Another amusing incident also happened in the Yellowstone. As the stage
arrived at the Cañon Hotel, one of the passengers, who had been having
much to say concerning bears, put on his raincoat and got down on all
fours, proceeding to impersonate a bear. While this demonstration was on
a grizzly arrived. He made a rush at the man and chased him up a tree,
amid laughter and excitement. The bear made no attempt to harm any one
and plainly enjoyed this prank merely as a prank.
A grizzly mother in Yellowstone Park was catching trout for her cubs one
June day of 1891, when a friend and I came along. We went near to watch
them. Mother grizzly charged; we fled. After one leap she stood still
and appeared to be almost grinning at us. We went back, she charged, and
again we ran, although she stopped at the end of the first leap. But the
third time she leaped at us we stood our ground. She growled but came no
nearer. Although her threats did not appear to be in earnest, we did not
risk going closer; nor would I have risked standing even at that
distance if we had been outside of the Park boundary.
One day I saw a bear who appeared to be suffering from a headache. A
short time before he had eaten an enormous quantity of garbage. This may
have been his first dinner at a garbage-pile. Standing up, he felt of
his head with first one fore paw and then the other. Then, lying down,
he endeavored to hold his head in both fore paws. He had just thrust it
into a stream and was trying to rub it with his paw when I last saw him.
On another occasion I noticed a bear suffering from a toothache. He felt
of his tooth, clawed at it, and in a number of other ways showed his
annoyance.
In the Yellowstone the environment of grizzlies was radically changed
when it became a wild-life reservation. The numerous bear-population
quickly discovered that in the Park it would not be shot at. Grizzlies
at once wandered about near people with no attempt to conceal themselves
and with the best of manners; there was no annoying of people, no
crossness, no ferocity. This ideal association of people and grizzly
bears went on unmarred for years.
Numbers of bears from far outside Park boundaries came to spend two or
three months of each summer there, returning to home territory during
the autumn. Other grizzlies left their homes outside the Park and moved
in to stay. Whether the summer migrant bears or the recent residents
came to the Park because of the food, the safety, or both is difficult
to say. Unusual opportunities were furnished Park visitors to study and
observe the grizzly, with beneficial influence on themselves. But their
worrying of the bears in time proved harmful.