Part 5 (2/2)
”It seems to me that a bear which eats flesh would be bigger and stronger than if he was a vegetarian.”
”That's one o' the cur'ous things you want to write about,” replied Bruce, with one of his odd chuckles. ”Why is it a bear gets so fat he can hardly walk along in September when he don't feed on much else but berries an'
ants an' grubs? Would you get fat on wild currants?
”An' why does he grow so fast during the four or five months he's denned up an' dead to the world without a mouthful to eat or drink?
”Why is it that for a month, an' sometimes two months, the mother gives her cubs milk while she's still what you might call asleep? Her nap ain't much more'n two-thirds over when the cubs are born.
”And why ain't them cubs bigger'n they are? That natcherlist laughed until I thought he'd split when I told him a grizzly bear cub wasn't much bigger'n a house-cat kitten when born!”
”He was one of the few fools who aren't willing to learn--and yet you cannot blame him altogether,” said Langdon. ”Four or five years ago I wouldn't have believed it, Bruce. I couldn't actually believe it until we dug out those cubs up the Athabasca--one weighed eleven ounces and the other nine. You remember?”
”An' they were a week old, Jimmy. An' the mother weighed eight hundred pounds.”
For a few moments they both puffed silently on their pipes.
”Almost--inconceivable,” said Langdon then. ”And yet it's true. And it isn't a freak of nature, Bruce--it's simply a result of Nature's far-sightedness. If the cubs were as large comparatively as a house-cat's kittens the mother-bear could not sustain them during those weeks when she eats and drinks nothing herself. There seems to be just one flaw in this scheme: an ordinary black bear is only about half as large as a grizzly, yet a black bear cub when born is much larger than a grizzly cub. Now why the devil that should be--”
Bruce interrupted his friend with a good-natured laugh.
”That's easy--easy, Jimmy!” he exclaimed. ”Do you remember last year when we picked strawberries in the valley an' threw s...o...b..a.l.l.s two hours later up on the mountain? Higher you climb the colder it gets, don't it? Right now--first day of July--you'd half freeze up on some of those peaks! A grizzly dens high, Jimmy, and a black bear dens low. When the snow is four feet deep up where the grizzly dens, the black bear can still feed in the deep valleys an' thick timber. He goes to bed mebby a week or two weeks later than the grizzly, an' he gets up in the spring a week or two weeks earlier; he's fatter when he dens up an' he ain't so poor when he comes out--an' so the mother's got more strength to give to her cubs. It looks that way to me.”
”You've hit the nail on the head as sure as you're a year old!” cried Langdon enthusiastically. ”Bruce, I never thought of that!”
”There's a good many things you don't think about until you run across 'em,” said the mountaineer. ”It's what you said a while ago--such things are what makes huntin' a fine sport when you've learned huntin' ain't always killin'--but lettin' live. One day I lay seven hours on a mountain-top watchin' a band o' sheep at play, an' I had more fun than if I'd killed the whole bunch.”
Bruce rose to his feet and stretched himself, an after-supper operation that always preceded his announcement that he was going to turn in.
”Fine day to-morrow,” he said, yawning. ”Look how white the snow is on the peaks.”
”Bruce--”
”What?”
”How heavy is this bear we're after?”
”Twelve hundred pounds--mebby a little more. I didn't have the pleasure of lookin' at him so close as you did, Jimmy. If I had we'd been dryin' his skin now!”
”And he's in his prime?”
”Between eight and twelve years old, I'd say, by the way he went up the slope. An old bear don't roll so easy.”
”You've run across some pretty old bears, Bruce?”
”So old some of 'em needed crutches,” said Bruce, unlacing his boots. ”I've shot bears so old they'd lost their teeth.”
”How old?”
”Thirty--thirty-five--mebby forty years. Good-night, Jimmy!”
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