Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 33, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1893 — Habits of Brain. [ARTICLE]

Habits of Brain.

If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugp, roots and nuts to satisfy the cravings of so huge a bulk. There is always a touch of the comic, as well as a touch of the strong and terrible, in a bear’s looks and actions. It will tug and pull, now with one paw, now with two, now on all fours, now on its hind legs, in the effort to turn over a large log or stone; and when it succeeds it jumps round to thrust its muzzle into the damp hollow and lap up the affrighted mice or beetles while they are still paralyzed by the sudden exposure. The true time of plenty for bears is the berry season. Then they feast ravenously on huckleberries, blueberries, kinmkinicberries, buffalobarries, wild plums, elderberries and scores of other fruits. They often smash all the bushes in a berry patch, gathering the fruit with'half luxurious, half laborious greed, sitting on their haunches and sweeping the berries into their mouths with dexterous paws. The still hunter is in luck who in the fall finds an accessible berry-covered hillside which is haunted by bears; but, as a rule, the berry bushes do not grow close enough together to give the hunter much chance. Aside from man, the full-grown grizzly has hardly any foe to fear. Nevertheless, in the early spring, when weakened'by the hunger that succeeds the winter sleep, it behooves even the grizzly, if he dwells in the mountain fastnesses of the far Northwest, to beware of a famished troop of great timber wolves.—Globe Democrat.