XII
THE MENTAL AND MORAL TRAITS OF BEARS
Considered as a group, the bears of the world are supremely interesting animals. In fact, no group surpasses them save the Order Primates, and it requires the enrollment of all the apes, baboons and monkeys to accomplish it.
From sunrise to sunrise a bear is an animal of original thought and vigorous enterprise. Put a normal bear in any new situation that you please, he will try to make himself master of it. Use any new or strange material that you please, of wood, metal, stone or concrete, and he will cheerfully set out to find its weakest points and destroy it. If one board in a wall happens to be of wood a little softer than its fellows, with wonderful quickness and precision he will locate it. To tear his way out of an ordinary wooden cage he asks nothing better than a good crack or a soft knot as a starting point.
Let him who thinks that all animals are mere machines of heredity and nothing more, take upon himself the task of collecting, yarding, housing and KEEPING a collection of thirty bears from all over the world, representing from ten to fifteen species. In a very short time the believer in bear knowledge by inheritance only, will begin to see evidences of new thought.
In spite of our best calculations, in twenty-two years and a total of about seventy bears, we have had three bear escapes. The species involved were an Indian sloth bear, an American black bear and a Himalayan black bear. The troublesome three laboriously invented processes by which, supported by surpassing acrobatics, they were able to circumvent our overhanging bars. Now, did the mothers of those bears bequeath to them the special knowledge which enabled them to perform the acrobatic mid-air feat of warping themselves over that sharp-pointed overhang barrier? No; because none of their parents ever saw steel cage-work of any kind.
Universal Traits. The traits common to the majority of bear species as we see them manifested in captivity are the following:
First, playfulness; second, spasmodic treachery; third, contentment in comfortable captivity; fourth, love of water; fifth, enterprise in the mischievous destruction of things that can be destroyed.
The bears of the world are distributed throughout Asia, Borneo, the heavy forests of Europe, all North America, and the northwestern portion of South America. In view of their wonderfully interesting traits, it is surprising that so few books have been written about them. The variations in bear character and habit are almost as wide as the distribution of the species.
There are four books in English that are wholly devoted to American bears and their doings. These are "The Grizzly Bear" and "The Black Bear," by William H. Wright, of Spokane(Scribner's), "The Grizzly Bear," by Enos A. Mills, and "The Adventures of James Capen Adams." In 1918 Dr. C. Hart Merriam published as No. 41 of "North American Fauna" a "Review of the Grizzly and Brown Bears of North America" (U.S. Govt.). This is a scientific paper of 135 pages, the product of many years of collecting and study, and it recognizes and describes eighty-six species and sub-species of those two groups in North America. The classification is based chiefly upon the skulls of the animals.
It is unfortunate that up to date no bear student with a tireless pen has written The Book of Bears. But let no man rashly assume that he knows "all about bears." While many bears do think and act along certain lines, I am constantly warning my friends, "Beware of the Bear! You never can tell what he will do next." I hasten to state that of all the bears of the world, the "pet" bear is the most dangerous.
A Story of a "Pet" Bear. In one of the cities of Canadaa gentleman greatly interested in animals kept a young bear cub, as a pet; and once more I say—if thine enemy offend thee, present him with a black-bear cub. The bear was kept in a back yard, chained to a post, and after his first birthday that alleged "pet" dominated everything within his circumpolar region.
One day a lady and gentleman called to see the pet, to observe how tame and good-natured it was. The owner took on his arm a basket of tempting apples, and going into the bear's territory proceeded to show how the Black One would eat from his owner's hand.
The bear was given an apple, which was promptly eaten. The owner reached for a second, but instead of accepting it, the bear instantly became a raging demon. He struck Mr. C. a lightning- quick and powerful blow upon his head, ripping his scalp open. With horrible growls and bawling, the beast, standing fully erect, struck again and again at his victim, who threw his arms across his face to save it from being torn to pieces. Fearful blows from the bear's claw-shod paws rained upon Mr. C.'s head, and his scalp was almost torn away. In the melee he fell, and the bear pounced upon him, to kill him.
The visiting gentleman rushed for a club. Meanwhile the lady visitor, rendered frantic by the sight of the bear killing her host, did a very brave but suicidally dangerous thing. She seized the hindquarters of the bear, gripping the fur in her bare hands, and actually dragged the animal off its victim! Fortunately at that dangerous juncture the lady's husband rushed up with a club, beat the raging animal as it deserved, and mastered it.
The owner of the bear survived his injuries, and by a great effort the surgeons saved his scalp. A "pet" bear in its second year may become the most dangerous of all wild animals. This is because it seems so affectionate and docile, and yet is liable to turn in one second,—and without the slightest warning, —into a deadly enemy.
Scores of times we have seen this quick change in temper take place in bears inhabiting our dens. Four bears will be quietly and peacefully consuming their bread and vegetables when,— "biff!" Like a stroke of lightning a hairy right arm shoots out and lands with a terriffic jolt on the head of a peaceful companion. The victim roars,—in surprise, pain and protest, and then a fight is on. The aggressor roars and bawls, and follows up his blow as if to exterminate his perfectly inoffensive cage-mate.
Mean and cruel visitors are fond of starting bear fights by throwing into the cages tempting bits of fruit, or peanuts; and sometimes a peach stone kills a valuable bear by getting jammed in the pyloric orifice of the stomach.
The owners of bears should NEVER allow visitors to throw food to them. Unlimited feeding by visitors will spoil the tempers of the best bears in the world.
Power of Expression in Bears. Next to the apes and monkeys, I regard bears as the most demonstrative of all wild animals. The average bear is proficient in the art of expression. The position of his ears, the pose of his head and neck, the mobility of his lips and his walking or his resting attitudes all tell their story.
To facial and bodily expression the bear adds his voice; and herein he surpasses most other wild animals! According to his mood he whines, he threatens, or warns by loud snorting. He roars with rage, and when in pain he cries, or he bawls and howls. In addition to this he threatens an enemy by snapping his jaws together with a mighty ominous clank, accompanied by a warning nasal whine. An angry bear will at times give a sudden rake with his claws to the ground, or the concrete on which he stands. Now, with all this facility for emotional expression, backed by an alert and many-sided mind, boundless energy and a playful disposition, is it strange that bears are among the most interesting animals in the world?
Bears in Captivity. With but few exceptions the bears of the world are animals with philosophic minds, and excellent reasoning power, though rarely equal to that of the elephant. One striking proof of this is the promptness with which adult animals accept comfortable captivity, and settle down in contentment. What we mean by comfortable captivity very shortly will be defined.
No bear should be kept in a cage with stone walls and an uneven floor; nor without a place to climb; and wherein life is a daily chapter of inactive and lonesome discomfort and unhappiness. The old-fashioned bear "pit" is an abomination of desolation, a sink- hole of misery, and all such means of bear torture should be banished from all civilized countries.
He who cannot make bears comfortable, contented and happy should not keep any.
A large collection of bears of many species properly installed may be relied upon to reveal many variations of temperament and mentality, from the sanguine and good-natured stoic to the hysterical demon. Captivity brings out many traits of character that in a wild state are either latent or absent.
Prominent Traits of Prominent Species. After twenty years of daily observation we now know that
The grizzly is the most keen-minded species of all bears.
The big Alaskan brown bears are the least troublesome in captivity.
The polar bear lives behind a mask, and is not to be trusted.
The black bear is the nearest approach to a general average in ursine character.
The European brown bears are best for training and performances.
The Japanese black bear is nervous, cowardly and hysterical; the little Malay sun bear is the most savage and unsatisfactory.
The Lesson of the Polar and Grizzly. The polar bears of the north, and the Rocky Mountain grizzlies, a hundred years ago were bold and aggressive. That was in the days of the weak, small-bore, muzzle-loading rifles, black powder and slow firing. Today all that is changed. All those bears have recognized the fearful deadliness of the long-range, high-power repeating rifle, and the polar and the grizzly flee from man at the first sight of him, fast and far. No grizzly attacks a man unless it has been attacked, or wounded, or cornered, or thinks it is cornered. As an exception, Mr. Stefansson observed two or three polar bears who seemed to be quite unacquainted with man, and but little afraid of him.
The great California grizzly is now believed to be totally extinct. The campaign of Mr. J. A. McGuire, Editor of Outdoor Life Magazine, to secure laws for the reasonable protection of bears, is wise, timely and thoroughly deserving of success because such laws are now needed. The bag limit on grizzlies this side of Alaska should be one per year, and no trapping of grizzlies should be permitted anywhere.
The big brown bears of Alaska have not yet recognized the true deadliness of man. They have vanquished so many Indians, and injured or killed so many white men that as yet they are unafraid, insolent, aggressive and dangerous. They need to be shot up so thoroughly that they will learn the lesson of the polars and grizzlies,—that man is a dangerous animal, and the only safe course is to run from him at first sight.
Bears Learn the Principles of Wild Life Protection. Ordinarily both the grizzlies and black bears are shy, suspicious and intensely "wild" creatures; and therefore the quickness and thoroughness with which they learn that they are in sanctuary is all the more surprising. The protected bears of the Yellowstone Park for years have been to tourists a source of wonder and delight. The black bears are recklessly trustful, and familiar quite to the utmost limits. The grizzlies are more reserved, but they have done what the blacks have very wisely not done. They have broken the truce of protection, and attacked men on their own ground.
Strange to say, of several attacks made upon camping parties, the most serious and most nearly fatal was that of 1917 upon Ned Frost, the well-known guide of Cody, Wyoming, and his field companion. They were sleeping under their wagon, well wrapped from the cold in heavy blankets and comfortables, and it is to their bedding alone that they owe their lives. They were viciously attacked by a grizzly, dragged about and mauled, and Frost was seriously bitten and clawed. Fortunately the bedding engaged the activities of their assailant sufficiently that the two men finally escaped alive.
How Buffalo Jones Disciplined a Bad Grizzly. The most ridiculous and laughable performance ever put up with a wild grizzly bear as an actor was staged by Col. C. J.("Buffalo") Jones when he was superintendent of the wild animals of the Yellowstone Park. He marked down for punishment a particularly troublesome grizzly that had often raided tourists' camps at a certain spot, to steal food. Very skilfully he roped that grizzly around one of his hind legs, suspended him from the limb of a tree, and while the disgraced and outraged silver-tip swung to and fro, bawling, cursing, snapping, snorting and wildly clawing at the air, Buffalo Jones whaled it with a bean-pole until he was tired. With commendable forethought Mr. Jones had for that occasion provided a moving-picture camera, and this film always produces roars of laughter.
Now, here is where we guessed wrongly. We supposed that whenever and wherever a well-beaten grizzly was turned loose, the angry animal would attack the lynching party. But not so. When Mr. Jones' chastened grizzly was turned loose, it thought not of reprisals. It wildly fled to the tall timber, plunged into it, and there turned over a new leaf. I once said: "C. J., you ought to shoot some of those grizzlies, and teach all the rest of them to behave themselves."
[Illustration with caption: WILD
BEARS QUICKLY RECOGNIZE PROTECTION The truce of the black bears of
the Yellowstone Park. The grizzlies are not nearly so trustful.
Photographed by Edmund Heller, 1921. (All rights reserved.)]
"I know it!" he responded, "I know it! But Col. Anderson won't let me: He says that if we did, some people would make a great fuss about it; and I suppose they would."
Recently, however, it has been found imperatively necessary to teach the Park grizzlies a few lessons on the sanctity of a sanctuary, and the rights of man.
We will now record a few cases that serve to illustrate the mental traits of bears.
Case I. The Steel Panel. Two huge male Alaskan brown bears, Ivan and Admiral, lived in adjoining yards. The partition between them consisted of panels of steel. The upper panels were of heavy bar iron. The bottom panels, each four feet high and six feet long, were of flat steel bars woven into a basket pattern. The ends of these flat bars had been passed through narrow slots in the heavy steel frame, and firmly clinched. We would have said that no land animal smaller than an elephant could pull out one of those panels.
By some strange aberration in management, one day it chanced that Admiral's grizzly bear wife was introduced for a brief space into Ivan's den. Immediately Admiral went into a rage, on the ground that his constitutional rights had been infringed. At once he set to work to recover his stolen companion. He began to test those partition panels, one by one. Finally he found the one that seemed to him least powerful, and he at once set to work to tear it out of its frame.
The keepers knew that he could not succeed; but he thought differently. Hooking his short but very powerful claws into the meshes he braced backward and pulled. After a fierce struggle an upper corner yielded. Then the other corner yielded; and at last the whole upper line gave way.
I reached the scene just as he finished tearing both ends free. I saw him bend the steel panel inward, crush it down with his thousand pounds of weight, and dash through the yawning hole into his rival's arena.
Then ensued a great battle. The two huge bears rose high on their hind legs, fiercely struck out with their front paws, and fought mouth to mouth, always aiming to grip the throat. They bit each other's cheeks but no serious injuries were inflicted, and very soon by the vigorous use of pick-handles the two bear keepers drove the fighters apart.
Case 2. Ivan's Begging Scheme. Ivan came from Alaska when a small cub and he has long been the star boarder at the Bear Dens. He is the most good-natured bear that we have, and he has many thoughts. Having observed the high arm motion that a keeper makes in throwing loaves of bread over the top of the nine-foot cage work, Ivan adopted that motion as part of his sign language when food is in sight outside. He stands up high, like a man, and with his left arm he motions, just as the keepers do. Again and again he waves his mighty arm, coaxingly, suggestively, and it says as plain as print: "Come on! Throw it in! Throw it!"
If there is too much delay in the response, he motions with his right paw, also, both arms working together. It is irresistible. At least 500 times has he thus appealed, and he will do it whenever a loaf of bread is held up as the price of an exhibition of his sign language. Of course Ivan thought this out himself, and put it into practice for a very definite purpose.
Case 3. Ivan's Invention for Cracking Beef Bones. Ivan invented a scheme for cracking large beef bones, to get at the ultimate morsels of marrow. He stands erect on his hind feet, first holds the picked bone against his breast, then with his right paw he poises it very carefully upon the back of his left paw. When it is well balanced he flings it about ten feet straight up into the air. When it falls upon the concrete floor a sufficient number of times it breaks, and Ivan gets his well-earned reward. This same plan was pursued by Billy, another Alaskan brown bear. Case 4. A Bear's Ingenious Use of a Door. When Admiral is annoyed and chased disagreeably by either of his two cage-mates he runs into his sleeping-den, slams the steel door shut from the inside, and thus holds his tormentors completely at bay until it suits him to roll the door back again and come out. At night in winter when he goes to bed he almost always shuts the door tightly from within, and keeps it closed all night. He does not believe in sleeping- porches, nor wide-open windows in sleeping-quarters.
Case 5. Admiral Will Not Tolerate White Boots. Recently our bear keepers have found that Admiral has violent objections to boots of white rubber. Keeper Schmidt purchased a pair, to take the place of his old black ones, but when he first wore them into the den for washing the floor the bear flew at him so quickly and so savagely that he had all he could do to make a safe exit. A second trial having resulted similarly, he gave the boots a coat of black paint. But one coat was not wholly satisfactory to Admiral. He saw the hated white through the one coat of black, promptly registered "disapproval," and the patient keeper was forced to add another coat of black. After that the new boots were approved.
Case 6. The Mystery of Death. Once upon a time we had a Japanese black bear named Jappie, quartered in a den with a Himalayan black bear,—the species with long, black side-whiskers and a white tip to its chin. The Japanese bear was about one-third smaller than the Himalayan black.
One night the Japanese bear died, and in the morning the keepers found it lying on the level concrete top of the sleeping dens.
At once they went in to remove the body; but the Himalayan black bear angrily refused to permit them to touch it. For half an hour the men made one effort after another to coax, or entice or to drive the guardian bear away from the dead body, but in vain. When I reached the strange and uncanny scene, the guardian bear was in a great rage. It took a position across the limp body, and from that it fiercely refused to move or to be driven. As an experiment we threw in a lot of leaves, and the guardian promptly raked them over the dead one and stood pat.
We procured a long pole, and from a safe place on the top of the nearest overhang, a keeper tried to prod or push away the guardian of the dead. The living one snarled, roared, and with savage vigor bit the end of the pole. By the time the bear was finally enticed with food down to the front of the den, and the body removed, seven hours had elapsed.
Now, what were the ideas and emotions of the bear? One man can answer about as well as another. We think that the living bear realized that something terrible had happened to its cage-mate,— in whom he never before had manifested any guardianship interest,—and he felt called upon to defend a friend who was very much down and out. It was the first time that he had encountered the great mystery, Death; and whatever it was, he resented it.
Case 7. A Terrible Punishment. Once we had a particularly mean and vicious young Adirondack black bear named Tommy. In a short time he became known as Tommy the Terror. We put him into a big yard with Big Ben, from Florida, and two other bears smaller than Ben, but larger than himself.
In a short time the Terror had whipped and thoroughly cowed Bruno and Jappie. Next he tackled Ben; but Ben's great bulk was too much for him. Finally he devoted a lot of time to bullying and reviling through the bars a big but good-natured cinnamon bear, named Bob, who lived in the next den. In all his life up to that time, Bob had had only one fight. Tommy's treatment of Bob was so irritating to everybody that it was much remarked upon; and presently we learned how Bob felt about it.
One morning while doing the cage work, the keeper walked through the partition gate from Bob's den into Tommy's. He slammed the iron gate behind him, as usual, but this time the latch did not catch as usual. In a moment Bob became aware of this unstable condition. Very innocently he sauntered up to the gate, pushed it open, and walked through into the next den. The keeper was then twenty feet away, but a warning cry from without set him in motion to stop the intruder.
[Illustration with caption: ALASKAN BROWN BEAR "IVAN" BEGGING FOR FOOD He invented the very expressive sign language that he employs.]
[Illustration with caption: THE MYSTERY OF DEATH. Himalayan bear jealously guarding the body of a dead cage-mate.]
Having no club to face, Bob quietly ignored the keeper's broom. Paying not the slightest attention to the three inoffensive bears, Bob fixed his gaze on the Terror, at the far end of the den, then made straight for him. Tommy made a feeble attempt at defense, but Bob seized him by the back, bit him, and savagely shook him as a terrier shakes a rat. The Terror yelled lustily "Murder! Murder! Help!" but none of the other bears made a move for his defense. Bob was there to give Tommy the punishment that was due him for his general meanness and his insulting behavior.
The horrified keeper secured his pike-pole, with a stout spike set in the end for defense, and drove the spike into Bob's shoulder. Bob went right on killing the Terror. Again the keeper drove in his goad, and blood flowed freely; but Bob paid not the slightest attention to this severe punishment.
Then the keeper began to beat the cinnamon over the nose; and that made him yield. He gave the Terror a parting shake, let him go, and with a bloody shoulder deliberately walked out of that den and into his own. The punishment of the Terror went to the full limit, and we think all those bears approved it. In a few hours he died of his injuries.
Case 8. The Grizzly Bear and the String. One of the best illustrations I know of the keenness and originality of a wild bear's mind and senses, is found in Mr. W. H. Wright's account of the grizzly bear he did not catch with an elk bait and two set guns, in the Bitter Root Mountains. This story is related in Chapter VI.
Case 9. Silver King's Memory of His Capture. At this moment we have a huge polar bear who refuses to forget that he was captured in the water, in Kane Basin, and who now avoids the water in his swimming pool, almost as much as any burned child dreads fire. Throughout the hottest months of midsummer old Silver King lies on the rock floor of his huge and handsome den, grouching and grumbling, and not more than once a week enjoying a swim in his spacious pool. No other polar bear of ours ever manifested such an aversion for water. The other polar bears who have occupied that same den loved that pool beyond compare, and used to play in its waters for hours at a time. Evidently the chase of Silver King through green arctic water and over ice floes, mile after mile, his final lassoing, and the drag behind a motor boat to the ship were, to old Silver King, a terrible tragedy. Now he regards all deep water as a trap to catch bears, but, strange to relate, the winter's snow and ice seem to renew his interest in his swimming pool. Occasionally he is seen at play in the icy water, and toying with pieces of ice.
Memory in Bears. I think that ordinarily bear memory for human faces and voices is not long. Once I saw Mr. William Lyman Underwood test the memory of a black bear that for eighteen months had been his household pet and daily companion. After a separation of a year, which the bear spent in a public park near Boston, Mr. Underwood approached, alone, close up to the bars of his cage. He spoke to him in the old way, and called him by his old name, but the bear gave absolutely no sign of recognition or remembrance.
How a Wild Grizzly Bear Caches Food. The silver-tip grizzly bear of the Rocky Mountains has a mental trait and a corresponding habit which seems to be unique in bear character. It is the habit of burying food for future use. Once I had a rare opportunity to observe this habit. It was in the Canadian Rockies of British Columbia, in the month of September(1905), while bears were very activism. John M. Phillips and I shot two large white goats, one of which rolled down a steep declivity and out upon the slide- rock, where it was skinned. The flensed body of the other was rolled over the edge of a cliff, and fell on a brushy soil-covered spot about on the same level as the remains of goat No. 1.
The fresh goat remains were promptly discovered by a lusty young grizzly, which ate to satiety from Goat No. 1. With the remains of. Goat No. 2 the grizzly industriously proceeded to establish a cache of meat for future use.
The goat carcass was dragged to a well chosen spot of seclusion on moss-covered earth. On the steep hillside a shallow hole was dug, the whole carcass rolled into it, and then upon it the bear piled nearly a wagon load of fresh earth, moss, and green plants that had been torn up by the roots. Over the highest point of the carcass the mass was twenty-four inches deep. On the ground the cache was elliptical in shape, and its outline measured about seven by nine feet. On the lower side it was four feet high, and on the upper side two feet. The cache was built around two larch saplings, as if to secure their support. On the uphill side of the cache the ground was torn up in a space shaped like a half moon, twenty-eight feet long by nineteen wide.
I regard that cache as a very impressive exhibit of ursine thought, reasoning and conclusion. It showed more fore-thought and provision, and higher purpose in the conservation of food than some human beings ever display, even at their best. The plains Indians and the buffalo hunters were horribly wasteful and improvident. The impulse of that grizzly was to make good use of every pound of that meat, and to conserve for the future.
Survival of the Bears.—The bears of North America have survived thirty thousand years after the lions and the sabre-toothed tigers of La Brea perished utterly and disappeared. But there were bears also in those days, as the asphalt pits reveal. Now, why did not all the bears of North America share the fate of the lions and the tigers? It seems reasonable to answer that it was because the bears were wiser, more gifted in the art of self-preservation, and more resourceful in execution. In view of the omnivorous menu of bears, and their appalling dependence upon small things for food, it is to me marvelous that they now maintain themselves with such astounding success.
A grizzly will dig a big and rocky hole three or four feet deep to get one tiny ground-squirrel, a tidbit so small that an adult grizzly could surely eat one hundred of them, like so many plums, at one sitting. A bear will feed on berries under such handicaps that one would not be surprised to see a bear starve to death in a berry-patch.
But almost invariably the wild bear when killed is fairly well fed and prosperous; and I fancy that no one ever found a bear that had died of cold and exposure. The cunning of the black bear in self- preservation surpasses that of all other large mammal species of North America save the wolf, the white-tailed deer and the coyote. In the game of self-preservation I will back that quartet against all the other large land animals of North America.
What Constitutes Comfortable Captivity. It is impossible for any man of good intelligence to work continuously with a wild animal without learning something of its thoughts and its temper.
In our Zoological Park, day by day and hour by hour our people carry into practical effect their knowledge of the psychology of our mammals, birds and reptiles. In view of the work that we have done during the past twenty-one years of the Park's history, we do not need to apologize for claiming to know certain definite things about wild animal minds. It is my belief that nowhere in the world is there in one place so large an aggregation of dangerous beasts, birds and reptiles as ours. And yet accidents to our keepers from them have been exceedingly few, and all have been slight save four.
Twenty-five years ago I endeavored to plan for the Zoological Society the most humane and satisfactory bear dens on earth. Fortunately we knew something about bears, both wild and captive. Never before have we written out the exact motif of those dens, but it is easily told. We endeavored to give each bear the following things:
A very large and luxurious den, open to the sky, and practically on a level with the world;
Perfect sanitation;
A great level playground of smooth concrete;
High, sloping rocks to climb upon when tired of the level floor;
A swimming pool, always full and always clean;
Openwork steel partitions between cages, to promote sociability and cheerfulness;
Plenty of sunlight, but an adequate amount of shade;
Dry and dark sleeping dens with wooden floors, and
Close-up views of all bears for all visitors.
If there are anywhere in the wilds any bears as healthy, happy and as secure in their life tenure as ours, I do not know of them. The wild bear lives in hourly fear of being shot, and of going to bed hungry.
The service of our bear dens is based upon our knowledge of bear psychology. We knew in the beginning that about 97 per cent of our bears would come to us as cubs, or at least when quite young, and we decided to take full advantage of that fact. All our bears save half a dozen all told, have been trained to permit the keepers of the dens to go into their cages, and to make no fuss about it. The bears know that when the keepers enter to do the morning housework, or at any other time for any other purpose, they must at once climb up to the gallery, above the sleeping dens, and stay there until the keepers retire. A bear who is slow about going up is sternly ordered to "Go on!" and if he shows any inclination to disobey, a heavy hickory pick-handle is thrown at him with no uncertain hand.
Now, in grooming a herd of bears, a hickory pick-handle leaves no room for argument. If it hits, it hurts. If it does not hit a bear, it strikes the concrete floor or the rocks with a resound and a rebound that frightens the boldest bear almost as much as being hit. So the bear herd wisely climbs up to the first balcony and sits down to wait. No bear ever leaps down to attack a keeper. The distance and the jolt are not pleasant; and whenever a bear grows weary and essays to climb down, he is sternly ordered back. The keepers are forbidden to permit any familiarities on the part of their bears.
All the bears, save one, that have come to us fully grown, and savage, have been managed by other methods, involving shifting cages.
On two occasions only have any of our keepers been badly bitten in our bear dens. Both attacks were due to over-trustfulness of "petted" bears, and to direct disobedience of fixed orders.
From the very beginning I laid down this law for our keepers, and have repeated it from year to year.
"Make no pets of animals large enough to become dangerous. Make every animal understand and admit day by day that you are absolute master, that it has got to obey, and that if it disobeys, or attacks you, you will kill it!"
Familiarity with a dangerous wild animal usually breeds contempt and attack.
Timidity is so fatal that none but courageous and determined men should be chosen, or be permitted, to take care of dangerous animals.
In every zoological garden heroic deeds are common; and the men take them all as coming in the day's work. Men in positions of control over zoological parks and gardens should recognize it as a solemn duty to provide good salaries for all men who take care of live wild mammals, birds and reptiles. A man who is in daily danger of getting hurt should not every waking hour of his life be harried and worried by poverty in his home.
Let me cite one case of real heroism in our bear dens, which went in with "the day's work," as many others have done. Keeper Fred Schlosser thought it would be safe to take our official photographer, Mr. E. R. Sanborn, into the den of a European brown bear mother, to get a close-up photograph of her and her cubs. Schlosser felt sure that Brownie was "all right," and that he could prevent any accident.
But near the end of the work the mother bear drove her cubs into their sleeping den and then made a sudden, vicious and most unexpected attack upon Keeper Schlosser. She rushed him, knocked him down, seized him by his thigh, bit him severely, and then actually began to drag him to the door of her sleeping den! (Just why she did this I cannot explain!)
Heroically ignoring the great risk to himself, and thinking of nothing but saving Schlosser, Mr. Sanborn seized the club that had fallen from the keeper's hand when he fell, rushed up to the enraged bear and beat her over the head so savagely and so skilfully that she was glad to let go of her victim and retreat into her den. Then Mr. Sanborn seized Schlosser, dragged him away from the den, and stood guard over him until help came.