The How and Why Library/Wild Animals/Section I

by Eleanor Stackhouse Atkinson

Wild Animals You Would Like to Know

Editors' Note to Mother and Teacher.—Wild animals have a wonderful fascination for children. About the traits, habits and homes of those most commonly to be seen in menageries and city park zoos, they never tire of hearing. Ample accounts of these animals, giving the classifications and main facts by which they may be identified, are to be found under the appropriate headings in the body of this work. Those accounts should always be read first. The pictures should be studied, and drawings and clay models of the animals made. In no other way than by the graphic arts, can the facts of life be so firmly and accurately impressed on a child's mind. The child is then ready for peeps into the wonderland of the intimate life of wild creatures. Unconsciously, and with the keenest interest, he absorbs a great deal of geography, zoology and related subjects, and sees the animals in their relation to human beings, their place in literature and folklore, and their claim on his sympathy.

I. Big Brother Bear

W'y, wunst they wuz a Little Boy went out

In the woods, to shoot a Bear—an* he

Wuz goin' along—an' goin' along, you know.

An' purty soon he heerd somefin go "Wooh!"-

'ist that-a-way—"Woo-ooh!"

—James Whitcomb Riley.

You ought to get Mr. Riley's poems and read the bear story that little Alex, who couldn't talk plain, but who knew all about bears, ' 'ist maked up his-own-se'f."

Did you ever think why little American boys and girls know more stories about bears, and are more interested in bears than they are in any other wild animals? It must be because white children and bears are such old acquaintances. They have always lived near neighbors, both in the old world and in the new. In northern countries, where white people live, there never have been any lions or other big, flesh-eating beasts, so Mr. Bear has had the woods andmountains and frozen oceans very much to himself. Besides, although he can kill deer and buffalo bigger than himself, he rarely attacks men unless they hunt him. If caught as a cub, he can be tamed and taught all sorts of cunning tricks. And he is so bright and does so many almost human things, that we rather like him, even if we are afraid of him.

Little Alex knew that "bears kin climb up higher in the trees than any little boys in all the wo-r-r-ld!" that the big papa and mama bears "get mad" if you bother their babies; that they think out new ways to escape traps and catch their enemies. So now, maybe this story is really true:

"Once upon a time, a Puritan boy who came to live in America was lost in the forest. He climbed a tall tree to look over the country to find himself. The tree was hollow to the bottom. Suddenly he slipped and fell into the well-like hole, and dropped plump onto something soft and warm and squirmy and grunty. He knew at once he had fallen into a bear's den onto the cubs, and was badly scared, for he couldn't climb out. 'Way, 'way up he could see a round patch of blue sky. Then he couldn't see it. The hole was corked like a bottle by mama bear coming home. He remembered that a bear always comes down backwards, just as a boy does.

"Down she scrambled, scratching and 'woof-ing,' and backed her hairy body right into the boy. He grabbed her shaggy coat and hung on for dear life, and screamed. Very likely the bear thought a wild cat was on her back. Wild cats have terrible claws, and the bear was where she couldn't fight. So she climbed up as fast as she could, and pulled the boy out of the hole. They both 'ran fourteen miles in fifteen days and never looked behind them.'"

That must have been one of the smaller black bears that used to be so common everywhere in American woods. The black bear is so bright that the Indians called him "brother." They never killed one purposely. The little Puritan boy was right in thinking that she would come down backwards as did the brown bear in the woods of England. Both of these land bears do many things like boys. They can stand up on their hind legs and "box" with the fore paws, as if they were trained in a school gymnasium. They can walk on the hind legs and carry a cub or a squealing pig in then-arms, as your mama carries the baby. They eat meat only if they can get nothing better. Really they prefer blackberries, honey and nuts, just as children do. And—they make tracks with the entiresoles of their five-toed feet, that look like bare-footed men's tracks. The Indians were sometimes fooled by these tracks of Brother Bear. To the people of Northern Europe, who wondered over these human-looking foot-prints, the brown bear was called "the wise old man in the fur cloak."

Brown bear cubs always were easily tamed. In Northern Japan a people called Ainos fatten bear cubs for food. When small they play with the children, and are not shut up until they become big and rough. They are as playful as puppies. Hundreds of years ago' trained bears were led by chains about the old walled cities of Europe, and made to dance and tumble and pull carts. Very likely bears, and many other wild animals, were tamer in the days when there were fewer people and bigger forests. In Yellowstone Park, in the Rocky Mountains, where hunters are not allowed to shoot or trap them, black and cinnamon bears come right up to the hotels in the woods to eat scraps from the table.

Mr. Thompson Seton tells all about these bears, and their bright and comical ways, in his story of "Johnny Bear." Johnny was a cub that worried his mama. He was an only child, and very much spoiled and peevish. He would poke his silly head into every sort of danger. He was so greedy he often had the stomachache, and he got his paws fast in tomato cans and jam pots. So, once she had to box his ears!

We can't all go to Yellowstone Park and take snap-shot pictures of bears from the hotel verandas, but nearly all of us can see them in menageries and city park zoos. There you can see black and brown, cinnamon, "grizzly" and polar bears. They all belong to one family, as you can easily see from their clumsy bodies, shuffling walk, shaggy coats and bear-y faces. But, in many ways, they are as different from each other as white, black, brown and yellow people.

The old world brown bear is the tamest of all. He will sit upon his haunches, cross his paws over his breast and catch peanuts in his mouth. Sometimes, when the band plays, he will dance and gambol about like a big, playful dog. The smaller, fine-coated black bear is friendly sometimes; but often he climbs the oak tree in his pit, folds his limp body across a big limb, like your mama's rug muff, and sulks or sleeps. You couldn't coax him down with a pot of honey! The big "grizzly" bear has an ugly temper. He sits back and snarls. Mr. Roosevelt says his real name is "Grisly," or horrid, and you believe it. He is a huge, ugly beast with long teeth andlong gray hair about his head. The big white polar bear, who weighs as much as an ox, doesn't pay any attention to anybody. He just prowls and prowls in an uneasy, lonesome way about his pit, until you feel sorry for him. His thick fur and fat body make him uncomfortable, very likely. When, on a hot day, a keeper gives him a ton of ice to lie on, he seems happier. If he turns his big paws up you can see that he is rough-shod, with hairy bristles all over the soles of his feet, for travelling on ice and snow.

Suddenly, for no cause that you can see, the bears in all the pits will shuffle over to the bars, rear upon their hind legs and "woof!" They smell the keeper coming with bread. Bears do not see very well out of their small eyes, and are rather dull of hearing, but they have wonderful noses for news, especially news of food and of enemies. If the wind is right, Mr. Wild Bear can smell a hunter and his gunpowder a mile away, and he gets out of a dangerous neighborhood as fast as he can travel.

He can travel fast, too. For all he is so clumsy he can run as well as he can climb. But he is not built for jumping, or for turning easily and quickly. Old hunters know this, so when a bear chases them they sometimes escape by turning sharp corners, or by zigzagging. This puzzles a bear and wears him out. Hunters never climb big trees, for the bear can go right up after them. When they climb small trees bears have been known to put their big arms around the trunk and try to shake them down. Or they sit at the foot of the tree and wait. As little Alex says: "That bear 'ist won't go 'way, 'ist growls 'round there, an' the Little Boy he haf to stay up in the tree all night." Bears are clever about getting out of tight places, too. Here is a story about a clever bear that is told by a naturalist.

A dozen men were in the Rocky Mountains of Canada laying out a route for a new railroad when they saw a big cinnamon bear in a tree. He had gone up for honey or a squirrel's store of nuts, or just for a nap, perhaps. The men had no guns, but they had axes and crowbars, so they thought they could manage Mr. Bear. They chopped the tree nearly down, the bear lying still and watching them. When the tree began to fall he put his forepaws over his head, rolled up into a big ball and dropped. He upset some of the men and surprised the others so that he had time to scramble to his feet and run away. I shouldn't wonder if that bear was still laughing at those men.Bears will not run from danger and leave their cubs behind. A cub can never be captured unless papa and mama bear are dead, or far away from home. They hide their babies very cleverly in caves, hollow trees or under old logs where they make their winter dens. They keep the cubs hidden there for weeks and months after they are born, for bear babies are as blind as kittens, as naked as little birds, and perfectly helpless at first. They are fed with milk at their mother's breast, so she stays with the cubs while papa bear goes foraging for food for her. Mama Bear is as cross—as a bear. You know that's as cross as any one can be. She will try to kill anyone who comes near her babies.

All wild animals are fond of their mates and babies, and will fight for them. But there are few that are as brave and loving as the polar bears. Explorers and whalers tell stories that make the tears come to your eyes. In that lonely waste of frozen land and water, a polar bear family seems almost human in their close affection. In the winter the mother and cubs stay in the warm cave, but the father cannot sleep all winter long as the land bears do. He must go out into the Arctic night for food. He watches seal and walrus holes as patiently as the Esquimo. He climbs icy cliffs. He is often carried out to sea on floating ice, and he swims back, miles and miles. In the summer the whole family hunt together. If one parent is killed the other will not desert the body. Neither will leave a dead or wounded cub, but will stand over it, lick the face and wound, pet it, coax it to get up, and will fight to the death rather than be driven away. They are terrible in their grief and rage.

There are three kinds of bears—land, water and honey bears. Of course all bears love honey, and will risk being stung on their tender noses to get it. But the honiest honey bear lives in the East Indies. In his Mowgli stories, Mr. Kipling has a honey bear that he calls Baloo. This animal is called the jungle bear because he sleeps in the shady jungle all day, and also the sloth, because he is so sleepy and moves about so slowly, and also the honey eater. He and the sun bear, who loves the sun as the jungle bear loves the shade, have long upper lips that look as if they had been stung by angry bees, and stretchy rubbery tongues. They can push this lip and tongue into an ant's nest and suck up a whole village with a greedy noise you can hear yards away, They eat bees and ants, ants' eggs, rice plants, fruits, honey and even flowers. In SouthAmerica 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.