DIDO IS CAUGHT
One nice, warm sunny day, when it was too hot to stay inside the den
among the rocks, the nice bears were all out in front, lying in the
shade of the woods.
“Oh, my! How hot it is!” cried Dido, and he opened his mouth wide, and
let his red tongue hang out, for animals, such as dogs and bears, cool
themselves off that way. You must have seen your dog, when he had run
fast, after a cat, perhaps, open his mouth and breathe fast, with his
tongue hanging out.
“Let’s go swimming in the lake again!” cried Dido to his brothers.
“All right,” agreed Gruffo.
“We’ll all go,” said Mr. Bear. “Come along.”
So off through the woods walked the family of bears toward the cool,
blue lake, high up in the mountains. Dido could hardly wait to get
there, and as soon as he saw, through the trees, the sparkle of the
water he began to run. He ran so fast that he stumbled over a stone,
and fell down.
“Oh, Dido!” called his mother. “You must be more careful. You must not
go so fast. Something will happen to you some day if you do not look
where you are going.”
“I didn’t hurt myself that time, anyhow,” answered Dido, as he got up,
and jumped into the lake. There he swam about, as did the father and
mother bear, and the other two cubs. Dido splashed his brothers every
time he came near them, but they did not mind, for he was such a cute
little fellow and he meant no harm. Besides, it was so warm that the
more water they had on them the better Gruffo and Muffo liked it.
“It makes me hungry to go in swimming,” said Mrs. Bear. “I am going off
in the woods to look for some berries.”
“I’m coming, too,” said Dido. “For I am hungry myself.”
Soon Mrs. Bear found a bush on which were growing some big red berries.
These she pulled off with her forepaws, which were, to her, almost like
our hands are to us, and the mother bear filled her mouth with the
fruit. Dido did the same, and soon he was not as hungry as he had been.
Then along came Mr. Bear, with Gruffo and Muffo, and they, too, ate the
red berries off the bushes.
All at once Mr. Bear stopped eating, and, lifting his nose up in the
air, sniffed very hard two or three times.
“What is the matter?” asked Mrs. Bear quickly.
“I think I smell a man,” answered the papa bear. “See if you can smell
anything.”
Mrs. Bear lifted her nose up in the air and she, also, sniffed. Bears,
you know, as do most wild animals, use their noses as much as they do
their eyes to tell when there is danger. And to wild animals a man,
nearly always, means danger. If you were out in the woods, and could
not see any one, you could not tell, just by smelling the air, whether
some person was near you or not――that is, unless they had a lot of
perfume on them, and then, if the wind was blowing toward you, why you
might smell that.
But bears have much better noses for smelling than have we, and they
can smell a man in the woods even if he has no cologne on him.
“Sniff! Sniff!” went Mr. Bear.
“Sniff! Sniff!” went Mrs. Bear.
“Yes, I can surely smell a man,” the papa bear said in a low voice. “It
is the first time I have known them to come around here.”
“And so can I smell a man,” added Mrs. Bear. “We had better get away
from here.”
Then the bears ran off through the woods to their den. For though big
bears are very strong and can fight well, they would much rather run
away from a man than fight him, unless they find they can not get away.
For when a man goes into the woods where there are bears he nearly
always has a gun with him, and while bears know they are stronger than
a man they also know that a gun is stronger than a dozen bears.
When Dido, with his brothers and father and mother, got back to the den
in the rocks, the little bear cub saw that his father was worried about
something. Mr. Bear walked up and down in front of the pile of rocks,
sniffing the air, and looking on all sides.
“What is the matter, Papa?” asked Dido, in bear talk, of course.
“It’s that man I smelled in the woods,” said Mr. Bear. “I fear he may
find our den.”
“Well, what if he does?” asked Dido.
“Then it would not be safe for us to stay here,” answered Mrs. Bear.
“If men are coming into our woods it is time for us to go away.”
“What! go away from our nice den?” asked Gruffo. For though the den was
only a hole in the rocks, with a pile of leaves in one corner for a
bed, still, to the bears, it was as much a home as your house is to you.
“Yes, it would not be safe to stay while men are around,” said Mr.
Bear. “That is the first time I have ever smelled them in our woods.
Though a friend of mine, Mr. Lion, who lives farther down the mountain,
said he has often seen men near his cave. Once some men on elephants
chased him, but he got away.”
“Have you ever seen a man?” asked Dido of his father.
“Oh, yes, often, but always afar off. And the men did not see me.”
“What does a man look like?” asked Dido, for he had never seen any,
though he had heard of them.
“A man is a queer creature,” said Mr. Bear. “He walks up on his hind
feet, as we do sometimes, but when he walks on his four feet he can
only go slowly, like a baby. Even you could run away from a man on his
four feet, Dido.”
“How queer!” said the little bear.
“But don’t try it,” said Mrs. Bear quickly. “Keep away from men, Dido,
for they might shoot you with one of their guns.”
“What else is a man like?” the little bear asked.
“Well, he has a skin that he can take off and put on again,” said Mr.
Bear.
“Oh, how very funny!” cried Dido. “Take off his skin? I should think it
would hurt!”
“It doesn’t seem to,” said the papa bear. “I don’t understand how they
do it, but they do.”
Of course what Mr. Bear thought was skin was a man’s clothes, which he
takes off and puts on again. But though bears are very wise and smart
in their own way, they don’t know much about men, except to be afraid
of them.
“I do not like it that men are coming up in our woods,” said Mr. Bear.
“It means danger. So be careful, Dido, and you, too, Gruffo and Muffo,
that you do not go too far away. Perhaps the man has come up here to
set a trap to catch us.”
“What is a trap?” asked Dido.
“It is something dangerous, to catch bears,” his mother told him. “Some
traps are made of iron, and they have sharp teeth in them that catch
bears by the leg and hurt very much. Other traps are like a big box,
made of logs. If you go in one of these box traps the door will shut
and you can not get out.”
“What happens then?” asked Dido.
“Then the man comes and gets you.”
“And what does he do with you?” the little bear cub wanted to know.
“That I can not say,” answered Mrs. Bear. “Perhaps your father knows.”
Mr. Bear shook his head.
“All I know,” he answered, “is that the man takes you away if he finds
you in his trap. But where he takes you I do not know, for I was never
caught, and I hope I never will be.”
“I hope so, too,” said Dido, and he sniffed the air to see if he could
smell the man, but he could not.
For a number of days after that the bears did not go far from their den
in the rocks. They were afraid the man might shoot them.
But, after a while, all the berries and sweet roots close by had been
eaten, and the bears had to go farther off. Besides, they wanted some
fish, and they must go to the lake or river to catch them. So after Mr.
Bear had carefully sniffed the air, and had not smelled the man-smell,
the bears started off through the woods again to get something to eat.
Dido ran here and there, sometimes on ahead and again he would stay
behind, slipping up back of his brothers to tickle them. Oh, but Dido
was a jolly little bear, always looking for fun.
The bears found some more red berries, and a few blue ones, and some
sweet roots, and they also caught some fish, which made a good dinner
for them. Then they went swimming in the lake again before going back
to their den.
In the afternoon, when Gruffo was asleep in the shade, Dido went softly
up to him, and poured a paw full of water in his brother’s ear.
[Illustration: But Dido climbed up a tree to get away.]
“Wuff! Ouch! What’s that? Is it raining?” cried Gruffo, suddenly waking
up. Then he saw that Dido had played the trick on him, and he ran after
the little bear. But Dido climbed up a tree to get away, and he did it
in such a funny way, his little short tail going around like a Fourth
of July pinwheel, that Gruffo had to sit down and laugh.
“Oh, you are such a funny cut-up bear!” he said, laughing harder than
ever, and when a bear laughs he can’t very well climb a tree.
“Come on down, I won’t do anything to you,” said Gruffo, after a while,
so Dido came down. Then he turned somersaults on a pile of soft leaves.
Next he stood on his hind legs, and began striking at a swinging branch
of a tree with his front paws, as you have seen a kitten play with a
cord of a window curtain.
“Dido is getting to be a real cute little cub,” said Mrs. Bear.
Then, all of a sudden, Dido struck at the tree branch, but he did not
hit it and he fell over backward.
“Look out!” cried Mr. Bear. “You’ll hurt yourself, Dido.”
“I didn’t hurt myself that time,” said the little bear, “for I fell on
some soft, green moss.”
“Well, there will not always be moss for you to fall on,” his mother
said. “So look out.”
One day, when Mr. Bear came back from a long trip in the woods, he
brought some wild honey in his paws. And oh! how good it tasted to
Dido and Gruffo and Muffo!
“Show me where the bee-tree is, Papa,” begged Dido. “I want to get some
more honey.”
“It is too far away,” answered the papa bear. “Besides, I saw a man in
the woods as I was getting the honey out of a hollow tree. It would not
be safe for you to go near it when men are around.”
But the honey tasted so good to Dido that the little bear cub made up
his mind that he simply must have more.
“I know what I’ll do,” he said to himself. “When none of the others
are watching me I am going off by myself in the woods and look for a
bee-tree to get some honey. I don’t believe there’s any danger.”
So about a week after this, one day, Dido saw his two brothers asleep
outside the den. Mr. Bear had gone off to the lake, perhaps to catch
some fish, and Mrs. Bear was in the den, stirring up the leaves that
made the bed, so it would be softer to lie on.
“Now’s my chance,” thought Dido, in the way bears have of thinking.
“I’ll just slip off in the woods by myself, and find a honey-tree. I’ll
bring some honey home, too,” said Dido, for he was not a selfish little
bear.
Walking softly, so as not to awaken his brothers, and so his mother,
making the leaf-bed in the den, would not know what he was doing, away
slipped Dido to the woods.
He shuffled along, now and then finding some red berries to eat, or a
bit of sweet root, and every little while he would lift his nose up in
the air, as he had seen his father do, and sniff to see if he could
smell a man-smell.
“But I don’t smell any,” said Dido. “I guess it’s all right.”
Then, all at once, he felt a little wind blowing toward him, and on the
breeze came the nicest smell.
“Oh, it’s honey!” cried Dido. “It’s honey! I have found the honey-tree!
Oh, how glad I am!”
He hurried on through the woods, coming nearer and nearer to the honey
smell all the while, until, after a bit, he saw in among the trees
something square, like a box, made of little logs piled together. And
inside the thing like a box was a pile of honey. Dido could see it and
smell it. But he did not rush up in a great hurry.
“That doesn’t look like the honey-tree father told about,” the little
bear cub thought. “He said he had to climb a tree. This honey is low
down. Still it is honey, so this must be a honey-tree, and if it is
low down so much the better for me. I will not have to climb.”
Dido sniffed the air again. He wanted to see if there was a man-smell
about. But all he could smell was the honey.
“Oh, I guess it’s all right,” said the bear cub. “I’m so hungry for
that honey I can’t wait! Here I go!”
Dido fairly ran into the box and began to eat the honey on the floor
of it. But, no sooner had he taken a bite, than suddenly a queer thing
happened.
_Bang!_ went something behind Dido, and when he looked around he saw
that the box was shut tight. A sliding door had fallen down and poor
Dido was a prisoner.