An episode appeared twice a month
in The Michigan Farmer magazine.
Whitepaw Gets an Unexpected Bath
Jerry and I visited Uncle Joe Spence one morning late in June. He laid
his binoculars on the table as he greeted us. Below the tower we could
see Friendly Forest spreading in all directions, and here and there
we could get a glimpse of Friendly River through the trees.
"This is sort of an anniversary," Uncle Joe told us when
we had made ourselves comfortable.
"Your birthday?" asked Jerry.
"No-o, nothing like that," Uncle Joe explained. "It
was just a year ago today that I first saw Whitepaw, a little black
bear cub. He was a funny little fellow and just as full of mischief
as he was funny. As he grew older he played all kinds of tricks on his
mother and sister."
"Why did you call him Whitepaw, Uncle Joe?" Jerry asked.
"It's quite a story," Uncle Joe sighed.
"We'll help you watch for fires while we listen to it," Jerry
pleaded eagerly.
"Very well," Uncle Joe said. "Keep a pretty sharp lookout!"
We settled ourselves as Uncle Joe took a look in each direction through
his binoculars. We were high above the forest and if there had been
a fire it would have been easy to see.
"The first time I saw Whitepaw he got a very unexpected bath which
almost drowned him," Uncle Joe began, as he finished his work.
"I happened to be looking at the hill above Friendly River. At
the top of the hill is a cave, and I was quite surprised to see two
bear cubs playing in front of it. Of course it is nearly two miles to
the hill but I could see them very clearly through the binoculars. They
were playing tag or something almost the same, for they chased each
other in and out of the cave and around the big elm trees nearby. As
I watched them, I saw that one was larger and had a white paw so I named
him Whitepaw; and the other, his sister, Blackpaw because she had no
such marking."
"How did you know they were brother and sister?" Jerry asked.
Uncle Joe smiled. "Well, bear cubs often come that way and the
larger cub is usually the male, and the smaller one his sister."
"Do bears always live in caves?" I asked.
Uncle Joe's eyes twinkled. "Not being very good carpenters they
have to take what they can find. If no cave is handy they take a hollow
tree or make their den under a fallen tree. How large do you think a
black bear cub is when it is born?" He looked first from one of
us to the other questioningly.
"As big as my dog?" Jerry suggested.
"Smaller, much smaller."
"My cat?" Jerry guessed again.
"You'll never guess," Uncle Joe said. "When they are
born they are no larger than a partly-grown red squirrel; and if I had
one, a day old, I could put it in my left hand and could put my right
hand over top and cover it up."
"As small as that," Jerry breathed. "And they get to
be great big fellows."
Uncle Joe nodded. "About eight or nine hundred pounds in weight.
But the reason they are so small is that they are born in the wintertime
when the mother bear is asleep."
Uncle Joe paused to look in each direction for possible fires. When
he had finished he turned to us again. "We have to be very careful
about fires. When the forests burn, the fire not only destroys the shelter
the trees give the animals but it takes all their food and often their
homes as well."
"Who puts out the fires that start?" I asked.
Uncle Joe pointed to the telephone and a long brass affair along side
of it. "This brass instrument helps me tell just where the fire
is located and then I call the fire patrol with the telephone."
"Well, as I was saying, the two little bears were playing tag,"
Uncle Joe continued the story. "When the one that was 'it' caught
up with the other one they would start wrestling. They would roll all
over the top of the hill, biting and clawing at each other. They got
so interested in their play that they didn't pay much attention to what
they were doing. Several times they came near the edge of the hill and
I held my breath thinking they might fall into the river.
"Back and forth they rolled; and then Blackpaw got loose and started
for the den. But Whitepaw hadn't played enough. He ran around the corner
of a big rock and pounced out after her. As he sprang, he jumped too
far. He missed Blackpaw entirely and went right on over the side of
the hill towards Friendly River. Once he almost hit a big beech tree.
A stone was in his path. He rolled right over the top of it. Then, with
a big splash, he hit the water and disappeared."
"Did he drown?" Jerry asked eagerly.
"I'm afraid that's all the time I have today," Uncle Joe
said as he picked up the binoculars, "but if you'll come back tomorrow
I'll tell you more about the life of the little bears and how Whitepaw
followed his nose."
"Then he didn't drown," Jerry said with a sigh of relief.
"Tomorrow," Uncle Joe called after us as we took our leave.
"Tomorrow," Jerry promised as we started the climb down from
the tower.
Click HERE to read "Whitepaw
Follows His Nose"
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© 2004 Leo VanMeer
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