The Black Bear 47 



and hogs are their favorite prey, especially 

 the latter, for bears seem to have a special 

 relish for pork. Twice I have known a black 

 bear kill cattle. Once the victim was a bull 

 which had got mired, and which the bear de 

 liberately proceeded to eat alive, heedless of 

 the bellows of the unfortunate beast. On the 

 other occasion, a cow was surprised and slain 

 among some bushes at the edge of a remote 

 pasture. In the spring, soon after the long 

 winter sleep, they are very hungry, and are 

 especially apt to attack large beasts at this 

 time; although during the very first days of 

 their appearance, when they are just breaking 

 their fast, they eat rather sparingly, and by 

 preference the tender shoots of green grass 

 and other herbs, or frogs and crayfish ; it is not 

 for a week or two that they seem to be over 

 come by lean, ravenous hunger. They will 

 even attack and master that formidable fighter 

 the moose, springing at it from an ambush as 

 it passes for a bull moose would surely be an 

 overmatch for one of them if fronted fairly 

 in the open. An old hunter, whom I could 

 trust, told me that he had seen in the snow in 

 early spring the place where a bear had sprung 

 at two moose, which were trotting together; 

 he missed his spring, and the moose got off, 



