CHAPTER XXI
WHEN THE WORLD TURNED WHITE
IT certainly was hard, thought Fuzzy-Wuzz, for a cub bear to keep out of trouble.
Back from the camping trip, the Ranger’s children spent much time in the great log barn, and Fuzzy with them. How he did love to turn somersaults in the haymow! Like a furry clown, he would tumble about as if he hadn’t a bone in his body.
Sometimes the hens did not lay in their boxes, and the children used to be sent to hunt eggs, which they would find here and there in the hay. Fuzzy, too, learned to hunt for eggs, though those he found were never seen again, save for the smears of egg yolk on his jaws.
He soon found it was great sport to chase the hens and send them squawking, feathersflying as he caught a mouthful of tail plumage.
He also delighted in coming around at milking time. At first the cows were so uneasy with the little bear around that they would kick their pails over and lower their horns at him. So the Ranger tried to drive him away by milking a stream of milk at him as one would turn on the hose.
Was Fuzzy driven away? On the contrary, he just opened his mouth wide and drank it down. After that he used to come and beg to have them milk into his mouth.
But Fuzzy was finally banished from the barn. The mischievous young rascal caught a pig one day and hugged him till the pig squealed as if he were being killed. A little more and he would have been, for a bear has a powerful hug. It certainly was hard for a fun-loving little bear to keep out of trouble.
At last Fuzzy disappeared. The children searched and searched, but they could find him nowhere. They set all his favorite dainties out on the back porch for him,—bacon, and honey, and wild gooseberries,—everythingthey could think of that he especially loved.
They called him, they searched the woods for some trace of his footprints in the soft ground left by the early rains, but nowhere could they find hide nor hair of him.
“Do you suppose a lion’s got him?” they worried.
“No,” laughed the Ranger. “I shouldn’t be the least bit surprised if he had gone to hibernating. You know a bear always sleeps the winter away. He can’t find anything more to eat, with the snow deep on the ground, and he can’t keep warm unless he eats, so he just creeps off into some hole and curls up into a ball, with his toes inside, and sleeps till spring.”
“Fuzzy didn’t need to. We would have fed him.”
“Yes, but you see, bears have had to hibernate for so many, many years that it has become their nature to. I guess he couldn’t help himself: he just got to feeling so sleepy that nothing else mattered.”
“But where is he hibernating? I just wish we knew where he was.”
“Oh, probably in some cave in the hillside, or under a big bowlder where he would be sheltered from the wind; or perhaps he has just crawled under some fallen tree, where the snow will bank around him and make a cave, and keep the cold wind off him, and his breath will melt an air-hole.”
Then one afternoon, when the sun had been blotted out by the big white flakes of their first real, lasting snow, the boy was pitching hay from the mow for the horses when something round and furry tumbled out and into a horse stall. It was wee Fuzzy-Wuzz, who had been pried from the warm corner he had selected for his winter’s sleep.
He blinked and yawned a few times. Then he disappeared again, and it was not till the following spring that they found him snoozing away in the far corner of the haymow.