America are numbers of honey bears. Some of them climb cocoanut trees and drink the milk of green nuts.
These are about all the animals you know as bears, but there are several cousins of the bears who are all clever. They are famous climbers, diggers, fighters and swimmers. The raccoon or 'coon, that Southern negroes love to hunt, is the plucky little tree-bear. He is only two feet long, but he will fight a dozen dogs and sometimes get away. Here is something funny about the 'coon. He likes his food wet, or clean, or something. When he finds something to eat he takes it to a brook and washes it. In Germany the 'coon is called the washing bear. In a wild state the big bears do not seem to have this habit. But when the loaves of bread are brought to the pits in park zoos, all the bears roll it into the running water and soak it before eating it.
There is one thing bears are afraid of—guess! You never will. Mosquitoes.
Away up in Alaska where the biggest gold brown bear of all lives, and the glacier bear on the ice rivers, the summers are short and hot. There mosquitoes breed by millions on the vast swamps. The tip of a bear's nose is quite naked, moist and sensitive, like a dog's. He needs it that way for smelling. And, of course, his eyes have little protection. The mosquito swarms in clouds about poor Bruin and sting and sting him. He can fell a buffalo with one box of his big paw, but he cannot fight these little pests. He just turns tail and runs!
Long, long ago, the people in a far-away cold country called Finland had a beautiful story about the bear. They called him Otso. This story was put into verse like that of Hiawatha, and sung by mothers to put children to sleep:
- Otso, thou, O forest lover,
- Bear of honey-paws and fur-robes,
- Learn that Waina Moinen follows,
- That the singer comes to meet thee;
- Hide thy claws within thy mittens,
- Let thy teeth remain in darkness,
- Mighty Otso, much beloved,
- Honey-eater of the mountains.
Isn't that a pretty song of Brother Bear? Maybe that's why you like to take Teddy Bear to bed with you.
