g it again and
of remembering it; for I had never before heard anything like the
sound, and had no idea what creature produced it. There was no
response, however, and I speedily grew interested in the owls; for by
this time two or three more were hooting about me, all called in by
the first comer. When they had gone I tried the strange call again.
Instantly it was answered close at hand. The creature was coming.

I stole out into the middle of the opening, and sat very still on a
fallen log. Ten minutes passed in intense silence. Then a twig snapped
behind me. I turned--and there was Mooween, just coming into the
opening. I shall not soon forget how he looked, standing there big and
black in the moonlight; nor the growl deep down in his throat, that
grew deeper as he watched me. We looked straight into each other's
eyes a brief, uncertain moment. Then he drew back silently into the
dense shadow.

There is another side to Mooween's character, fortunately a rare one,
which is sometimes evident in the mating season, when his temper leads
him to attack instead of running away, as usual; or when wounded, or
cornered, or roused to frenzy in defense of the young. Mooween is then
a beast to be dreaded, a great savage brute, possessed of enormous
strength and of a fiend's cunning. I have followed him wounded through
the wilderness, when his every resting place was scarred with deep
gashes, and where broken saplings testified mutely to the force of his
blow. Yet even here his natural timidity lies close to the surface,
and his ferocity has been greatly exaggerated by hunters.

Altogether, Mooween the Bear is a peaceable fellow, and an interesting
one, well worth studying. His extreme wariness, however, enables him
generally to escape observation; and there are undoubtedly many queer
ways of his yet to be discovered by some one who, instead of trying to
scare the life out of him by a shout or a rifle-shot in the rare
moments when he shows himself, will have the patience to creep near,
and find out just what he is doing. Only in the deepest wilderness is
he natural and unconscious. There he roams about, entirely alone for
the most part, supplying his numerous wants, and performing droll
capers with all the gravity of an owl, when he thinks that not even
Tookhees, the wood-mouse, is looking.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ways of Wood Folk, by William J. Long

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WAYS OF WO