Bears, when they live far enough away from man, have absolutely nothing to be afraid of. There are, of course, bigger bears—perhaps bigger ones of our own kind, either black or brown (‘cinnamon,’ as the brown members of our family are called), or, especially, grizzly4. But I never heard of a grizzly bear hurting one of us. When I smell a grizzly in the neighbourhood, I confess that it seems wiser to go round the other side of the hill; but that is probably inherited superstition5 more than anything[10] else. My father and mother did it, and so do I. But I have known several of our cinnamon cousins in my life, and have been friendly enough with them—with the she-bears especially. Apart from these, there lives nothing in the forest that a full-grown black bear has any cause to fear. He goes where he pleases and does what he likes, and nobody ventures to dispute his rights. With a cub, however, it is different.
I had heard my father and mother speak of pumas6, or mountain lions, and I knew their smell well enough—and did not like it. But I shall never forget the first one that I saw.
We were out together—father, mother, Kahwa, and I—and it was getting well on in the morning. The sun was up, and the day growing warm, and I, wandering drowsily8 along with my nose to the ground, had somehow strayed away from the rest, when suddenly I smelled puma7 very strong. As I threw myself up on my haunches, he came out from behind a tree, and stood facing me only a few yards away. I was simply paralyzed with fear—one of the two or three times in my life when I have been honestly and thoroughly10 frightened. As I looked at him, wondering what would happen next, he crouched11 down till he was almost flat along the[11] ground, and I can see him now, his whole yellow body almost hidden behind his head, his eyes blazing, and his tail going slap, slap! from side to side. How I wished that I had a tail!
Then inch by inch he crept towards me, very slowly, putting one foot forward and then the other. I did not know what to do, and so did what proved to be the best thing possible: I sat quite still, and screamed for mother as loud as I could. She must have known from my voice that something serious was the matter, because in a second, just as the puma’s muscles were growing tense for the final spring, there was a sudden crash of broken boughs12 behind me, a feeling as if a whirlwind was going by, and my mother shot past me straight at the puma. I had no idea that she could go so fast. The puma was up on his hind-legs to meet her, but her impetus13 was so terrific that it bore him backwards14, without seeming to check her speed in the least, and away they went rolling over and over down the hill.
But it was not much of a fight. The puma, willing enough to attack a little cub like me, knew that he was no match for my mother, and while they were still rolling he wrenched15 himself loose, and was off among the trees like a shadow.
[12]
When mother came back to me blood was running over her face, where, at the moment of meeting, the puma had managed to give her one wicked, tearing claw down the side of her nose. So, as soon as my father and Kahwa joined us, we all went down to the stream, where mother bathed her face, and kept it in the cold water for nearly the whole day.
It was probably in some measure to pay me out for this scrape, and to give me another lesson in the unwisdom of too much independence and inquisitiveness17 in a youngster, that my parents, soon after this, allowed me to get into trouble with that porcupine18.
One evening my father had taken us to a place where the ground was full of mountain lilies. It was early in the year, when the green shoots were just beginning to appear above the earth; and wherever there was a shoot there was a bulb down below. And a mountain lily bulb is one of the very nicest things to eat that there is—so sweet, and juicy, and crisp! The place was some distance from our home, and after that first visit Kahwa and I kept begging to be taken there again. At last my father yielded, and we set out early one morning just before day was breaking.
[13]
We were not loitering on the way, but trotting19 steadily20 along all together, and Kahwa and I, at least, were full of expectation of the lily bulbs in store, when, in a little open space among the trees, we came upon an object unlike anything I had ever seen before. As we came upon it, I could have declared that it was moving—that it was an animal which, at sight of us, had stopped stock still, and tucked its head and toes in underneath21 it. But it certainly was not moving now, and did not look as if it ever could move again, so finally I concluded that it must be a large fungus22 or a strange new kind of hillock, with black and white grass growing all over it. My father and mother had stopped short when they saw it, and just sat up on their haunches and looked at it; and Kahwa did the same, snuggling up close to my mother’s side. Was it an animal, or a fungus, or only a mound23 of earth? The way to find out was to smell it. So, without any idea of hurting it, I trotted24 up and reached out my nose. As I did so it shrank a little more into itself, and became rounder and more like a fungus than ever; but the act of shrinking also made the black and white grass stick out a little further, so that my nose met it sooner than I expected, and I found that, if it was grass, it was[14] very sharp grass, and pricked25 horribly. I tried again, and again it shrank up and pricked me worse than ever. Then I heard my father chuckling26 to himself.
That made me angry, for I always have detested27 being laughed at, and, without stopping to think, I smacked28 the thing just as hard as I could. A moment later I was hopping29 round on three legs howling with pain, for a bunch of the quills30 had gone right into my paw, where they were still sticking, one coming out on the other side.
My father laughed, but my mother drew out the quills with her teeth, and that hurt worse than anything; and all day, whenever she found a particularly fat lily bulb, she gave it to me. For my part, I could only dig for the bulbs with my left paw, and it was ever so many days before I could run on all four feet again.
All these things must have happened when I was very young—less than three months old—because we were still living in the same place, whereas when summer came we moved away, as bears always do, and had no fixed31 home during the hot months.
Bear-cubs are born when the mother is still in her winter den9, and they are usually five or six[15] weeks old before they come out into the world at all. Even then at first, when the cubs are very young, the family stays close at home, and for some time I imagine that the longest journey I made was when I tumbled those fifty feet downhill. Father or mother might wander away alone in the early morning or evening for a while, but for the most part we were all four at home by the rock and the cedar-trees, with the bare brown tree-trunks growing up all round out of the bare brown mountain-sides, and Kahwa and I spending our time lying sleepily cuddled up to mother, or romping32 together and wishing we could catch squirrels.
There were a great many squirrels about—large gray ones mostly; but living in a fir-tree close by us was a black one with a deplorable temper.
Every day he used to come and quarrel with us. Whenever he had nothing particular to do, he would say to himself, ‘I’ll go and tease those old bears.’ And he did. His plan was to get on our trees from behind, where we could not see him, then to come round on our side about five or six feet from the ground, just safely out of reach, and there, hanging head downwards33, call us every name he could think of. Squirrels have an awful[16] vocabulary, but I never knew one that could talk like Blacky. And every time he thought of something new to say he waved his tail at us in a way that was particularly aggravating34. You have no idea how other animals poke35 fun at us because we have no tails, and how sensitive we really are on the subject. They say that it was to hide our lack of tail that we originally got into the habit of sitting up on our haunches whenever we meet a stranger.
Kahwa and I used to make all sorts of plans to catch Blacky, but we might as well have tried to catch a moonbeam. He knew exactly how far we could reach from the ground, and if we made a rush for him he was always three inches too high. Then we would run round on opposite sides of the tree in the hope of cutting him off when he came down. But when we did that he never did come down, but just went up instead, till he reached a place where the branches of our trees nearly touched those of his own fir, and then jumped across. We always hoped he would miss that jump, and Kahwa and I waited down below with our mouths open for him to drop in, but he never did.
We used to try and persuade mother to go up[17] his tree after him, but she knew very well that she could neither catch him nor get out on the thin branches where his nest was. There is only one way in which a bear can catch squirrels, and that is by pretending to be dead or asleep; for squirrels are so idiotically inquisitive16 that sooner or later they are certain to come right up to you if you do this, and sit on your nose. Some bears, I believe, are fond of squirrels, but I confess I never cared for them. There is so much fluff and stringy stuff in them, and so little to eat.
Chipmunks[2] are different. Though smaller than squirrels, they are much less fluffy38 in proportion, and taste almost as nice as mice.
Next to Blacky, our most frequent visitor was Rat-tat, the woodpecker. The air in the mountains is very still, so that you can hear sounds a long way, and all day long from every direction the ‘rat-tat-tat-tat!’ of the woodpeckers was ringing through the woods. In the evening when the sun was going down, they used to sit on the very tops of the trees, and call to each other from hill to hill—just two long whistles, ‘whee-whoo, whee-whoo.’ It was a sad noise, but I liked Rat-tat. He was so jauntily39 gay in his suit of black and white, with his [18]bright red crest40, and always so immensely busy. Starting near the bottom of a tree, he worked steadily up it—rat-tat-tat-tat! and up—rat-tat-tat-tat! till he got to the top; then down like a flash to another, to begin all over again. Grubs he was after, and nothing else mattered. Grubs—rat-tat-tat-tat! rat-tat-tat-tat! grubs! and up and up he went.
One of our cedars41 was dead at the top, and Rat-tat used to come there nearly every day. Little chips and splinters of wood would come floating down to us, and once a lovely fat beetle42 grub that he had somehow overlooked came plump down under my very nose. If that was the kind of thing that he found up there, I was not surprised that he was fond of our tree. I would have gone up too, if I could; but the dead part would never have been safe for me.
Very soon we began to be taken out on long excursions, going all four together, as I have said, and then we began to learn how much that is nice to eat there is in the world.
You have probably no idea, for instance, how many good things there may be under one rotting log. Even if you do not get a mouse or a chipmunk37, you are sure of a fringe of greenstuff which,[19] from lack of sunlight, has grown white and juicy, and almost as sure of some mushrooms or other fungi43, most of which are delicious. But before you can touch them you have to look after the insects. Mushrooms will wait, but the sooner you catch beetles44, and earwigs, and ants, and grubs, the better. It is always worth while to roll a log over, if you can, no matter how much trouble it costs; and a big stone is sometimes nearly as good.
Insects, of course, are small, and it would take a lot of ants, or even beetles, to make a meal for a bear; but they are good, and they help out. Some wild animals, especially those which prey45 upon others, eat a lot at one time, and then starve till they can kill again. A bear, on the other hand, is wandering about for more than half of the twenty-four hours, except in the very heat of summer, and he is eating most of the while that he wanders. The greater part of his food, of course, is greenstuff—lily bulbs, white camas roots, wild-onions, and young shoots and leaves. As he walks he browses46 a mouthful of young leaves here, scratches up a root there, tears the bark off a decaying tree and eats the insects underneath, lifts a stone and finds a mouse or a lizard47 beneath, or loiters for twenty[20] minutes over an ant-hill. With plenty of time, he is never in a hurry, and every little counts.
But most of all in summer I used to love to go down to the stream. In warm weather, during the heat of the day, bears stay in the shelter of thickets48, among the brush by the water or under the shade of a fallen tree. As the sun sank we would move down to the stream, and lie all through the long evening in the shallows, where the cold water rippled49 against one’s sides. And along the water there was always something good to eat—not merely the herbage and the roots of the water-plants, but frogs and insects of all sorts among the grass. Our favourite bathing-place was just above a wide pool made by a beaver50-dam. The pool itself was deep in places, but before the river came to it, it flowed for a hundred yards and more over a level gravel51 bottom, so shallow that even as a cub I could walk from shore to shore without the water being above my shoulders. At the edge of the pool the same black and white kingfisher was always sitting on the same branch when we came down, and he disliked our coming, and chirred at us to go away. I used to love to pretend not to understand him, and to walk solemnly through the water underneath and all round his branch. It[21] made him furious, and sent him chirring upstream to find another place to fish, where there were no idiotic36 bear-cubs who did not know any better than to walk about among his fish.
Here, too, my father and mother taught us to fish; but it was a long time before I managed to catch a trout52 for myself. It takes such a dreadful lot of sitting still. Having found where a fish is lying, probably under an overhanging branch or beneath the grass jutting53 out from the bank, you lie down silently as close to the edge of the water as you can get, and slip one paw in, ever so gradually, behind the fish, and move it towards him gently—gently. If he takes fright and darts54 away, you leave your paw where it is, or move it as close to the spot where he was lying as you can reach, and wait. Sooner or later he will come back, swimming downstream and then swinging round to take his station almost exactly in the same spot as before. If you leave your paw absolutely still, he does not mind it, and may even, on his return, come and lie right up against it. If so, you strike at once. More probably he will stop a few inches or a foot away. If you have already reached as far as you can towards him, then is the time that you need all your[22] patience. Again and again he darts out to take a fly from the surface of the water or swallow something that is floated down to him by the current, and each time that he comes back he may shift his position an inch or two. At last he comes to where you can actually crook55 your claws under his tail. Ever so cautiously you move your paw gently halfway56 up towards his head, and then, when your claws are almost touching57 him, you strike—strike, once and hard, with a hooking blow that sends him whirling like a bar of silver far out on the bank behind you. And trout is good—the plump, dark, pink-banded trout of the mountain streams. But you must not strike one fraction of a second too soon, for if your paw has more than an inch to travel before the claws touch him he is gone, and all you feel is the flip58 of a tail upon the inner side of the paw, and all your time is wasted.
It is hard to learn to wait long enough, and I know that at first I used to strike at fish that were a foot away, with no more chance of catching59 them than of making supper off a waterfall. But father and mother used to catch a fish apiece for us almost every evening, and gradually Kahwa and I began to take them for ourselves.
[23]
Then, as the daylight faded, the beavers60 came out upon their dam and played about in the pool, swimming and diving and slapping the surface with their tails with a noise like that of an osprey when he strikes the water in diving for a fish. But though they had time for play, they were busy folk, the beavers. Some of them were constantly patching and tinkering at the dam, and some always at work, except when the sun was up, one relieving another, gnawing61 their way with little tiny bites steadily through one of the great trees that stood by the water’s edge, and always gnawing it so that when, after weeks of labour, it fell, it never failed to fall across the stream precisely62 where they wanted it. If an enemy appeared—at the least sign or smell of wolf or puma—there would be a loud ringing slap from one of the tails upon the water, and in an instant every beaver had vanished under water and was safe inside the house among the logs of the dam, the door of which was down below the surface.
Us bears they were used to and did not mind; but they never let us come too near. Sitting safely on the top of their piled logs, or twenty feet away in the water, they would talk to us pleasantly enough; but—well, my father told me[24] that young, very young, beaver was good eating, and I imagine that the beavers knew that we thought so, and were afraid, perhaps, that we might not be too particular about the age.
As the dusk changed to darkness we would leave the water and roam over the hillsides, sometimes sleeping through the middle hours of the night, but in summer more often roaming on, to come back to the stream for a while just before the sun was up, and then turning in to sleep till he went down again.
Those long rambles63 in the summer moonlight, or in the early dawn when everything reeked64 with dew, how good they were! And when the afternoon of a broiling65 day brought a thunderstorm, the delight of the smell of the moist earth and the almost overpowering scent66 of the pines! And when the berries were ripe—blueberries, cranberries67, wild-raspberries, and, later in the year, elderberries—no fruit, nor anything else to eat, has ever tasted as they did then in that first summer when I was a cub.
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1
cubs
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| n.幼小的兽，不懂规矩的年轻人( cub的名词复数 ) | |
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cub
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| n.幼兽，年轻无经验的人 | |
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toddling
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| v.（幼儿等）东倒西歪地走( toddle的现在分词 )；蹒跚行走；溜达；散步 | |
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grizzly
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| adj.略为灰色的，呈灰色的；n.灰色大熊 | |
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superstition
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| n.迷信，迷信行为 | |
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pumas
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| n.美洲狮( puma的名词复数 )；彪马；于1948年成立于德国荷索金劳勒(Herzogenaurach)的国际运动品牌；创始人：鲁道夫及达斯勒。 | |
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puma
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| 美洲豹 | |
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drowsily
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| adv.睡地，懒洋洋地，昏昏欲睡地 | |
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den
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| n.兽穴；秘密地方；安静的小房间，私室 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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crouched
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| v.屈膝，蹲伏( crouch的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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boughs
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| 大树枝( bough的名词复数 ) | |
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impetus
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| n.推动，促进，刺激；推动力 | |
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backwards
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| adv.往回地，向原处，倒，相反，前后倒置地 | |
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wrenched
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| v.（猛力地）扭( wrench的过去式和过去分词 )；扭伤；使感到痛苦；使悲痛 | |
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inquisitive
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| adj.求知欲强的，好奇的，好寻根究底的 | |
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inquisitiveness
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| 好奇，求知欲 | |
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porcupine
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| n.豪猪， 箭猪 | |
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trotting
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| 小跑，急走( trot的现在分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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steadily
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| adv.稳定地；不变地；持续地 | |
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underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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fungus
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| n.真菌，真菌类植物 | |
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mound
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| n.土墩，堤，小山；v.筑堤，用土堆防卫 | |
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trotted
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| 小跑，急走( trot的过去分词 )； 匆匆忙忙地走 | |
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pricked
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| 刺，扎，戳( prick的过去式和过去分词 )； 刺伤； 刺痛； 使剧痛 | |
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chuckling
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的现在分词 ) | |
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detested
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| v.憎恶，嫌恶，痛恨( detest的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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smacked
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| 拍，打，掴( smack的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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hopping
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| n. 跳跃 动词hop的现在分词形式 | |
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quills
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| n.（刺猬或豪猪的）刺( quill的名词复数 )；羽毛管；翮；纡管 | |
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fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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romping
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| adj.嬉戏喧闹的，乱蹦乱闹的v.嬉笑玩闹( romp的现在分词 )；（尤指在赛跑或竞选等中）轻易获胜 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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aggravating
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| adj.恼人的，讨厌的 | |
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poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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idiotic
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| adj.白痴的 | |
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chipmunk
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| n.花栗鼠 | |
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fluffy
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| adj.有绒毛的，空洞的 | |
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jauntily
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| adv.心满意足地；洋洋得意地；高兴地；活泼地 | |
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crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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41
cedars
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| 雪松，西洋杉( cedar的名词复数 ) | |
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42
beetle
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| n.甲虫，近视眼的人 | |
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43
fungi
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| n.真菌，霉菌 | |
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44
beetles
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| n.甲虫( beetle的名词复数 ) | |
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45
prey
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| n.被掠食者，牺牲者，掠食；v.捕食，掠夺，折磨 | |
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46
browses
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| n.吃草( browse的名词复数 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息v.吃草( browse的第三人称单数 )；随意翻阅；（在商店里）随便看看；（在计算机上）浏览信息 | |
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lizard
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| n.蜥蜴，壁虎 | |
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48
thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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49
rippled
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| 使泛起涟漪（ripple的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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50
beaver
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| n.海狸，河狸 | |
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51
gravel
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| n.砂跞；砂砾层；结石 | |
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52
trout
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| n.鳟鱼；鲑鱼(属) | |
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53
jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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54
darts
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| n.掷飞镖游戏；飞镖( dart的名词复数 )；急驰，飞奔v.投掷，投射( dart的第三人称单数 )；向前冲，飞奔 | |
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55
crook
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| v.使弯曲；n.小偷，骗子，贼；弯曲(处) | |
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56
halfway
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| adj.中途的，不彻底的，部分的；adv.半路地，在中途，在半途 | |
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57
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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58
flip
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| vt.快速翻动；轻抛；轻拍；n.轻抛；adj.轻浮的 | |
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59
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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60
beavers
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| 海狸( beaver的名词复数 )； 海狸皮毛； 棕灰色； 拼命工作的人 | |
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61
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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62
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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63
rambles
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| （无目的地）漫游( ramble的第三人称单数 )； （喻）漫谈； 扯淡； 长篇大论 | |
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64
reeked
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的过去式和过去分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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65
broiling
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| adj.酷热的，炽热的，似烧的v.（用火）烤（焙、炙等）( broil的现在分词 )；使卷入争吵；使混乱；被烤（或炙） | |
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66
scent
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| n.气味，香味，香水，线索，嗅觉；v.嗅，发觉 | |
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67
cranberries
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| n.越橘( cranberry的名词复数 ) | |
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