On the north side of the mound a tunnel a couple of feet long had been dug by the bear, and the heart of the chip pile had been thrown out to make a little cave, just big enough for Mooween to lie down in. I poked my head into it, and to my astonishment found it to be a regular ice house, with snow and ice packed in solidly among the chips. I tried the pile in other places and found the same conditions everywhere. A foot or two beneath the surface the ice remained as perfectly preserved as if it were January instead of midsummer. Here were shade and coolness such as no sun could disturb, and in a moment it came to me how the queer thing had come about.
All winter long the lumbermen had chopped their fire-wood on the same spot, using axes only, and making an enormous amount of chips and rubbish. When heavy snows fell, instead of clearing it away, they simply cut more wood on top of it, tramping the snow beneath into a solid mass and covering it over with fresh chips. So the pile grew,—first a layer of chips, then a thick blanket of snow, then more chips and snow again,—growing bigger and bigger until in April the lumbermen locked their shanty and went out on the spring drive of logs.
When the spring sun melted the snow in the woods the big pile remained, settling slowly as the days warmed. At midday the top layer of snow would melt and trickle down through the chips; by night it would freeze hard, gradually changing the snow within to soft ice. When all the snow in the woods was gone, that in the chip pile remained, kept from melting by the thick wooden blankets that covered it; and the longest summer would hardly be sufficient to melt it down to the bottom layer, which represented the first fall of snow in the previous autumn.
When I found the spot it was early July. The sun was blistering hot overhead, and the flies and mosquitoes were out in myriads; but in Mooween's den two or three layers of ice were as yet unmelted. The hole was as cold as a refrigerator, and not a fly of any kind would stay there for a single second.
At the inner end of the den something glimmered as my eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and I reached in my hand and pulled the thing out. It was a stone jug, and I knew instantly what had held the molasses that had been spilled on the camp floor. Mooween had probably pulled the cork and rolled the jug about, lapping up the contents as they came out. When he could get no more he had taken the jug under his arm as he climbed through the hole in the roof, and kept it now in his cool den to lick it all over again for any stray drops of molasses that he might have overlooked. Perhaps also he found comfort in putting his tongue or his nose into the nozzle-mouth to smell the sweetness that he could no longer reach.
I have found one or two strange winter dens of Mooween, and have followed his trail uncounted miles through the snow when he had been driven out of one hibernaculum and was seeking another in the remote fastnesses, making an unending trail with the evident intention of tiring out any hunter who should attempt to follow him. I have found his bathing pools repeatedly, and watched him in midsummer when he sought out cool retreats—a muddy eddy in a trout brook under the alders, a mossy hollow under the north side of a great sheer ledge—to escape the flies and heat. But none of them compare with this lumberman's ice house which his wits had appropriated, and which, from many signs about the place, he was accustomed to use daily for his nap when the sun was hottest; and none of his many queer traits ever appealed to me quite so strongly as the humorous cunning which prompted him to take the jug with him into his den. It was safe there, whether Mooween were at home or not, for no bear will ever enter another's den unless the owner first show him in; and while other bears were in the hot camp, trying to find a satisfactory bite of salt pork and dry flour, Mooween was lying snug in his ice house licking the molasses jug that represented his own particular share of the plunder.
KINGFISHER'S KINDERGARTEN