An outing in northwestern Arizona gave me fresh glimpses into grizzly life, although I had not expected to see grizzlies. I found them apparently at home with heat and sand in the edge of a desert. Perhaps these bears were only visitors. They were not dwarfed by the harsh conditions but appeared similar to grizzlies of other localities.
I was sheltered to the leeward of a rock-outcrop waiting for a roaring desert windstorm to subside. As I looked off into the dusty distance, a brown, dust-covered grizzly came into view. He climbed up and sat down upon a large sand-dune and looked around evidently glad that things were clearing. He watched closely a dust spiral which came spinning across the clear sky. As it passed close to him, a withered cactus-lobe dropped from it upon the dune, turned over once or twice, and then rolled down the slope. The grizzly took after it, striking out with right fore paw; but, missing, was upon it with a plunge. Picking the cactus up cautiously in his teeth, he held it for a second, then with a jerk of his head tossed it into the air and pursued it. The sloping sand-dune caved and slid beneath him. Forgetting the cactus, he leaped along the crumbling sand and made a number of lunges, each followed by a dive and an abrupt stop on the sand. He ran in a circle round the crest of the dune several times, occasionally coming to a sudden stop. Then, sliding down the dune, suddenly stopped his play.
He stood still at the foot of the dune for several seconds and looked off into the distance. He was debating what he should do next. Off he started slowly toward the horizon. Into the edge of the mysterious landscape of a mirage he walked and vanished. I thought him lost and rose to move on, when a purple shadowy landscape pushed up into the sky and in this strange, dim scene a giant shadowy grizzly raced and played.
Play is a common habit of animals. Darwin, Wallace, and others have emphasized its importance as a progressive evolutionary factor in the survival of the fittest. Play is rest and relaxation; it gives power and proficiency; it stimulates the brain to the highest pitch of keenness and arouses all the faculties to be eager and at their best; it develops the individual. Play not only is a profound advantage to the player, but is necessary to the requirements of an efficient life.
All alert animals freshen themselves with play. The human race is beginning to do intelligently what it once did instinctively; it is relearning the lost art, the triumphant habit, of play.
Matching Wits with the Grizzly
In April, 1904, “Old Mose,” an outlaw grizzly, was killed on Black Mountain, Colorado. For thirty-five years he had kept up his cattle-killing depredations. During this time he was often seen and constantly hunted, and numerous attempts were made to trap him. His home territory was about seventy-five miles in diameter and lay across the Continental Divide. He regularly killed cattle, horses, sheep, and hogs in this territory, and, so far as known, did not leave this region even briefly. Two missing toes on his left hind foot were the means of identifying his track.