is the extreme smallness of bear cubs at birth. This, at first glance,
is not only astonishing, but to many people seems almost incredible.
“How is it possible,” they ask, “and why is it advantageous for an
animal as large as a bear to have young so small? Why, the puppies of a
forty-pound dog are as large as the cubs of the four-hundred pound
bear!” Yet the fact remains, and in the case of the grizzly, where the
mother sometimes weighs twice as much as the Black Bear mother, the cubs
are, if anything, a trifle smaller at birth on the average. I have never
heard the matter explained, but it seems to me that when we consider the
yearly habits of the bear they tend to suggest how this peculiar
race-habit was developed. A dog mother with three or four puppies,
weighing six or eight ounces apiece at birth, will eat three huge meals
a day and grow thin as a rail nursing her hungry youngsters. What, then,
would become of a bear mother who had to nurse three or four cubs for
six weeks or two months, with never a meal at all, if the cubs were born
weighing five or six pounds? It looks very much as though Nature, with
her usual skill at making both ends meet, had so arranged matters in the
bear family that, as these animals developed the hibernating habit, the
size of the cubs was reduced in proportion to the reduced ability of the
mother to nourish them. And that three or four eight-ounce cubs do not
make any undue demands on the resources of a three-hundred or
four-hundred-pound mother is proved by the fact that both she and they
are normally in excellent condition when they first come out in the
spring.
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FOOD AND FEEDING
THE Black Bear is described as omnivorous. Literally, that means that he
eats everything; and this comes pretty near to being literally true, for
he has democratic tastes, a magnificent appetite, and nothing much to do
between meals. Technically, however, the term means that the Black Bear
is both carnivorous and herbivorous; that he eats flesh like a wolf,
grass like an ox, fish like an otter, carrion like a coyote, bugs like a
hen, and berries like a bird. In short he eats pretty much everything he
can get, and pretty generally all he can get of it.
One would naturally imagine that so thorough-going a feeder would emerge
from his long and complete winter fast ravenously hungry and ready to
fall tooth and claw upon a hearty breakfast. But this is not so. Indeed,
when we stop to think of it, we can see that even a bear’s cast-iron
constitution and digestive apparatus would hardly stand such treatment.
I have examined the stomach and intestines of a bear killed just as it
came out in the spring, and not only found them utterly empty, but
flattened with disuse. These organs have, therefore, to be treated with
consideration and coaxed back gradually to the performance of their
accustomed functions. Shipwrecked sailors, rescued at the point of
starvation, have to be forced by their friends to go slowly until their
stomachs again get the habit of digestion; and while bears have no
friends to do them a like service, they have practised long fasting for
so many generations that they have developed instincts that serve the
purpose.
When they first come out of the winter’s den they wander around for a
day or so showing little or no inclination for food. Then they make
their way down to where the snow is gone and the early vegetation has
begun to sprout, and eat sparingly of the tender grass shoots. But their
appetites are not long in returning. By the end of a week the old
saying, “hungry as a bear,” is more than justified and they start in in
earnest to make up for lost time. At this season they are especially
fond of the parsnip-like roots of the skunk cabbage, and I have seen
marshy bottom lands so dug over by bears in search of this dainty that
they had almost the appearance of having been ploughed.
Here again the experience of the Lodges with their captive bears exactly
confirms my own observations in the open. Mr. William R. Lodge writes me
that, “When they first come out they are not hungry, and the first day
or two only partake of a bite or two of parsnip or similar food that we
always provide and that seems to be their most satisfactory diet after
they acquire the habit of eating again.” Later on these Cuyahoga Falls
animals are given young dandelion leaves, clover, scraps from the hotel
tables, berries, watermelons, sweet corn, and acorns. I have no doubt
that this diet, so carefully approximated to the natural food of the
animal in its free state, has had much to do with the success of the
owners in inducing them to breed.
Wild white clover is another favorite dish of the Black Bear, and they
eat the buds of the young maple shrubs and other tender green stuff.
They do not, however, do nearly so much digging as the grizzly. I have
seen acres of stony ground literally spaded up by the latter in search
of the bulbs of the dog-tooth violet and the spring beauty. But it is
only here and there, where a thin layer of earth covers a smooth
hillside or ledge of rock and supports a meagre crop of small roots,
that the Black Bear will scoop these up and eat them; and apart from the
easy work of turning over the soft swamp earth for skunk-cabbage roots
they are little given to such systematic labor.
Here indeed one sees one of the most striking differences of habit and
disposition between the Black Bear and the grizzly. The grizzlies work
for their food like industrious men. The Black Bear will work hard at
any kind of mischief, but seems to hate to work steadily for business
purposes. The grizzly will dig for hours and heap out cartloads of earth
and rock to get at a nest of marmots or ground-squirrels. The Black Bear
may show an interest in a marmot burrow and do a little half-hearted
scratching near the entrance, but never digs deep or long for them. As
far as I have ever seen, they kill nothing larger, in the way of small
game, than field-mice and such small fry. But they are both quick and
clever at catching these. They will turn over stumps and roll logs aside
and up-end flat stones and catch an escaping mouse before it goes a
yard.
Frogs and toads are also favorite tidbits of theirs and they spend much
time looking for them. They will walk along the edge of small streams
and pin down a jumping frog with their lightning-quick paws; and I have
seen one, when a frog escaped it and jumped into the creek, jump after
it and land like a stone from a catapult, splashing water for twenty
feet.
Practically nothing in the insect line comes amiss to them. They are
everlastingly poking and pulling at rotten logs, old stumps, loose
stones, and decaying trees, looking for caterpillars, squash-bugs,
grubs, centipedes, and larvæ. Their sense of smell is wonderfully acute
and one can hear them sniffing and snuffing over the punky mass of an
old tree trunk they have ripped open, searching with their noses for
crawling goodies.
Like all bears they are extravagantly fond of ants, and they are not
only experts in finding them, but know how to take advantage of the
habits of the various kinds in order to catch them. Their greatest
feasts in this line are obtained when they discover the huge low hills
of what, in the West, are called Vinegar Ants. These are only moderate
in size, but are extremely vicious. They get their name from a strong
odor, resembling that of vinegar, that they exhale when aroused. They
build large hills, sometimes several feet in diameter, made up for the
most part of pine needles, bits of wood, pellets of earth, and such like
stuff. They are red and black in color, have powerful jaws, and rush by
the thousand to give battle to any intruder that disturbs their home. It
is this latter trait that makes them an easy prey to the Black Bear.
When he discovers an ant-hill belonging to this species he walks up to
it, runs one of his fore-legs deep down into the inside of it, gives a
turn to his paw that effectually stirs things up below, and then
stretches himself out at ease to await results, with his front legs
extended to the base of the hill.
Out rush the ants by companies and regiments and brigades; mad as
hornets, brave as lions, smelling like a spoiled vinegar mill, and
looking for trouble. They get it, almost immediately. They discover the
bear’s furry paws and, struggling and tumbling in the hair like angry
and hurrying warriors in a jungle, they begin to swarm over them. And as
fast as they come the bear licks them up. When the excitement dies down,
he gives the inside of the hill another poke. This results in another
sortie of defenders, and when these have stormed the hairy heights and
been eaten for their pains, he repeats the operation. I believe a bear
would eat a solid bushel of these insects at a sitting. On the other
hand, a bear will by no means despise a single ant, and one of the best
ways of making friends with a young cub is to catch a stray ant and
offer it to him. He will lean forward, sniff at your fingers, and then
grab the dainty as eagerly as though it weighed a pound.
There is another variety of ants, larger than the so-called Vinegar
Ants, which are black and live, for the most part, under flat rocks.
These the bear will lap up with his tongue after uncovering their
retreat. And there is still another variety of huge black ants that nest
about the roots of trees and spend their time exploring the bark and
branches. I have seen them sixty feet above ground busily pursuing their
affairs. Of these, too, the Black Bear is fond, and one sees him
snuffing and smelling around the cracks in old trees in hopes of
locating a colony of them. I have seen where bears have scratched and
gnawed at the edges of a narrow opening in the lower trunk of a decaying
tree, in a vain endeavor to get into the open heart of it; and again,
where they had ripped off a rotting slab and gained a feast. For in cold
weather these ants gather in sluggish masses and later even freeze
solid—I have seen what would make a quart of them so frozen—and seem to
take no harm from the cold storage. By the way, the bear is not alone in
liking this peculiar diet. I have seen French Canadian lumber jacks pick
up handfuls of these frozen black ants and eat them. One of them once
informed me that they tasted “just the same like raspberries.”
The Black Bear is also fond of bumble-bees, yellow-jackets, wasps, and
hornets. He is the bear that is, when occasion offers, the honey-eater;
but in the Rockies and Western coast ranges there are few wild
honey-bees, and so his taste in that direction is seldom indulged, but
he makes up for this by hunting out and eating such bees as he can find.
He will dig up bumble-bees and eat them and will lap yellow-jackets off
his fur exactly as he does ants. Of course the bear is fully protected
by his thick coat from any attack by the bees, and if the latter sting
his mouth or tongue as he swallows them, he manages to disguise the fact
very thoroughly. I have never seen one shake his head or otherwise
advertise a mishap of this kind.
But all these bugs and bees and ants and mice are, after all, but the
luxuries and dessert of the Black Bear’s diet. He is, for the most part,
a vegetarian, does far more grazing than is ordinarily supposed, and has
his real season of plenty and stuffing when the berry season arrives. He
will travel miles to get to a berry patch, and even when tamed and half
domesticated will often try to escape to the open for this annual feast.
A chain that has proved amply strong enough to hold a Black Bear captive
during the spring and early summer is very likely to turn up broken when
the blueberries ripen. Their favorites everywhere are blueberries and
huckleberries, and the black and red haws, called thorn-apples in New
England. The sarvis berry is another of their staples. They will reach
up one paw, draw down a laden berry bush, and grasping it between their
forefeet will rake the fruit into their open mouths. But the Black Bear
is less particular in regard to berries than the grizzly. He will eat
pretty much anything in that line, even feeding on the Oregon grape in
the Rockies, a food disdained by the grizzly.
In the East they also feed greedily on acorns and beechnuts, and in the
West they eat the seeds that drop out of the pine cones. In the higher
ranges of the Tetons and Bitter Roots, and indeed throughout the Rockies
down into Mexico, there is a tree locally called the Jack Pine that
bears a curious cone two or three inches across the butt and only two or
three inches in depth—as broad as it is long, in fact. These cones
contain very large and meaty seeds and the Black Bear is very fond of
them. The Indians also cook and eat the young cones of the Jack Pine.
In addition to this the Black Bear has a great habit of peeling the bark
off of balsam and of Jack Pine saplings, and of lapping the juices and
gum from the wounds. They also scrape the gummy pulp from the inside of
the bark and eat it. The grizzly never does these things. This pulp,
however, is used by some of the Indians, who make a kind of bread out of
it.
The Black Bear is fond of fish, but here again shows himself less clever
and less industrious than the grizzly, who is an expert fisherman. On
the Pacific slope of the Rocky Mountains almost every stream has, or
used to have, its runs of salmon, these fish making their way to the
upper reaches of the smaller rivers for the purpose of spawning. There
are several varieties of these fish, and they enter the river and start
on their long, up-hill journeys at different seasons. But one and all
they are moved by a single desire—to get as far up stream as it is
possible to go; and are driven forward by so strong an instinct that
neither wounds, nor weariness, nor exhaustion, nor the fear of death
itself, deters them from attempting (and sometimes accomplishing) what
seems like the impossible.
They come from undiscovered regions of the sea in uncountable billions.
In untold millions they enter the mouths of the great rivers. They turn
off into each tributary stream by hundreds of thousands. They fill the
tributaries of these tributaries. And finally one finds them, still in
their hundreds, filling the pools of the smaller rivers, leaping,
floundering, all but crawling through the riffles and shallows of the
smaller creeks, thousands of feet above the sea, and still undaunted.
And few of the invading millions ever find their way back to the ocean
from which they came. From the moment that they enter the mouths of the
larger rivers, every living creature, from man downward, begins to take
toll of them. Those that pass the nets and salmon wheels of the canning
factories, that elude the talons of the eagles and ospreys, that are
missed by the paws of the bears and the cougars, the teeth of the otters
and the mink, arrive at the head-waters of their selected stream in a
pitiable condition of wounds and exhaustion. Their fins are nothing but
bare spines. Their sides are torn by rocks, they are thin from fasting,
and when they have deposited and fertilized the eggs that they have come
so far to find fit hatcheries for, they are, for the most part, utterly
unable to manage the long return journey. Then they fall an easy prey to
any animal that finds them. And many animals gather to the feast. Here
is the free-lunch counter of the wilderness; during the salmon runs
everything in the mountains lives on fish: bears, cougars, coyotes,
wolverines, lynx; in Alaska the very geese gorge themselves on salmon;
and the Black Bear gets his share of the loot.
The grizzly, as I have said, is an expert fisherman. I have seen one
toss out seventeen big salmon in less than an hour, and after eating his
fill bury the rest of his catch for future use. But the Black Bears only
fish on their own account occasionally and in very shallow water. They
will wander along the trails on the banks of the small streams, and if
salmon are struggling over the riffles, will jump in and catch one or
two. But they are too much lacking in patience to wait for the fish as
the grizzly does, and too improvident to do more than supply the need of
the moment when the opportunity comes unwaited for. And they are quite
satisfied, for the most part, to take the leavings of others or to feed
on stranded or dead fish. They often get crumbs from the table of the
golden eagle, the bald eagle, and the osprey; and sometimes, when one of
these birds catches a fish too heavy to fly away with, a Black Bear will
drive the fisherman away and eat his catch for him.
But we began by saying that the Black Bear was in part carnivorous, and
so far, we have not justified the claim by anything more fleshy than a
field-mouse. The truth is that the Black Bear much prefers to have his
meat “well hung,” as some sportsmen express it. That is to say, he
really prefers carrion. Any kind of a carcass makes a strong appeal to
him, and I do not believe that meat can be too putrid to suit his taste.
Ben, when he was out walking with me during the time we lived in
Missoula, would turn aside to sniff over any dead cat or hen that he
came across—even if nothing remained of it but dried skin and bones. And
he would actually lie down and roll on the find, and, if allowed, would
then pick it up in his mouth and carry it home for a nest egg.
But in spite of his preference for carrion, the Black Bear soon learns
to take advantage of easily procurable live meat. They are remarkably
adaptable animals, take kindly to civilization, and accommodate
themselves readily to the conditions and opportunities that follow in
its wake. They very soon realize it if they are free from interference,
and will, with the slightest encouragement, begin to impose upon you.
They will live under your barn with the best will in the world. And
they’ll learn to steal sheep. In some localities they get to be a
serious nuisance in this way. But their favorite civilized dish is young
pig. In some regions the ranchmen in the spring turn their hogs out into
swamps to feed on the roots of the skunk cabbage; but if Black Bears
happen to be plentiful in the neighborhood they are very likely to get
not only the skunk cabbage but the pigs as well. There appears to be
something about a shoat that appeals directly to the Black Bear
instinct. They learn to be sheep thieves; but they appear to be born pig
thieves. The summer that I caught Ben, as we were returning to Spokane
across the Palouse farming country, we stopped at a ranch over night and
left Ben tied under a small shed while we unpacked and stabled our
horses. It happened that there was an old sow with a litter of young
pigs in a pen at the rear end of the shed, and that there was a hole in
the pen for the young ones to come and go by. And when we came back to
get Ben we found him lying by this hole with one paw stuck through it,
waiting for a pig. And just as we arrived he actually slapped one on the
nose and almost caught it. And he was only a little larger than the pig
himself.
Of course the diet of the Black Bear, like that of the grizzly, and of
most other wild animals, depends largely upon the locality in which they
live. There are regions where, of necessity, the bear are largely if not
altogether vegetarians; and others where, at certain seasons, they live
almost wholly upon fish or largely upon carrion. It is never safe to
generalize from localized observations as to the food habits of any
animal, and it is only very carefully and as the result of a broad
experience that one should venture to ascribe to any species the traits
that one has observed in individuals. There is one feeding habit of the
Black Bear, however, that I believe to be universally typical. They
never make caches of food. The grizzlies will, as I have already said,
bury the fish they cannot eat for future use. They will also drag away
and bury or hide the carcass of any animal they have found and will
return to feed on it until it is all consumed; or they will carefully
cover it where it lies with earth and leaves and branches to prevent
other animals from finding it in their absence. The Black Bear does not
look so far ahead. He will carry away a few pounds of meat or bones in
his mouth, but beyond that appears to take no thought for the morrow.
When he has sated his appetite on a carcass he will leave it where and
as he found it. He lives from hand to mouth and is the Happy Hooligan of
the woods.
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THE HAPPY HOOLIGAN
In this chapter I would like to give some notion of the Black Bear at
home. I do not mean “at home” in the society sense of being dressed up
“from four to seven” to receive callers; but in the good old backwoods
sense of being in your shirt-sleeves with your feet on the table. There
is a good deal more difference between the two attitudes than appears in
a book on etiquette.
If you meet a man at an afternoon reception you see one side of him—the
outside. If you are a member of the local vigilance committee and call
on him officially in the course of business, you get a specialized
insight into another phase of his character. But as an old hermit with a
rat-tailed file for a tongue once said to me in the hills, “You never
really know a man till you’ve watched him through the transom when he
thinks himself alone.”
It is pretty much the same with bears. We are all familiar with them as
seen at their public receptions in the bear pits. We know their company
manners. Personally, I can never quite rid myself of the absurd notion
that when the guards put the crowds out at five o’clock and close the
Zoo gates for the night, the bears must yawn, stretch their cramped
muscles, shake themselves with that lumbering, disjointed violence of
theirs, and exclaim in bear language, “Thank heaven, _that’s_ over until
to-morrow!”
For the rest most of our information about them comes from
self-appointed vigilantes who, rifle in hand, knock unexpectedly at the
doors of their summer residences and do not even offer them the
customary five minutes in which to say their prayers. In their reports,
as in accounts of other executions, the chief emphasis is laid upon the
attitude of the victim in the face of death. “The condemned mounted the
steps of the scaffold with a firm tread.” Or, if the animal happened to
be gnawing a bone when discovered, “At the conclusion of a hearty
breakfast consisting of ham and eggs and coffee, the sheriff came in and
read the death-warrant.” Or, best of all, if the unhappy brute ventured
to show its teeth as the firing squad sighted down the rifle barrel, we
are informed that, “the savage and bloodthirsty monster died game.”
[Illustration: She began to swing her head from side to side]
This may be good journalism, but it is mighty poor natural history. It
gives us some insight into the nature of the man behind the gun, but
very little idea of the real nature of the bear in front of it. We never
find out what the bear would have done if the trigger had not been
pulled. A man once stopped before a plant in my garden and asked me what
under the shining sun it was. He had never, he said, seen anything like
it. As a matter of fact it happened to be a cabbage that had gone to
seed; but the man, who had always killed his cabbages as soon as their
hides were prime, did not even know they bore seed. And he rather
fancied himself as an amateur gardener, too. It is much the same in the
woods. If you kill your bear just as soon as it begins to act natural,
you may get to be an authority on hides, but there will be a lot of
things that you don’t know.
We are not here discussing the ethics of killing. That is a question
quite apart. Goodness knows that there is little enough glory—since
there is little or no risk—in killing a Black Bear. To chase a timorous
and inoffensive animal up a tree and then to stand underneath and shoot
it is no very great achievement. The sport is altogether in the mind of
the sportsman. It is a good deal like dressing up in a brown cotton
imitation of a fringed buckskin hunting shirt and stalking the spring
calf in the east pasture with an air-gun. It’s exciting—until you find
out what it really amounts to. But you have to manufacture your own
excitement. The point I wish to make is simply this: that if you want to
find out how an animal lives, you must watch it live and not watch it
die. When you start out to study the habits of a wild animal the place
for your gun, if you have one, is in the rack at home.
For one thing, if you undertake to watch a man through a transom with a
gun in your hand and murder in your mind, the chances are a hundred to
one that he’ll feel something queer “in the air.” The thing has not been
explained yet, but we can feel a scowl behind our backs much more
readily than a smile. And in the woods the animals soon distinguish
between a desire to kill and a desire to look on. I have tried both and
I know.
All animals are quick to understand when we are afraid of them; and many
of them seem to enjoy taking advantage of the fact. We can see this in
cows and in dogs and even in turkey gobblers. And we would see it often
in the woods, too, if we were not so much given to either running or
shooting before we had time to see it. The Black Bear makes the most of
his ability to inspire terror. He trades on it. He makes capital out of
it. And he has come to be one of the most accomplished bluffers on
earth.