MAINLY ABOUT BEARS 47 



Canada goose, the wildest of the migratory birds, 

 is as tame as a barnyard fowl. I got a snapshot 

 of a flock within a hundred feet. How do they 

 know — what mysterious instinct tells them — that 

 here, alone, of all the spots from the Gulf of 

 Mexico to the Arctic Circle, they are safe? 



I felt like Alexander Selkirk. 



"Their tameness was shocking to me." 



The woodchuck, dozing on the rail of the wooden 

 bridge, looks at you with sleepy russet eyes, as you 

 pass within a foot of him, never stirring. A bear 

 lumbers across the road, a few feet in front of you, 

 with an expression that says, as plain as words, 

 ''You lemme alone; you don't dast to tech me." 



The elk, the deer and the antelope hardly raise 

 their heads from grazing as you pass. One day, 

 walking, I passed within ten feet of a mother deer 

 and two fawns with mottled sides gleaming in the 

 sun. She moved off a few steps, but the fawns 

 looked at me with their great velvety eyes, and 

 one scratched her ear with her tiny hoof, as she con- 

 templated me, and then went on grazing. In the 

 winter, the antelope congregate by the hundreds 



