WHEN THE WORLD TURNED WHITE
IT certainly was hard, thought Fuzzy-Wuzz, for a cub bear to keep out
of trouble.
Back from the camping trip, the Ranger’s children spent much time
in the great log barn, and Fuzzy with them. How he did love to turn
somersaults in the haymow! Like a furry clown, he would tumble about as
if he hadn’t a bone in his body.
Sometimes the hens did not lay in their boxes, and the children used to
be sent to hunt eggs, which they would find here and there in the hay.
Fuzzy, too, learned to hunt for eggs, though those he found were never
seen again, save for the smears of egg yolk on his jaws.
He soon found it was great sport to chase the hens and send them
squawking, feathers flying as he caught a mouthful of tail plumage.
He also delighted in coming around at milking time. At first the cows
were so uneasy with the little bear around that they would kick their
pails over and lower their horns at him. So the Ranger tried to drive
him away by milking a stream of milk at him as one would turn on the
hose.
Was Fuzzy driven away? On the contrary, he just opened his mouth wide
and drank it down. After that he used to come and beg to have them milk
into his mouth.
But Fuzzy was finally banished from the barn. The mischievous young
rascal caught a pig one day and hugged him till the pig squealed as if
he were being killed. A little more and he would have been, for a bear
has a powerful hug. It certainly was hard for a fun-loving little bear
to keep out of trouble.
At last Fuzzy disappeared. The children searched and searched, but
they could find him nowhere. They set all his favorite dainties
out on the back porch for him,--bacon, and honey, and wild
gooseberries,--everything they could think of that he especially loved.
They called him, they searched the woods for some trace of his
footprints in the soft ground left by the early rains, but nowhere
could they find hide nor hair of him.
“Do you suppose a lion’s got him?” they worried.
“No,” laughed the Ranger. “I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he
had gone to hibernating. You know a bear always sleeps the winter away.
He can’t find anything more to eat, with the snow deep on the ground,
and he can’t keep warm unless he eats, so he just creeps off into some
hole and curls up into a ball, with his toes inside, and sleeps till
spring.”
“Fuzzy didn’t need to. We would have fed him.”
“Yes, but you see, bears have had to hibernate for so many, many years
that it has become their nature to. I guess he couldn’t help himself:
he just got to feeling so sleepy that nothing else mattered.”
“But where is he hibernating? I just wish we knew where he was.”
“Oh, probably in some cave in the hillside, or under a big bowlder
where he would be sheltered from the wind; or perhaps he has just
crawled under some fallen tree, where the snow will bank around him and
make a cave, and keep the cold wind off him, and his breath will melt
an air-hole.”
Then one afternoon, when the sun had been blotted out by the big white
flakes of their first real, lasting snow, the boy was pitching hay from
the mow for the horses when something round and furry tumbled out and
into a horse stall. It was wee Fuzzy-Wuzz, who had been pried from the
warm corner he had selected for his winter’s sleep.
He blinked and yawned a few times. Then he disappeared again, and it
was not till the following spring that they found him snoozing away in
the far corner of the haymow.