Speaking of Bears * * * * * 41 



out, so that he himself could turn around and escape. After that the 

 chief closed the door when he entered the bear's house. 



The life of a bear in his natural state is full of paradoxes. He is 

 born while the mother is in hibernation, in a close, evil-smelling, almost 

 air-tight cave. She is asleep, not as sleep is ordinarily known, but in a 

 state of coma, almost lifeless, barely breathing. She has been asleep for 

 three or four months, with all normal functions of her body suspended. 

 New-born bears are tiny, hairless little things, no larger than squirrels. 

 They snuggle up in the warm hair of the sleeping mother bear's breast, 

 and there they suckle and slumber, growing a little, acquiring a coat of 

 fur. When she awakes in the spring, they are perhaps a month old. She 

 is weak and mangy as she leaves the cave in search of food. She leaves 

 the little ones in hiding in the cave for two weeks or a month longer. 



All bears hibernate, of course, males as well as females. The latter 

 seem to suffer no more from their long fast than do the males, in spite 

 of the strain of bearing the young and feeding them a month on reserve 

 strength from the last summer's food. One would think that the raven 

 ous bear, fresh from hibernation, would eat everything in sight. But 

 that is not the case. The bears spurn the food proffered by human 

 friends for a month or more, rooting in the forest for certain herbs, 

 roots, and natural food which their appetites crave. Then they are ready 

 for the long-distance championship salad-eating contest. 



The little bears seem to grow before your eyes, once they are brought 

 from the cave by the mother bear. They are soft, fluffy, lively, the 

 cutest little animals alive. No wonder they are so popular with the 

 camera fans ! No wonder, now and then, 

 a visiting Dude forgets the invariable rule 

 of the mother bear that no one shall come 

 between herself and her babes! No 

 wonder the Dudes and Sagebrushers love 

 to watch those little fellows going through 

 that first year of schooling under the 

 coaxing, the guiding, and the spanking of 

 the mother bear. 



About the first thing the little bears 

 must learn to do is to climb trees and to 

 climb them fast, for safety's sake. The 

 black bear's main worry is the grizzly, 

 and the only sure way to avoid a grizzly is to climb a tree. More than 

 once the rangers have seen a grizzly approach a "salad bowl" and 

 watched the black bears scamper to tree tops, where they patiently sit 

 until the grizzly has eaten his fill. You would think to look at them that 

 the black bears were up in the trees from choice, so utterly oblivious are 



