It's been a while since I told a story. This story has absolutely no machining content, but you will find it interesting. It is a true story, and I have just written it this afternoon to add to my archives.--Don't get on my case about the paragraph structure, because when I copy and paste into the forum, it loses all of its formatting.--Brian
Pet Bears
Everybody who lives up north, be it USA or Canada will have some kind of bear story to tell.—The bear chased me---The bear chased my dogs---The bear wrecked our tent—and so on. I have a very different bear story to tell, so bear with me and I will tell a tale.
My father was a lumberjack, and in the years between the end of world war 2 and the beginning of the 1960’s, he spent most of his winters in the logging camps, away from home during the winter months.
One March when I was about 9 years old,(about 1955) my dad and my uncle Charlie Martin were logging from home---that is taking white pine off our own 50 acres instead of being in a camp for the winter. My father fell (that`s ``cut down`` for you non loggers) a big white pine, but instead of falling cleanly, it hung up in the limbs of a dead but still standing ash tree, creating one of the worst hazards that loggers had to contend with. The dead ash had a large and sprawling root system, which was partially frost heaved out of the ground, to the point where it was three of four feet above the snow and surrounding groundcover
My father climbed up onto the top of this tangle of exposed roots, and began very carefully to notch the dead ash to make it fall in the right direction to bring it down and bring the white pine down with it.
That was when a very upset and angry sow bear stuck her head out of the tangle, right between my old man`s feet!!! Now after spending five years fighting with allied troops and surviving, it didn`t take Angus long to make a very quick decision. He had a chainsaw---and it was a bear----
After the bear was dispatched and the tree cut down, they backed up uncle Charlie`s team of Bays to the tangle and hooked the chains to the bear and pulled her all the way out of the den.—(And yes, we did indeed eat bear meat whenever we had the chance). When the bear was removed from what proved to be her den, there were 3 newly born cubs inside.
My Uncle Charlie picked up all three cubs and packed them away into the pocket of his Mackinaw coat and brought them up to our house.
As I remember, (and it was a long time ago) the cubs weren`t much bigger than week old puppies. They didn`t have their eyes open yet, and they were very hungry. We didn`t have any `real` milk, but we did have cans of Carnation condensed milk, and we did have honey. My mother mixed up a concoction of canned milk, water, and honey, and rounded up an old baby bottle with a rubber nipple, and it was my job to feed the bears.
This was very fascinating for me, and when the bears weren`t eating, they slept in a cardboard box with an old shirt in it behind the cookstove to keep them warm.
After about 10 days, their eyes opened, and they were quite adventurous, spilling out of the cardboard box and exploring the kitchen and surrounding rooms. They loved me, and loved to play, just like puppies.—they weren`t house broke either, so when I hear that old question—“Does a bear $hit in the woods`` I can answer quite honestly “Yes, and everywhere else, too!!” and I was the clean-up boy.
We kept the bears indoors through the rest of March and April, but by May the snow had melted, and the bears and I began making sorties outside. I had named all three of the bears by this time, and they knew their names and would come to me when I called them. They were very affectionate, and loved to wrestle and play.
Then disaster struck. Uncle Charlie kept a bag of oats for his horses in our little barn, and I believe that it was a mix of oats and molasses that the horses dearly loved. The barn door was left open, and one of the bears got into the barn, ripped the bag open and gorged itself on the sweet oats. The oats swelled from the moisture in the bears stomach, and the bear was unable to pass the oats, and it died very quickly.—Mind you, we didn’t really have access to any real veterinarys, and even if we had, there would have been no money to afford one.
I was heartbroken, but the remaining two cubs and I had some wonderful fun that spring.---But---They were bears!! They grew very quickly, and their teeth and claws seemed to grow almost faster than the rest of them. They weren’t mean nor ferocious at all, but they didn’t realize that 9 year old boys weren’t quite as tough skinned as your average bear. After a couple of months, I was beginning to look like I spent my time in a tigers cage. All of my clothes were ripped, and my skin had darned near as many rips in it as my clothes did.
Finally my father and mother decided that no matter how good tempered the bears were, they had to go if their son was to survive.
Fortunately, they didn’t go far. Out at the end of our sideroad was a generals store/gas bar/ restaurant that volunteered to keep the bears, as a tourist attraction. The bears were collared and chained to an iron stake in the front lawn, and they did prove to be a great draw for tourists and home-folk too.
The bears would hold an ice cream cone in both front paws and eat it just like a kid, and they loved to drink bottles of grape pop which they held between their front paws and stood up on their hind legs to drink just like a kid would.
However, if the treat was taken away from the bears, they got pretty upset.---Remember the teeth and claws?—And they would climb a man just like a tree if the treat was with-held from them. It was too good to last. Eventually some fellow from down south and his 14 year old son stopped to get gas in their car, and the son started to tease the bears by holding an ice cream cone over his head where they couldn’t reach it. Non-plussed, the bears climbed him right to the top of his outstretched arm, and got the ice cream---and the kid lost a pound of flesh in the bargain.
The bears (which were getting pretty darned big by then) were moved down to Kaladar on highway #7, and lived out the rest of their lives in an iron cage, again as a tourist attraction—but this time with a protective fence around the perimeter of the cage to keep people far enough away from the bears to avoid being shredded.
The remarkable thing about his all, is that my mother was a picture maniac with her old Kodak camera. I have dozens of old black and white pictures of me and my “pet bears” which I can trot out and show my unbelieveing grandchildren.
Hope you enjoyed my bear story.---Brian Rupnow---Feb.2015
Pet Bears
Everybody who lives up north, be it USA or Canada will have some kind of bear story to tell.—The bear chased me---The bear chased my dogs---The bear wrecked our tent—and so on. I have a very different bear story to tell, so bear with me and I will tell a tale.
My father was a lumberjack, and in the years between the end of world war 2 and the beginning of the 1960’s, he spent most of his winters in the logging camps, away from home during the winter months.
One March when I was about 9 years old,(about 1955) my dad and my uncle Charlie Martin were logging from home---that is taking white pine off our own 50 acres instead of being in a camp for the winter. My father fell (that`s ``cut down`` for you non loggers) a big white pine, but instead of falling cleanly, it hung up in the limbs of a dead but still standing ash tree, creating one of the worst hazards that loggers had to contend with. The dead ash had a large and sprawling root system, which was partially frost heaved out of the ground, to the point where it was three of four feet above the snow and surrounding groundcover
My father climbed up onto the top of this tangle of exposed roots, and began very carefully to notch the dead ash to make it fall in the right direction to bring it down and bring the white pine down with it.
That was when a very upset and angry sow bear stuck her head out of the tangle, right between my old man`s feet!!! Now after spending five years fighting with allied troops and surviving, it didn`t take Angus long to make a very quick decision. He had a chainsaw---and it was a bear----
After the bear was dispatched and the tree cut down, they backed up uncle Charlie`s team of Bays to the tangle and hooked the chains to the bear and pulled her all the way out of the den.—(And yes, we did indeed eat bear meat whenever we had the chance). When the bear was removed from what proved to be her den, there were 3 newly born cubs inside.
My Uncle Charlie picked up all three cubs and packed them away into the pocket of his Mackinaw coat and brought them up to our house.
As I remember, (and it was a long time ago) the cubs weren`t much bigger than week old puppies. They didn`t have their eyes open yet, and they were very hungry. We didn`t have any `real` milk, but we did have cans of Carnation condensed milk, and we did have honey. My mother mixed up a concoction of canned milk, water, and honey, and rounded up an old baby bottle with a rubber nipple, and it was my job to feed the bears.
This was very fascinating for me, and when the bears weren`t eating, they slept in a cardboard box with an old shirt in it behind the cookstove to keep them warm.
After about 10 days, their eyes opened, and they were quite adventurous, spilling out of the cardboard box and exploring the kitchen and surrounding rooms. They loved me, and loved to play, just like puppies.—they weren`t house broke either, so when I hear that old question—“Does a bear $hit in the woods`` I can answer quite honestly “Yes, and everywhere else, too!!” and I was the clean-up boy.
We kept the bears indoors through the rest of March and April, but by May the snow had melted, and the bears and I began making sorties outside. I had named all three of the bears by this time, and they knew their names and would come to me when I called them. They were very affectionate, and loved to wrestle and play.
Then disaster struck. Uncle Charlie kept a bag of oats for his horses in our little barn, and I believe that it was a mix of oats and molasses that the horses dearly loved. The barn door was left open, and one of the bears got into the barn, ripped the bag open and gorged itself on the sweet oats. The oats swelled from the moisture in the bears stomach, and the bear was unable to pass the oats, and it died very quickly.—Mind you, we didn’t really have access to any real veterinarys, and even if we had, there would have been no money to afford one.
I was heartbroken, but the remaining two cubs and I had some wonderful fun that spring.---But---They were bears!! They grew very quickly, and their teeth and claws seemed to grow almost faster than the rest of them. They weren’t mean nor ferocious at all, but they didn’t realize that 9 year old boys weren’t quite as tough skinned as your average bear. After a couple of months, I was beginning to look like I spent my time in a tigers cage. All of my clothes were ripped, and my skin had darned near as many rips in it as my clothes did.
Finally my father and mother decided that no matter how good tempered the bears were, they had to go if their son was to survive.
Fortunately, they didn’t go far. Out at the end of our sideroad was a generals store/gas bar/ restaurant that volunteered to keep the bears, as a tourist attraction. The bears were collared and chained to an iron stake in the front lawn, and they did prove to be a great draw for tourists and home-folk too.
The bears would hold an ice cream cone in both front paws and eat it just like a kid, and they loved to drink bottles of grape pop which they held between their front paws and stood up on their hind legs to drink just like a kid would.
However, if the treat was taken away from the bears, they got pretty upset.---Remember the teeth and claws?—And they would climb a man just like a tree if the treat was with-held from them. It was too good to last. Eventually some fellow from down south and his 14 year old son stopped to get gas in their car, and the son started to tease the bears by holding an ice cream cone over his head where they couldn’t reach it. Non-plussed, the bears climbed him right to the top of his outstretched arm, and got the ice cream---and the kid lost a pound of flesh in the bargain.
The bears (which were getting pretty darned big by then) were moved down to Kaladar on highway #7, and lived out the rest of their lives in an iron cage, again as a tourist attraction—but this time with a protective fence around the perimeter of the cage to keep people far enough away from the bears to avoid being shredded.
The remarkable thing about his all, is that my mother was a picture maniac with her old Kodak camera. I have dozens of old black and white pictures of me and my “pet bears” which I can trot out and show my unbelieveing grandchildren.
Hope you enjoyed my bear story.---Brian Rupnow---Feb.2015
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