A Busy Year at the Old Squire's

by C. A. Stephens

The bears were not disturbed again, and remained there so quietly that we nearly forgot them. It was now the second week of March, and up to this time the weather had continued cold; but a thaw set in, with rain for two or three days, the temperature rising to sixty degrees, and even higher.

On the third night of the thaw, or rather, in the early morning, a great commotion broke out at the west barn. It waked the girls first, their room being on that side of the farmhouse. At about two o'clock in the morning Ellen came to our door to rouse Addison and me.

"There's a fearful racket up at the west barn," she said, in low tones. "You had better see what's wrong."

Addison and I threw on our clothes, went down quietly, so as not to disturb the old Squire, and were getting our lanterns ready, when he came from his room; for he, too, had heard the disturbance. We then sallied forth and approached the end door of the barn. Inside, the young cattle were bellowing and bawling. Below, in the barn cellar, sheep were bleating, and a shoat was adding its raucous voice to the uproar. Above it all, however, we could hear eight old turkeys and a peacock that were wintering in the west barn, "quitting" and "quuttering" aloft, where they roosted on the high beams.

The young cattle, seventeen head, were tied facing the barn floor. All of them were on their feet, pulling back at their stanchions in a great state of alarm. But the real trouble seemed now to be aloft in the dark roof of the barn, among the turkeys. Addison held up the lantern. Nothing could be seen so far up there in the dark, but feathers came fluttering down, and the old peacock was squalling, "Tap-pee-yaw!" over and over.

We fixed a lantern on the end of a long bean-pole and thrust it high up. Its light revealed those two young bears on one of the high beams of the barn!

One of them had the head of a turkey in his mouth, and was apparently trying to bolt it; and we discovered later that they had had trouble with the shoat down in the cellar. The shoat was somewhat scratched, but had stood them off.

Several of the sheep had their fleeces torn, particularly one old Cotswold ram, which also had a bleeding nose. Evidently the barn had been the scene of a protracted fracas. The bears must have climbed for the turkeys as a last resort. How they reached the beam we did not know, unless by swarming up one of the bare posts of the barn.

To drive them down, Addison climbed on a scaffold and thrust the lantern close up to the one with the turkey's head in its mouth. The bear struck at the lantern with one paw, started back, but lost its claw-hold on the beam and fell, turkey and all, eighteen or twenty feet to the barn floor.

The old Squire and I sprang aside in great haste; but so far as we could see, the bear never stirred after it struck the floor. Either the fall broke its neck, or else the turkey's head choked it to death.