OF WILD ANIMALS 13 1 



I once said: "C. J., you ought to shoot some of those griz- 

 zlies, and teach all the rest of them to behave themselves." 



"I know it!" he responded, "I know it! But Col. Anderson 

 won't let me. He says that if we did, some people would make 

 a great fuss about it; and I suppose they would." 



Recently, however, it has been found imperatively necessary 

 to teach the Park grizzlies a few lessons on the sanctity of a 

 sanctuary, and the rights of man. 



We will now record a few cases that serve to illustrate the 

 mental traits of bears. 



Case 1. The Steel Panel. Two huge male Alaskan brown 

 bears, Ivan and Admiral, lived in adjoining yards. The parti- 

 tion between them consisted of panels of steel. The upper 

 panels were of heavy bar iron. The bottom panels, each four 

 feet high and six feet long, were of flat steel bars woven into a 

 basket pattern. The ends of these flat bars had been passed 

 through narrow slots in the heavy steel frame, and firmly 

 clinched. We would have said that no land animal smaller 

 than an elephant could pull out one of those panels. 



By some strange aberration in management, one day it 

 chanced that Admiral's grizzly bear wife was introduced for a 

 brief space into Ivan's den. Immediately Admiral went into 

 a rage, on the ground that his constitutional rights had been 

 infringed. At once he set to work to recover his stolen com- 

 panion. He began to test those partition panels, one by one. 

 Finally he found the one that seemed to him least powerful, and 

 he at once set to work to tear it out of its frame. 



The keepers knew that he could not succeed; but he 

 thought .differently. Hooking his short but very powerful 

 claws into the meshes he braced backward and pulled. After 

 fierce struggle an upper corner yielded. Then the other 

 corner yielded; and at last the whole upper line gave way. 



I reached the scene just as he finished tearing both ends free. 

 [ saw him bend the steel panel inward, crush it down with his 



