. Familiar life in field and forest; the animals, birds, frogs, and salamanders . er with the remain-ing one. Of late years it is probable that extremely fewbears have been found in the Catskill woods; but Iremember as a boy a great sportsmans resort on theeastern slope of the hills not far from Cairo, calledBarney Buttss, where bearskins and tame bears yearsago were almost as common as chipmunks are now. One unfortunate youngbruin which I rememberbetter than the othershad lost a paw in asteel trap; it was saidthat he had gnawedit off (a not uncom-mon thing for atrapped bear to do),escaped, an
. Familiar life in field and forest; the animals, birds, frogs, and salamanders . er with the remain-ing one. Of late years it is probable that extremely fewbears have been found in the Catskill woods; but Iremember as a boy a great sportsmans resort on theeastern slope of the hills not far from Cairo, calledBarney Buttss, where bearskins and tame bears yearsago were almost as common as chipmunks are now. One unfortunate youngbruin which I rememberbetter than the othershad lost a paw in asteel trap; it was saidthat he had gnawedit off (a not uncom-mon thing for atrapped bear to do),escaped, and was recaptured after tracing his blood-stained tracks over the frozen snow. The limbeventually healed quite perfectly, and he managedby the following summer to do as well with threelegs as most of his kind did with four. But I nevercould forget the picture which my imagination con-jured up of poor bruin hobbling in anguish over theicy snow, a wretched victim of mans inhumanity;so he was regaled with cakes and lumps of sugar, thebest way of showing him my boyish sympathy. The. Caught in a trap. THE KINO OF THE WILDERNESS. 1S5 last news I got of him in the fall was that he hadknocked the spigot out of a barrel of molasses some-where in the neighborhood, and that particular partof the country was very sticky. Besides having a most extraordinarily sweet tooth,bruin is decidedly omnivorous ; his food is commonlymice, turtles, frogs, fish, ants and their eggs, bees andhoney, wild cherries, blackberries, blueberries—infact, berries of every kind—fruits, vegetables, roots,and not infrequently sheep, pigs, and poultry. Ifyou try him with a kitchen diet his taste is quite ascomprehensive; it includes cake, bread, nmffins, pieand pudding, butter and eggs, ham, hominy, sweet-meats, crackers and milk, pork and beans, corncake,gingerbread—in fact, excepting pickles, I doubtwhether he would refuse anything contained in thelarder. In his native wilds he will tear old stumpsto pieces to
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Keywords: ., bookauthorma, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, booksubjectzoology
