Yellowstone National Park getting a series of flash-light pictures of
grizzly bears, and early in my stay I was joined by Mr. J. B. Kerfoot,
of New York, who, although he had had no experience with bears, had done
a good deal of amateur photography and was anxious to help me with the
work in hand. The day after we reached camp we went out to look over the
ground where we proposed to work that night, and on our way back we ran
across an old Black Bear with two cubs and determined to take her
picture. As soon as she saw us she ordered her cubs up a tree but, by a
quick movement, I managed to get to them in time to intercept the second
cub before it had a chance to obey. It then rejoined its mother and I
placed myself between them and the treed cub and thus had things just as
I wanted them, knowing that the old bear would not go far away and leave
her youngster (who was bawling lustily from the branches) to its
possible fate.
But when I called Kerfoot, who had the camera, to come forward and get
some pictures, he was rather shy about it. He explained that he had come
out to photograph bears, and that if this one had been by herself, he
would not have minded her; but that he had always understood that an old
bear with cubs was about the most dangerous thing on four legs, and that
to interpose himself between her and her bawling offspring looked to him
a good deal like suicide. I finally persuaded him that there was no
danger, however, and he moved up to within fifty feet or so of the old
bear. But he had no more than taken a step or two when she turned toward
him with a coughing snarl that made him think his last hour had come. I
could not help laughing at the old bluffer, for she had never so much as
shown me a tooth, but had rather assumed toward me what you might call a
“put upon” expression—whining and walking nervously back and forth and
showing quite plainly that she thought herself badly used by a superior
force. But Kerfoot was hard to convince in regard to her bluffing
qualities, and while we were all maneuvering for a suitable position the
cub came down from the tree, joined its mother and the other cub, and
all three made off into the woods.
We followed helter-skelter, and as the cubs could not run very fast we
finally succeeded in treeing one of them again and resumed operations.
This time I picked up a club and by brandishing it valiantly every time
the bear snarled at Kerfoot, managed to reassure him sufficiently to
coax him up within about thirty feet of her. He had a Graflex
natural-history camera that took a 4 × 5 plate, but had sufficient
bellows to accommodate a twenty-inch lens, thus giving a very large
image at a comparatively considerable distance from the object. In these
cameras an inclined mirror, that flies out of the way at the moment of
exposure, enables one to see the full-sized picture on the ground glass,
and to focus on a moving subject up to the second of pressing the
button. And when Kerfoot had looked at the picture at a distance of
thirty feet he said that he thought he could get a fine head by going a
bit closer yet, and moved ten feet nearer. He had just gotten things to
his liking and was standing with the long camera held at the level of
his eye and his head bent over the focussing hood when the bear gave a
vicious snort, and executed the peculiar combination of broken coughs
and gnashing teeth that is the trump card in the Black Bear’s game of
bluff; and the photographer literally went straight up into the air. Of
course the whole effect was reproduced on the ground glass within two
inches of his eyes and he said afterward that he had thought his nose
was scratched. But the sight was too much for me. I threw away my club,
and throwing myself on the ground roared with laughter, and as soon as
he understood what had happened, Kerfoot put the camera down and joined
me.
And when we had laughed ourselves almost into tears we found the old
bear sitting on her haunches and looking at us as serious as an owl.
That ended her bluffing and we got several pictures of her, one of
which, taken just before we left her, is reproduced here. By that time
the poor old soul had so worried herself over the other cub that she was
literally drenched in sweat, and she finally sat down and began to swing
her head dejectedly from side to side, uttering a sort of moan at each
swing, for all the world like a mourner at a wake, while the cub that
was with her sat back and looked on. It was at this moment that the
picture was taken, and when we had secured it we were so sorry for her
that we packed up and left her alone.
This experience gave Mr. Kerfoot a pretty good insight into the real
meaning of Black Bear ferocity, and later on we had many amusing
experiences with the beasts. To show, however, that some people have
eyes but do not use them, I will give another little adventure that we
had toward the end of our stay in the mountain. We had with us as camp
keeper a man who has lived most of his life in the Rockies, has hunted
bears all over that part of the country, and ought to have been pretty
well acquainted with the real nature of them. I do not believe that with
a gun in his hand he would be afraid of anything that walks, but he had
evidently never investigated very closely into what would happen to him
when he had left his gun at home. We had stopped over night at a public
camp at a place called Tower Falls, and after supper in the evening
Kerfoot and I, having seen a Black Bear at the edge of a clearing,
walked over to look at her. She was a large animal and lay on the ground
near the foot of a big pine tree, and a single cub sat on one of the
low-hanging branches above her head. We were talking about our plans for
the morrow and walked toward the bear without thinking much about her
one way or the other. When we got within fifty feet or so of her she
backed up against the tree, and as we continued to advance without
noticing her especially, she first stood up with her feet against the
trunk and then climbed up ten or fifteen feet from the ground, driving
her cub ahead of her. We walked up to the foot of the tree and looked at
her for a few minutes, and though she stuck her upper lip out at us in
the peculiar fashion of her kind, she made no other demonstration, and
after we had stood there and talked for a little while, we turned back
toward camp.
About half-way back we met our man Frank coming down to see the bear,
and just behind him came a party of eight or ten people who had stopped
for the night at the camp. We paid no attention to this crowd until,
hearing a noise behind us, we turned around and found the whole lot
running back up the hill very much frightened, and as Frank was bringing
up the rear we asked him, rather jokingly, what was the matter. “Gee,”
he answered, “I tell you, that’s a fierce old bear.” And we have not
finished teasing him about it yet. That old bear certainly knew whom to
bluff, and I have no doubt that the majority of the schoolteachers in
the crowd thought themselves lucky to have escaped with their heads.
I do not mean to say that a Black Bear will not fight if it is forced
to. But, personally, I have never seen one’s patience tried to the
breaking point. If you chase one too closely it will take to a tree. If
you follow it up the trunk, it will retreat toward the top. I imagine
that if you kept on following it until it could go no farther you would
end up by getting a pretty bad mauling, for it has sharp claws and
tremendous muscles to back them up with; but it is perfectly safe to say
that if you were at the top of the tree and it was half-way down, you
would have a hard time getting at close enough quarters with it to get
hurt.
[Illustration: A black bear at home]
These conclusions, like all the others scattered through the pages of
this book, are founded upon many observations made during many years,
not upon any single experience or upon the actions of any one animal;
and I want to lay especial emphasis upon the fact that when I give, as
an illustration, the account of any particular happening, it is only
cited as an example of the things that, taken together, have gone to the
forming of my belief. For instance, in the summer of 1906 I was camped
high up on the continental divide in the mountains of Wyoming with two
boys, Tommy and Bill Richards. One day when we were out in the hills we
saw a Black Bear go into a thick tangle of underbrush surrounding a big
pine tree and lying at the foot of a perpendicular cliff; and we
determined for the fun of the thing to drive it out so as to get a good
look at it. I accordingly made my way to the extreme right of the
thicket, Bill stationed himself in front, and Tommy stayed where we were
when we first saw the bear. Then at a given signal we all rushed in with
loud yells. But instead of trying to escape, the bear went up the pine
tree and lodged thirty feet or so from the ground in a clump of foliage.
One of the boys had a camera and now wanted to get the bear’s picture,
so I suggested that he could do this by driving the bear further up the
tree, and as Tommy said he was not afraid of the animal I cut him a long
pole and he climbed up to where he could reach up and poke the bear with
it. He punched it in the belly and the bear was furious, slashed at the
stick, gnashed its teeth, and made a most terrifying fuss, but refused
to move. Tommy, however, kept on poking and in a few minutes the bear
got over its anger, appeared to grow interested in the game, and before
they got through, it was actually _playing_. Tommy took to tickling its
feet, and it would raise first one and then the other and try to catch
the pole with its teeth and claws, all in a high good humor. Tommy
finally dislodged him by climbing higher yet and fairly threshing the
branches with his pole, and they got an excellent photograph that they
subsequently published in the _St. Nicholas_ magazine.
The Black Bear is very fond of water, and seldom stays for any length of
time where it cannot get its daily bath. The grizzly also bathes,
especially in hot weather or to rid itself of vermin, but the Black Bear
loves water for its own sake. They have regular bathing holes and after
taking a swim either stretch themselves out on a grassy bed near by, or
climb up into a convenient tree, where the sun and wind soon dries them
off. We found one such bear’s bath tub in a beautifully situated glade
among the mountains and spent a good deal of time concealed in some
nearby shrubbery, hoping to get a picture of Ursus emerging from the
bath. During one of these waits a small Black Bear sauntered up to the
edge of the pool, looked carefully around as though to make sure he was
alone, and then slipped into the water and swam twice the length of the
plunge. Just as he was crawling out on to the bank again, Kerfoot
snapped his camera at him and, frightened by the sound, the bear took to
his heels and climbed up a near-by tree. He settled himself about forty
feet from the ground in the sunlight, and having apparently made up his
mind that he had been scared over nothing settled down for a comfortable
snooze. We now made up our minds that we would like a second picture to
complete our record of the performance, and walked over to the bottom of
the tree where the bear was ensconced, but, as is usually the case with
these black animals, we found that the position in which he sat did not
lend itself to a picture, so we sat down under the tree determined to
wait till he changed his position. Nothing happened for fifteen or
twenty minutes, when, quite unexpectedly, the bear made up his mind that
he was not going to be held prisoner any longer, and with a great
puffing and snorting, started stern first down the tree. Kerfoot, who by
this time had gotten over his initial ideas about Black Bear, picked up
a stick and hammered on the trunk to scare him back again. But this was
one of the bears who, when he bluffed, bluffed to the limit, and,
instead of retreating, he redoubled his growls and snarls and continued
to come steadily down the tree. By this time I was becoming interested
and was making bets with myself as to which of the two bluffers (for I
knew that they were both bluffing) would eventually take the trick.
Kerfoot finally settled the matter by actually hitting the bear a whack
over the rump with his club, and the latter scurried back up the tree,
twice as fast as he had come down.
One of the most characteristic features of the Black Bear’s game of
bluff is its utter failure to show any concern when the bluff is called.
A dog, for instance, when he indulges in a bluff that fails to work,
very frequently shows plainly that he feels himself a fool. He’ll rush
out with every evidence of intending to attack; growling, snarling, and
coming headlong toward you; and when (if you know dogs and are not
impressed by his fine acting) he gets quite up to you without
frightening you, he will cringe, lick your boots, sometimes roll over
and put all four feet up—which is the dog sign of complete discomfiture
or complete surrender. Of course it is not possible for us to really
know how any animal’s mind works. We are almost certain to credit them
with some of our own psychology in trying to follow theirs. And so I do
not mean to imply that a dog under these circumstances “thinks he is a
fool.” But we know that he acts very much as we would feel if we thought
we had been shown up. The nearest that we can come to interpreting his
actions is to say that they seem to mean, “I did not know that it was
_you_, or I never would have tried to frighten you.”
But a Black Bear does not, as the boys say, give a continental whether
his bluff works or not. If he scares you, well and good. He’s gained his
point. If he doesn’t scare you, well and good again. Nothing has been
lost by the attempt. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he’ll sit and
look at you exactly as though nothing had happened, and the inference
is, “Well, _I’ve_ made _my_ suggestion. Now it’s _your_ move.” It was
thoroughly typical of the animal that the old bear that so scared
Kerfoot when he was focussing his camera upon her should have simply sat
down on her haunches and stared open-eyed at us when we rolled on the
ground in laughter.
Nor is this kind of bluff and this attitude toward failure to make
good on the part of the Black Bear, confined to intercourse with
strangers. I have seen one of them go through exactly similar actions
with another bear. One of the most amusing little incidents I ever
watched—because it so laughably illustrated the happy-go-lucky,
anything-to-keep-one’s-self-amused attitude of these beasts—will serve
as an example. I had been watching a Black Bear that was feeding in
ignorance of my presence, and after some time it had sat down at the
foot of a small pine tree on a side hill and was leaning lazily
against the trunk, turning its head now and then as though watching
for something to turn up. It was a pretty good-sized bear—three
hundred pounds or so perhaps—and when another animal of about its own
size appeared some distance along the side hill and, somewhat to my
surprise, began to walk threateningly toward it, I became very much
interested. The first bear, however, did not seem to share my
interest. He paid, or pretended to pay, no attention whatever to the
newcomer. And the latter, very deliberate but very determined, came
straight toward him. When he arrived at the other side of the small
tree (it was not more than six inches thick) he half drew back on his
haunches, half raised his fore-quarters from the ground, lifted one
paw as if to strike, and uttered the coughing snarl ending in a rapid
champing of the jaws that is the Black Bear’s ultimate expression of
wrath. I thought that I was going to have a reserved seat at a prize
fight. But my original bear continued to lean against his tree and
look about lazily as though waiting for something interesting to turn
up. He did not seem to so much as suspect that there was another bear
in that neck of the woods. And the challenger turned round and walked
away as deliberate, as dignified, and as unconcerned as though nothing
whatever had happened.
The actions of these two bears, moreover, illustrate another
characteristic of the tribe. You never watch Black Bear when they are
quite at home and undisturbed without being made to feel that they are
hard put to it to know what to do with themselves. A grizzly “knows his
business” in every sense of the expression. When he starts out, he knows
where he is going and goes there. When he starts a job, he finishes it
and goes on to the next. I have followed one along and over the high
ridges of the Rockies for two days on end when the light snow of early
fall showed every step he took. I have tracked one from ground-squirrel
burrow to marmot hole; seen where two hours of incredibly laborious
digging had yielded him a mouthful of breakfast; followed his careful
search for more provender, to be got by more digging, and seen where,
the possibilities of that particular ridge having been exhausted, he had
started on a predetermined journey across country for another feeding
ground. The grizzly is _working for his living_ and knows it.
But Black Bear act for all the world like boys on a rainy Saturday.
They’ve got nothing but time, and the one problem in life is how to kill
it. Watch one for a couple of hours and you’ll see him start forty
different things, finish none of them, and then sit down and swing his
head hopelessly from side to side as though to say, “Now _what_ shall I
do next?”
If you have only seen these animals in captivity you are apt to think
that their air of restless boredom is due to their confinement; that
they don’t know what to do with themselves because they are unable, in a
bear pit, to follow their natural vocations. I am always sorry for wild
animals in captivity, but I am, I think, less sorry for the Black Bear
than for most others. For they act just about as bored to death in the
woods as they do in the Zoo. I have seen one come along, rip a piece off
an old stump, sniff for bugs, find none, stand undecided for a few
minutes, and then walk up to a tree and draw itself upright against the
trunk, stretching like a cat. It then sat down at the foot of the tree
and scratched its ear. It then got up and started off aimlessly, but,
happening to straddle a low bush in its path and liking the feeling of
the branches against its belly, it walked backward and forward half a
dozen times to repeat the sensation. Then it started back the way it had
come and smelling a mouse under a log, suddenly woke up and became all
attention. It tried to move the log and failed. It dug a bit at one end
but gave that up. It then tried again, very hard this time, to turn the
log over, and the log giving away suddenly, the bear turned a complete
somersault backward, but instantly recovered itself and rushed around
with the most ludicrous haste to see if the mouse had gotten away. It
hadn’t. It hadn’t had time. Which may give you a faint notion of how
quick that clumsy-looking bear was when he really got awake. After he
had eaten the mouse he was up against it again. He didn’t know what to
do next. There was a fallen tree near by and he got up on the trunk and
walked the length of it. Then he turned around (quite hard to do without
touching the ground, but he was very careful) and walked back again to
the butt. Here he stood and looked straight ahead of him—stood at gaze,
as the old romancers used to say. Then (the log was perhaps eighteen
inches high) he climbed down backward very slowly and carefully as if he
were afraid of falling, and walked around to examine a place where the
upturned roots had left a hole in the earth. Finally he sat down and
began “weaving.” That is to say, he began swinging his head from side to
side, making a figure ∞ with his nose, as one often sees them do behind
the bars of the Zoo. There is nothing in the world more expressive of
hopeless ennui.
But although one is constantly tempted to call the Black Bear names; to
refer to him as an idle, pottering, purposeless, “footless,” lazy,
loafing tramp; he can upon occasion be the most persistent thing on four
feet (always excepting a porcupine), and the fact that he has no
business of his own to attend to by no means deters him from poking his
sharp nose into any and everything that doesn’t concern him. There never
was a more convincing example of the fact that idle hands (and paws) are
supplied by Satan with mischievous occupation. He is chock-full of
inquisitiveness and eaten up with curiosity. And if you imagine that
because he’s clumsy he can’t be quick, or that because he acts foolish
he is anybody’s fool, you will be very far out of the right reckoning.
One Black Bear in one-half hour can do more to make an unguarded camp
look like a hurrah’s nest than any other known agency; and I have had
one come back half a dozen times from half a dozen different directions,
to try to get at my camera to paw it over and find out what it was. One
day when I was photographing grizzlies I buried the tin case that held
my electric battery while I went back to camp for something. I did this
because I knew that there were Black Bear in the neighborhood, and I
hoped by this trick to keep them from tampering with my effects. But
when I got back a Black Bear had been there, had dug up the case, pulled
the cover off, chewed the tin all out of shape, and had bitten holes in
each of the dry batteries. Another time I found one sitting under a
canvas shoulder bag that I had hung on the branch of a tree, hitting it
first with one paw and then with another as it swung. He made so comical
a picture that I watched him for a while, but when he reached out his
snout and grasped the bag with his teeth I hurriedly drove him away, for
the bag had some wooden cylinders of flash powder in it.
On the trip when Mr. Kerfoot and I were working together we frequently
built ourselves seats in convenient trees from which to watch for
grizzlies, and operated the electric mechanisms of our cameras by
strings stretched from the apparatus to our crannies among the branches.
On one occasion, when we determined to work a second night from the same
location, we left these strings in position so as to save ourselves the
considerable trouble of running them a second time. But the next night
when we came to set up our cameras we could not find the ends of the
strings. There had been two of them running to widely separated points,
each one hundred feet or so distant from our look-out. And we could find
neither of them. Finally, I climbed to the seat in the tree to see if I
could find the other ends of the string, and discovered that a Black
Bear during our absence had been trying our seat, and had pulled both
strings in and left them hopelessly snarled up among the branches. He
had, I suppose, found our scent on the tree, followed it up to
investigate, found the seat (a piece of board nailed across two limbs),
and having his curiosity aroused by the strings, had pulled them in to
see what was at the other end.