"I mean omnivourous," with a still stronger accent on the wrong syllable. "I found the word in a book, and it means eathin' or devourin' all sorts. That's what a bear does. He likes everything, and a good deal of it. He can't live on suckin' his paws all winter, neither. That's a foolish notion."
"Do you mean to say a bear doesn't hibernate?" I asked.
"He hibernates,–yes. I believe that's what they call it," replied the one-eyed hostler. "He lies curled up kind o' torpid sometimes in winter; but what he really lives on then is his fat.
"Fat is fuel, so ter speak. He lays it up in the fall, and burns it out the the winter. He goes into his cold-weather quarters plump, and comes out lean; but it's only in very cold weather that he keeps so quiet. In mild, open winters he's out foragin' around, and when there comes a warm spell in the toughest winter, you may see him. He likes to walk out and see what's goin' on, anyhow."
The one-eyed hostler leaned against the pole, stroked Pomp's fur affectionately, and continued somewhat in this style:
"Bears are particularly fond of fat, juicy pigs, and once give 'em a taste of human flesh,–why, I shouldn't want my children to be playin' in the woods within a good many miles of their den!
"Which reminds me of Old Two Claws, as they used to call him, a bear that plagued the folks over in Ridgetown, where I was brought up,–wal, as much as forty year ago.
"He got his name from the peculiar shape of his foot, and he got that from trifling with a gun-trap. You know what that is,–a loaded gun set in such a way that a bear or any game that's curious about it, must come up to it the way it p'ints; a bait is hung before the muzzle, and a string runs from that to the trigger.
"He was a cunning fellow, and he put out an investigatin' paw at the piece of pork before trying his jaws on it; so instead of gettin' a bullet in the head, he merely had a bit of his paw shot away. There were but two claws left on that foot, as his bloody tracks showed.
"He got off; but this experience seemed to have soured his disposition. He owed a spite to the settlement.