The Life Story of a Black Bear

by Harry Perry Robinson

Then one day another rope was slipped over my nose, so that I could not bite, and, while all the ropes were stretched to their uttermost and I could not move an inch, Peter put a heavy collar round my neck, to which was fastened a chain that I could neither break nor gnaw. And when that had been firmly fastened round one of the logs in the wall, the ropes were all taken off.

Wow-ugh! The relief of it! Both my wrists and one of my ankles where the ropes had been were cut almost to the bone, and horribly painful; but though it was at first excruciating agony to rest my weight on my front-feet, the delight of being able to get on all fours again, and to be able to move around to the full length of the chain, was inexpressible. I had not counted the days, but it must have been over a month since I was captured, and all that time I had been bound so that, sleeping or waking, I was always in the same position, sitting on my haunches, with the ropes always pulling at my outstretched arms.

For another month and more I was kept in the same building, always chained and with the collar round my neck, until one day they tried to put the ropes on me again; but I was cunning now, and would not let them do it. I simply lay down, keeping my nose and paws in the earth, and, as long as a rope was anywhere near me, refused to move either for food or drink. But a bear is no match for men. They appeared to give up all attempts to put ropes on me, until a few days later they brought a lump of wool on the end of a long stick, and pushed it into my face till I bit at it and worried it. It was soaked in something the smell of which choked me and made me dizzy, and when I could hardly see, somehow they slipped a sack over my head that reeked with the same smell, and the next thing I knew was that I must have been asleep for an hour or more and the ropes were on all my legs again. When they began to drag me out of the building, I resisted at first; but I soon knew it was useless, so I made up my mind to go quietly, and they took me away, down the stream and over mountains for several days and nights, until one evening we came to a town and they dragged me into a box nearly as big as a house, and bigger than the trap in which I had been caught. And soon the box began to move. I know now that I was on the railway. We travelled for days and days, out of the mountains into the plains, where for three days there were no trees or hills, but only the great stretch of flat yellow land. I had no idea that there was so much of the world.

From the railway I was put on a boat, and from the boat back on the railway, and from that back on a boat again. For nearly a month we were constantly moving, always as far as I could tell, in the same direction; and yet we never came to the end of the world. During this time Peter was always with me or close at hand. He gave me all my meals, and when other men took the ropes to lead me from the railway to the boat or back again, if I got angry, he spoke to me, and for some reason, though I hardly know why myself, it calmed me. It was not until I had been in the gardens here, in this same cage, for some days that at last he went away and never came back. That was two years ago. When he went away, the new Peter took charge of me, and he has been here ever since.

Two years! It is a long time to be shut up in a cage. But I mind it less than I did at first. Why does man do it? I do not understand; nor can I guess what I am wanted for. I stay here in the cage all the time, and Peter brings me meals and cleans the cage, one half at a time, when I am shut up in the other half; and crowds of people come and walk past day after day, and look at me, and give me all sorts of things to eat—some quite ridiculous things, like paper bags and walnut-shells and pocket-handkerchiefs. Peter, I believe, means to be kind to me always, and I think he is proud of me, from the way he brings people to look at me. But how could you expect me to be friendly to man after all that I have suffered at his hands? Even Peter, as I have said, never comes into the same half of the cage with me. I have often wondered what I would do if he did. Twice only have men come within my reach when my paws have been free, and neither of them will ever go too near a bear again. But I am not sure whether I would hurt Peter or not. I like him to scratch my head through the bars.

Twice since I have been here they have given me a she-bear as a companion, and she has tried to make friends with me; but they had to take her away again. Let them bring me Wooffa if they think I am lonely.

And I am lonely at times—in spring and summer especially, when it is hot and dusty, and I remember how Wooffa and I used to have the cool forests to wander in at nights, and the thick, moist shade of the brush by the water’s edge to lie in during the day. Then I get sick for the scent of the pines, and the touch of the wet bushes, and the feel of the good soft earth under my claws. And sometimes in the heat of the day I hear the scream of an eagle from somewhere round there to the right (it is in a cage, I suppose, like myself, for it calls always from the same place, and I never hear a mate answering), and it all comes back to me—the winding streams and the beaver-dams, with the kingfishers, black and white, darting over the water, and the osprey sitting and screaming from its post on the pine-top. And at night sometimes, when the wolves howl and the deer whistle, or the whine of a puma reaches my ears—all caged, I suppose—the longing for the old life becomes almost intolerable. I yearn for the long mountain-slopes, with the cool night-wind blowing; and the stately rows of trees, black-stemmed and silver-topped in the moonlight; and the noise of the tumbling streams in one’s ears, when all the world was mine to wander in—mine and Wooffa’s.

Yes, I want freedom; but I want Wooffa most. And I do not even know, and never shall know now, whether she and Kahwa escaped with their lives that day, when I could not get to her even to lick the blood from her broken leg.