LONDON BEARS.
“Nevermake a pet of a bear,” is the advice given by the experienced “bear-ward” at the Zoo. But though his conclusions are the result of longer and closer experience of the animals than is possessed by any one person in Europe, there is something so attractive in the apparent simplicity andbonhomieof the comfortable, warmly-clad, deliberate ursine race which appeals irresistibly to animal-loving Englishmen. Ever since the early middle ages the performing bear has been a favourite; and to this day there is in Turkey and Bulgaria a wandering race of gipsies who are known by the common name of “bear-tamers,” from their traditional occupation of catching the young cubs in the forests of the Carpathians, and leading them through the villages as performers in all the feasts, whether Christian or Mussulman, of the ancient land of Thrace.
The tame bear, which for the greater part of 1891 and 1892 was exhibited in the London streets, and ultimately had an audience from her Majesty at Windsor Castle, was also a familiar acquaintance ofmost of the London police magistrates. Its popularity was such, that whenever exhibited it instantly became the centre of a crowd, which increased until the police constable on duty felt it incompatible with his position not to take it into custody. Then came the scene in the dock next morning, and the “dismissal with a caution” as a sequence. Meantime the bear had usually held a reception in the police-station the night before; and so much did its endearing ways win the hearts of the “force,” that on one occasion the constable who had run it in made a collection for its benefit the moment the case was dismissed.
This was a small Pyrenean bear, about three years old, with a rough coat the colour of a dusty cocoa-nut fibre door-mat, and though it had a strong steel muzzle of apparently needless severity fixed round the base of its nose, the genial Provençal who owned it, and whose bed it usually shared at night in the quarters of the foreign artists in street music and ice-creams in which he dwelt when not employed in exhibiting his pet before royalty, or elsewhere, declared that it was a “brave bête, doux comme un enfant, et doué de traits de caractère tout à fait remarquables.” The behaviour of the street urchins to thebrave bêtewas perhaps a reminiscence of the days when bear-baiting was looked upon as an exhibition calculated to maintain the pugnacious character of the true-bred Englishman; for, once assured that it would not hurt them, they stamped on its toes as occasion offered, until the bear rose on its hind legs and assumed anattitude of defence, which drove the malicious tribe to a safe distance. “Pauvre bête, il a peur,” said his owner; and it was evident not only that the bear was afraid of the brutal children of the street, but that it looked to the “grown-ups” for protection.
Probably the most easily tamed of the tribe are the small Malayan bears, five of which are at present in the collection of the Zoological Society. These are true honey-eating bears, provided with long elastic tongues, and covered with short close fur of the most beautiful dark and glossy brown, of the tint to which seal-skins are dyed. The largest is a perfect beauty in the eyes of bear connoisseurs, sleek and glossy, its coat fitting it like a well-made suit of felt, and when walking upright, as it prefers to do when about to be fed, it is “just like a person,” as we once heard a small girl remark. It has a cream-coloured face, and a beautiful orange “bib.” The oldest of the family has been twenty years in the Gardens, and is so stiff and decrepit, that when on the ground it moves like a rheumatic old man. But it can still climb, and will exhibit most amusing feats upon the bars in return for a lump of sugar. Sugar is the greatest luxury which can be given to these “sweet-toothed” animals except honey, and their rations of this are carefully regulated, as it does not agree with their constitutions when in confinement. When a lump of sugar is shown to the old bear it climbs the bars with great deliberation, and then holding on by all four feet waits for the visitor to go through his part of the performance.Unless this is carried out according to rule, the bear descends and sits on the floor, waiting until it gets the sugar thrown to it without further trouble. But if the lump is slowly waved round in circles from right to left—the opposite direction is not considered fair, and the animal “won’t play” if it is persisted in—the bear also turns “coach wheels” slowly on the bars. His old elbows stick out and his paws turn in, but he still feels equal to almost any number of turns if the visitor is exacting. When rewarded with the sugar the bear “makes it last,” like a nasty little boy with a sugar-plum, only far more ingeniously. “That was a white sugar-plum I gave you,” says the horrible child in Mr. Du Maurier’s picture—“it waspink once.” The bear is not really nasty, but it has discovered an ingenious process by which loaf-sugar can be converted into honey. It first wets its fore-paws, and then cracks the sugar into two pieces, and puts one on to each paw. It then rubs the bits on with its nose, and next picking each up again cracks it, and lays two well-moistened pieces on to each paw, as before. It then licks these off again, and if any is left again deposits them on the backs of its well-moistened sticky knuckles. Finally it licks them quite clean, and turns slowly head over heals, as an acknowledgment of the treat.
A regiment of Life Guards recently owned a large brown bear, which ultimately found a home in the Zoo after giving proof of the wisdom of the keeper’s opinion. It was a pet of the regiment, and was taken from Knightsbridge to Windsor, and later to theAlbany Street barracks, where it was kept chained up like a big dog, and treated with all the consideration due to a non-combatant member of the corps. A boy who was rather a favourite with the men, and used to run errands, and make himself useful about the barracks, took a fancy to the bear, and was employed to bring it its daily rations. One day, when the animal was asleep, the boy woke it by pulling the chain, at the same time laying the food before it. The experience of all those employed in the care of animals, whether wild or domesticated, forbids any approach without speaking to the creature first. In this case the bear, sulky at being wakened, and tethered only by a very long chain, seized the lad, and bit and clawed him so seriously that he was for some time an inmate of the Middlesex Hospital. The bear was “dismissed from the service,” and condemned to solitary confinement in a cage in the terrace in the Gardens. The ungrateful behaviour of the Guards’ bear must not be taken as a reflection on military treatment of wild animals, for an almost similar instance of the innate surliness of its species occurred many years ago in the establishment of one of those retired East India civilians whose Oriental habits were such a puzzle to the country squires, in the country seats in which the retired “Nabobs” often chose to spend their latter days. The gentleman in question had bought an estate in Devonshire; but it was his pleasure always to be waited upon by a “black man” at dinner, and in the later parts of the evening tosit at table with a pair of black bears, each adorned with a silver collar, seated in a large arm-chair on either side of him. An old Devonshire woman, who had been a servant in his family, took the bears under her charge, and fed them daily, until one of them bit three of the fingers off her hand. This was too much even for her master’s partiality for his pets, and the bears were slaughtered, and their bodies duly boiled down into “bears’ grease,” under the superintendence of their former owner and the attached domestic, who, though approving of the measure, like John Gilpin’s wife, “had still a frugal mind,” and felt that the unexpected supply of an expensive cosmetic should not be wasted.
The Polar bears are perhaps, with the exception of the elephants and other great pachyderms, the longest lived of animals when in captivity. In 1880 the first of the Polar bears died, after spending thirty-four years in Regent’s Park, and the eldest of the pair now in the collection has already spent twenty-six years in the Zoo. This is a splendid animal; at a rough guess it must weigh nearly a ton, and no carnivorous creature approaches it in size and strength. When we recollect that its common prey is the walrus, a sea beast nearly as large as a rhinoceros, seldom moving far from the edge of the ice-floes, and able by mere weight to drag both itself and its enemy into the sea, and to fight for life in its native element, the strength and armament of teeth and claws necessary to destroy it must be greater even than those of the lion, which,with all its weight of bone and muscle, seldom attacks even so large an animal as a buffalo, unless crippled by wounds.
The old Polar bear is now heavy with age and indolence; but the young female exhibits an activity and “lissomness,” whether on land or in the water, which shows how swift, dexterous, and terrible a foe to animal life the Polar bear must be. Confinement and maturity have not in the least abated its vigour, and it seems to enjoy life more than any creature in the Zoo. Fresh water is let into their bath three times in the week, and as soon as the bottom is covered the young bear rolls in and “cuts capers,” to use the keeper’s phrase. “She teased the old one till he got up to have a look, and then shoved him in,” he informed us on a recent visit; and though he seldom enters the bath now, he quite enjoyed it when once under-water. When in the bath by herself the female bear is in a state of pure physical enjoyment delightful to watch. She always prefers to take a “header,” but not after the orthodox fashion, for as her nose touches the bottom she turns a somersault slowly, and then floats to the surface on her back. After several rolls in the water she begins to play. Taking hold of her hind-paws with her fore-feet, she makes a huge ball of her body, and turns round and over with a curiously buoyant, easy movement, occasionally putting her head out to take breath and look at the spectators. Then she clambers out, shakes herself, and gallops round the edge of thebath. In spite of her bulk, this bear is really as active as a cat, and can go at speed round the narrow circle without pausing or missing a step. The next object of the bear is to find something to play with in the water. Anything will do, but if nothing else is handy, she usually produces a nasty bit of stale fish which she seems to keep hidden in some handy place, and dives for it, coming to the surface with the fish balanced on her nose, or on all four paws. If the water is still running in she will lie under the spout, and let it run through her mouth. But the most amusing game in which the writer has seen her occupied was played with a large round stone. After knocking it into the water, and jumping in to fish it out, she took it in her mouth, and endeavoured to push it into the hole in the pipe through which the water was running. This was a difficult matter, for the stone was as large as a tennis-ball, and the pipe was not much wider. Several times the stone dropped out, though the bear held it delicately between her lips, and pushed it out with her tongue. At last she sat up, and holding the stone between her fore-paws, put it up to the pipe and pushed it in with her nose. This was a great triumph, and she retired and contemplated the result with much satisfaction. Later, being apparently tired of this achievement, she threw water at it with her head, and failing to wash it down, picked it out with her claws, and went on diving for it in the bath.
Bears do not often have families in the Zoo. Theyare bad mothers in confinement, though when wild they are most devoted to their pretty little cubs. It must be admitted that they are almost the least well-housed of any creatures in the Gardens, as their dens, though dry, are cold and small. The most remarkable cubs ever born in the Gardens were a cross between the Polar and American black bear, born in 1853. In the spring of 1894, one of the she-bears in the pit gave birth to a litter of two, but one of these was killed by the male bear, and the other fatally injured.
Their place was, however, more than filled by a pair of tiny cubs which arrived at the Gardens on Easter Monday, a gift from Mr. Arnold Pike. They are of the grey Syrian breed, which is found from the Lebanon, across the high lands of Asia Minor, as far as the Caucasus, in which mountains these cubs were found when only a few days’ old. Though in a sense they are distant relations of the bears that ate the bad children who mocked the prophet Elisha, these little fellows were extremely tame and friendly. They were about the size of a large Skye terrier when they arrived, with sawdust-coloured heads, white collars, brown bodies, and sharp noses. They fed heartily on bread-and-milk and treacle, and their little stomachs stuck out roundly in evidence of their appreciation of their diet.
They were extremely sociable, and never quite happy unless people were near them or within sight. When they had human company they sat up,stretching their claws through the bars, in order to take hold of and suck the fingers of any one who would permit it. If not they sucked their own, keeping up a continual humming noise all the time. If left alone this became a loud, sustained complaint, like the noise of a litter of hungry puppies.
Bears are far more difficult to rear than would be thought in the case of such rough, hardy creatures. They are liable even after the first six months to cramp and paralysis of the hind-quarters, which gradually increase until the animal dies.
In winter-time all the bears are worth a visit. The black Himalayan bear, with its white front, the brown Russian and American species, with their magnificent soft fur, and most beautiful of all, the full-grown Syrian bear, with coat of cinnamon-grey, carrying a bloom like that on some soft fruit, are then in perfect condition. The two grizzly bears are interesting mainly on account of their rarity, and the possibility that they may live to develop the huge proportions which American hunters are unanimous in ascribing to the monsters of the Rocky Mountains. But even in full growth, it is much to be doubted whether the grizzly ever reaches the size even of the smaller Polar bear now in the Gardens.