The winter life of many animals is stern and strange. During the autumn the beaver stores up a food-supply for use when the pond is closed over with ice. The cony harvests hay for his winter food. Numbers of animals hunt food each day in the snow. But the woodchuck and the bear hibernate, that is, they fast and sleep in a den during the winter.
Being Good to Bears
On the slope of Long’s Peak one June morning I came upon two tiny grizzly bear cubs. Each was about the size of a cottontail rabbit—a lively little ball of fur, dark gray, almost black, in color.
Knowing that their mother had recently been killed, I thought I would capture them and bring them up properly. But they did not want to be brought up properly! We had a lively chase, dodging among the bowlders and trees. Cornering them at last among the fallen logs, I grabbed one. He did the same to me. His teeth were as sharp as needles and almost as sharp were his lively claws. It was some time before I could tear myself loose. He kept a mouthful of my trousers. At last I deposited the fighting little fellow in the bottom of a sack. The other cub scratched and chewed me up and tore my clothes; but I forced it also into the sack. Two grizzly bears in the same sack! any one should have known better!
I started to conduct them personally to my cabin, two miles away. In descending a steep moraine with the sack over my shoulder I slipped and shook the sack more than any sack should have been shaken that contained two bears. Of course, they started to fight. One bit through the sack and bit the wrong bear. I finally reached my cabin with a long pole over my shoulder. Tied to the south end of the pole was a sack full of grizzly bears.
I shook the cubs out of the sack in front of a basin of milk and thrust their faces deeply into it. Not having eaten for three days, they were “as hungry as bears” and needed no explanation concerning the milk. They had eager, cunning little faces, and were pets before sundown. In twenty-four hours Jenny knew that her name was Jenny, and Johnny that his was Johnny. After a few days they followed me about with fondness and loyalty.