He took careful aim and fired and brought them both down.
The next time he makes a tour of his traps he probably will not choose a bear's den for his night's lodging. A bear that is harmless in the open may be excused for getting violent if he finds a man asleep in the very bed he fixed for himself.
Grenfell's experience with bears for pets—he has tried to tame nearly everything animate from gulls to whales—was not so happy as with the caribou. He found that if "pigs is pigs," bears "remain bears, and are not to be trusted." He had two bear playmates for a long time, but when they hit out with their paws they dealt some "very nasty scratches," and what was fun for them was more serious for the tender pelt of a human being.
The wolverine lives by his wits.
He will turn over a trap and set it off before it can nip him.
He is the pest of the man who has fur traps, for he will go from trap to trap and grab whatever he finds therein.
He can climb trees and get meat which the owner thought was secure.
Sometimes when he is caught he will get away with the trap and chain still attached to his leg. He will even carry the trap in his mouth, to relieve the strain. Like Kipling's Fuzzy Wuzzy in the Sudan, he has a great way of shamming dead. He may jump up and bite the hunter, or he may make a sudden dash for freedom. Can you blame him?
One of the most satisfactory creatures of all is the beaver. I remember a pair in a pond on the west coast of Newfoundland, at Curling, where a beaver colony had a fine big house they had built in a lake with a dam of their making at one end. I didn't go into the house, which was mainly under water, but the male beaver evidently feared I would, and just as he dived he smartly slapped the water with his tail to give the danger signal to the lady who was placidly nosing about and grubbing for the roots of water-plants at the other side of the pond.
"Walking one day through thick wood," says Grenfell, "we came across a regular 'pathway,' the trees having been felled to make traveling easy. A glance at the stumps showed that it was a road cut by beavers, to enable them to drag their boughs of birch along more easily.