Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1883 — The Love of Bears for Melons. [ARTICLE]

The Love of Bears for Melons.

I once worked on a watermelon plantation where we had 100 acres under vines at a time. The curious thing about the business was that our hardest fight wasn’t agin weeds. It was agin bears—black bears. We’d got the vines all shooting along, some oj them with melons on ’em as big as a pumpkin, and the old man was getting the road to the river cleared ont, so as to be ready for shipping, when one morning in came one of the boys, and says he: “Something has broke down the worm fence and battered up about an acre of the vines in the clearin’. ” We’d just cleared about ten acres oi woodland the past winter, and melons were doing amazingly-well in that field. So you may know the old man was mad when he heard of this. Him and 1 went down to see what was up, and we saw in a moment that it was bears. There were tracks, just as they were made by men walking on their hands, in the soft earth, all over the field, and the vines was torn up, and the ripe and green melons mashed k to flinders in a way that nothing but a bear could do. “They’ll be back to-night,” said the old man. “You and Josh and Henry clean out your rifles and be ready foi them.” There was a full moon that night,and I tell you things looked purty. josh and Henry and I settin’ behind stumps, with our rifles across our laps, waiting. The fence was still tore down at the point nearest the woods, and the moonlight shining on the dark forest, where we expected the bears to come from, and then on the field of watermelon vines, whose wjtiite tendrils glistened like silver, looked mighty purty. Now and then we heard a screech owl yelling down in the woods, but w* didn’t pay no attention to that ;■ and presently I saw a bear come out and walk slowly into the field. He was a big fellow, as black as coal in the moonlight, and he wasn't in any hurry, either. H« sauntered along as slowly as you pleas* over to a big striped Georgia melon, and, settin’ down on his hams, he jusi picked that melon up in his two fore paws and smashed it between ’em like paper. In half a minute his whole head was dripping with juice, and I could hear him smacking his lips like a hog. We let him alone, according to the old man’s instructions, waiting until there should be a bear apiece for us, for the tracks showed that at least sir of ’em had been around the night before. In a few minutes along came anothei one, and then there walked in an old she with two little ones at her heels. We had three bears now, but nary one of us fired. Watching them bears was the picnic ever I saw. Sometimes they’d catch up a melon just as you’d take up a baby, and, holding it close to ’em, travel across the field or their hind legs until they’d see a bigger one, and then smash would go the rind, and juice would drip off ’em like they had just come out of a bath. I was watching the old she teaching her young ones how to break into th< juicy part, when crack went Josh’s rifle, and the whole gang started on t 1 run. The vines tripped ’em up so thal they couldn’t go very fast, and we eacl j bagged one of ’em, mine being one oi the young ones. We watched every night after that fill the season was over, but they were kind of wary now, and w« never shot more than one in a night. While we’d be sitting in one field waiting for them, they’d be rip-snorting away at the fruit on the other side o: the plantation. Bears are keener after watermelons than a negro, and I can say no more than that. —Denver Republican.