Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 290, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 December 1910 — BEARS IN A SCHOOL [ARTICLE]

BEARS IN A SCHOOL

Startling Adventure of School Teacher in Wilderness. • ■*. ■- - - T *o Animals Get Into Building Through Dugout and Spring Lock “ After Themselves —Attracted by Honey. Croas Fork, Pa.—When Miss Lydia Musser, teacher of a country school in Eulalia township, opened the door of her schoolroom the other morning she ' Waa confronted by two pupils who were not enrolled in her book. Two black bears got into the building through a trap door In the floor, which led Into a dugout underneath used for the storage of wood. Of course Miss Mugger, who was alone, didn’t tarry to ask the new scholars their names, nor whether it was the first time they had been to school. she slammed the door shut against the spring lock and the bears were again made prisoners, for it was subsequently discovered that they had out off their own egress by the route through which had come by accidentally slipping the catch on the trapdoor after they were in the room and being unable to open it. When Miss Musser opened the door the bears made a lunge toward her, doubtless in an effort to reach the door and escape, but the young woman believed that they were about to attack her, so that in her haste to get the door shut she tripped on her skirt and fell from the porch, landing in such a manner as to turn her foot and sprain her ankle so that she was unable to rise, and sustaining an Injury from which she is not apt to recover for several weeks. She screamed at the top of her voice. JThe schoolhouse is fully a mile from the nearest farmhouse, though, fortunately, a teamster who was within earehot In passing heard her and went to her rescue. Several pupils on the way to school also heard her alarm. Miss Musser informed the man of what she had seen, but prevented him from unlocking the schoolhouse Until she had been helped out of the reach of danger. , ■ The arriving pupils peeked through the windows and saw the bears. The animals were pawing back and forth like caged Hons and showed every evidence of their fright at being prisoners In the schoolhouse under"*the gaze of the fast gathering throng and aroused by the noise made by the affrighted boys and girls. The teamster sent some of the boys down the road to the nearest house for a rifle, but before the gun arrived the bears took It into their heads to do something on their own hook. One of . them appeared at the window farthest away from where the- school crowd

had collected, and with one great push of his paws sent the glass flying in a hundred pieces, following the crash with a plunge that brought his shaggy form all a tumble on to the ground. He had no sooner landed than the second bear followed suit, and In another second the animals were streaking It Into the woods, while the boys and girls, of course, were making pell-mell in the other direction. The bear that did the glass breaking evidently cut its paw, for blood in pretty good quantities was to be found along the route taken by the animals. When the schoolroom was opened and an examination made it was discovered that the bears had played havoc

with the books and maps. They were evidently.‘in search for food, and the books and other artyples coming within the reach of their search had been roughly handled. This is the schoolhouse In which during the summer a colony of bees took up their abode between the wall and the weather boards, where they stored a quite generous supply of honey before being discovered and their sweetmeats confiscated. It is presumed that the bears were drawn to the place by the smell of this honey, or the bees may have made some of their comb in the little basement of the building, and that this Is what first attracted the attention of the bears.