THE BLACK BEAR.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2902, 17 January 1911, Page 7

THE BLACK BEAR.

While the black bear can and does on occasion rise to the very height of tragedy, comedy is his favourite line. He is the humorist of the brute creation—a born low comedian. He has the liveliest sense of the ridi-

culous, and is always looking about him for ways and means to indulge

it. I remember (says the writer) two young bears that were orphans. It would be impossible to record the innumerable evidences as these cubs grew up that marked them as prodigies of ursine comicality. They were bears, though, and could not help it. But this irrepressible predilection for comedy resulted' at last in a tragic denouement to a bit of drollery on the part of one of the cubs. One day they were skylarking about the hunter's cabin, bent on fun. At a corner of the cabin stood a barrel half filled with rain water. One of the bears, thinking there might be capacity for fun in the barrel, got up with his four paws on the chine and looked in. He gazed into the barrel for a moment, and his plans were made. Dropping quickly to the ground, he picked up a stone, got back to the top of the barrel, and threw the stone with a splash into the water. Then he dropped again, seized another stone, and lost no time in casting that one into the barrel. His mate tumbling about some distance away, was attracted by his apparently excited movements and hurried to the barrel to have a share of whatever fun was going on there. He got up with his fore paws on the top of the barrel, and stuck his head over to see what had excited his mate. This was just what the latter wanted. It was what he had been playing for. He grabbed the other by the heels, and toppled him head first into the barrel. Then the young humorist danced about, his mouth wide open, as if he were laughing to kill himself at the way his mate, hind feet in the air, and head and shoulders submerged in the water, kicked and struggled vainly to extricate himself. The more he kicked and struggled, the more the other cub danced and enjoyed the joke. All this had been seen by the owner of the cubs, who happened to be on a hillside 300 yards away. He made all the haste he could to rescue the cub from its dangerous situation, but he was too late. The cub had ceased to kick. It had succumbed to the jocularity of its mate. But so little was the comic element in bear nature affected by this catastrophe that the cub whose idea of humour had caused it was discovered less than half an hour afterwards clutching the hind legs of a pig which had the freedom of the premises, and

running it about the yard on its forefeet as one might trundle a wheelbarrow, the shrill squeaking of the pig setting the bear almost wild with joy the while.