, 

 kinnikinic berries, buffalo berries, wild plums, elder- 

 berries, and scores of other fruits. They often smash all 



