less than
three months old--because we were still living in the same place,
whereas when summer came we moved away, as bears always do, and had no
fixed home during the hot months.

Bear-cubs are born when the mother is still in her winter den, and they
are usually five or six weeks old before they come out into the world at
all. Even then at first, when the cubs are very young, the family stays
close at home, and for some time I imagine that the longest journey I
made was when I tumbled those fifty feet downhill. Father or mother
might wander away alone in the early morning or evening for a while, but
for the most part we were all four at home by the rock and the
cedar-trees, with the bare brown tree-trunks growing up all round out of
the bare brown mountain-sides, and Kahwa and I spending our time lying
sleepily cuddled up to mother, or romping together and wishing we could
catch squirrels.

There were a great many squirrels about--large gray ones mostly; but
living in a fir-tree close by us was a black one with a deplorable
temper.

Every day he used to come and quarrel with us. Whenever he had nothing
particular to do, he would say to himself, "I'll go and tease those old
bears." And he did. His plan was to get on our trees from behind, where
we could not see him, then to come round on our side about five or six
feet from the ground, just safely out of reach, and there, hanging head
downwards, call us every name he could think of. Squirrels have an awful
vocabulary, but I never knew one that could talk like Blacky. And every
time he thought of something new to say he waved his tail at us in a way
that was particularly aggravating. You have no idea how other animals
poke fun at us because we have no tails, and how sensitive we really are
on the subject. They say that it was to hide our lack of tail that we
originally got into the habit of sitting up on our haunches whenever we
meet a stranger.

Very soon we began to be taken out on long excursions, going all four
together, as I have said, and then we began to learn how much that is
nice to eat there is in the world.

You have probably no idea, for instance, how many good things there may
be under one rotting log. Even if you do not get a mouse or a chipmunk,
you are sure of a fringe of greenstuff which, from lack of sunlight, has
grown white and juicy, and almost as sure of some mushrooms or other
fungi, most of which are delicious. But before you can touch the