Night of the Grizzlies (2 page)

Farther up the stream is a pool created by those industrious dam builders, the beavers, survivors of the beaver-coat fad of the ’20s and ’30s and the merciless trapping techniques of early woodsmen. Beavers are to be found in substantial numbers all over the Rockies, particularly in the haven called Glacier Park, but now one sees nothing in the pool except a narrow wake that leads out of sight behind some fresh-cut logs. Then one hears the crack, as loud as a pistol shot and just as unnerving. The beaver has whacked the surface of the water with his broad tail and thus warned other beavers in the neighborhood that a large non-beaver is on the premises. Now the animal is safely inside his lodge, his place of concealment given away by the tiny puffs of breath-fog that come out of the topside vent in the chilly morning air of the high mountains.

Swinging through Glacier Park on nature walks, one never knows where to look; there is so much animal life around that the unexpected soon fades into the ordinary. One walks softly alongside a narrow stream, hoping to come upon an otter slide or see the flash of silver that marks a fleeing trout, but instead one rounds a narrow curve and blinks one’s eyes in disbelief: A mouse is chasing a water bug
across the surface
of a pool. All day long, one wonders, but later the nature guide ends the confusion. The mouse was not a mouse at all, but a water shrew, Sorex palustris navigator, a tiny hunter with a pointed nose and webbed feet and blinding speed that enable it to romp across pools without breaking through the surface tension. The same nature guide reveals that the Cinereus shrew, a cousin of the water shrew, is the smallest mammal found in the park, almost never reaching four inches in length and seldom seen by humans. Its life expectancy is almost as short as its body; hawks, owls, and some of the carnivorous mammals wage a constant war on these diminutive animals, often killing one and contemptuously leaving the little carcass behind as not worth the bother.

Wending one’s way farther up the stream, and perhaps daydreaming a bit as the warming sun begins to climb above the treetops, one suddenly becomes aware of a loud hissing sound. In a few more steps, the source of all this anachronistic theatrical noise is found huddled in a narrow cut just below the lip of the bank. The rich brown fur, the tiny patches of white on the chin and throat, and the elongated weasel-like body identify the animal as a mink, one of the bravest and surliest beasts, pound for pound, on the face of the Earth. The larger meat eaters of the park have long since learned that a mink is trouble, and only a few species, such as the horned owl, are considered natural enemies of the feisty aquatic animal with the expensive coat. The mink does not seek out man, but neither does he back away, and long after one continues along the stream, the hissing continues; one wishes that the little beast would shut up lest all the wildlife for miles around be scared away. But there is no danger of that: The fauna of Glacier Park is so rich and varied that it is all but impossible to walk more than a mile without seeing something, perhaps merely a snowshoe rabbit or a Columbia ground squirrel or a Rocky Mountain jumping mouse, but
something
.

Often the seeker after wildlife is stunned by the sight of specimens that would be considered minor miracles of observation if they were spotted outside the limits of the park. There are places near Sperry Glacier where it is a rare day when mountain goats are not visible. Around Many Glacier, a small herd of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep usually is grazing, and a short hike to a nearby overlook will reward the student with a closer view of these prized and rare animals. Elk may be seen along the middle branch of the Flathead River in such numbers that the Park Service has had to consider ways and means of thinning out the herd; there are some 3,000 of the big deerlike mammals in the park, and they are overgrazing their winter range.

Although Glacier Park no longer is home to certain extinct or nearly extinct animals like the bison and the kit fox, it is the last hiding place for several other endangered or rare species. The Rocky Mountain wolf, a noble animal that may weigh as much as 200 pounds and sport a coat of purest white, has all but disappeared from its vast North American habitat, and up to a few years ago, it was thought to be absent from Glacier Park as well. But lately the animal has returned, in small but definite numbers. Many of the “wolf” sightings in the park tum out to be large coyotes, but there have been enough sightings by experts to guarantee that the Rocky Mountain wolf remains in the Rocky Mountains, at least in that portion called Glacier Park.

Although the glamorous animal known to mammologists as Felis concolor missoulensis has all but disappeared from the area around Glacier Park, some are seen each year within the park boundaries, where they apparently have sensed that they cannot be hunted. Felis concoloris the mountain lion, alias cougar, painter, catamount, panther, and puma, and there is no place in the world where this shy, secretive animal may be considered common. Even in Glacier Park, one will almost never see a mountain lion, but sometimes one will spot the track of the cat in fresh snow. It is big and round and unmistakable, and the sight of it gives one a momentary fright, even though the catamount’s personal habits make it about as dangerous to man as the water shrew chasing a bug across a mountain pool.

The wolverine, perhaps even more rare than the mountain lion, carries its heavy weight of legend about Glacier Park and sometimes is seen high-tailing it toward the nearest patch of deep woods. It is said that the wolverine can follow a trapline and remove all the kills and bait without getting caught, that it sometimes will attack and kill moose and elk, and that it will stand up to any animal in the forest, including the bear and the mountain lion. In point of fact, none of these claims can be documented; there are so few wolverines to be observed that folklore has moved in to take the place of science. One can be certain only that the wolverine packs 25 to 35 pounds on a rugged, ursiform body, that it is a close relative of the skunk, and that it prefers to mind its own business. Like most members of the weasel family, the wolverine is a powerful hunter, but it certainly is not the moose killer of Western legend.

The largest of all carnivores in the continental United States, indeed a subspecies of the largest of the world’s terrestrial carnivores, also is to be found within the confines of Glacier Park, although it is doubtful that the species will survive many more decades of nearness to man. The observer may prowl the backcountry of the park for weeks without spotting a specimen of
Ursus arctos horribilis
, but then suddenly a broad expanse of silver and brown will stir into motion in the bushes ahead, rise to its full height of seven or eight feet, shake its great shaggy head from side to side, and disappear into the forest at a speed that belies its quarter ton of sinew and fur and muscle. Then the observer will find that his heart is pounding with mingled fear and pride, and he will rush back to the lodge or the camp or the cabin to tell everyone that he has seen with his own eyes, in its own natural setting and on its own terms, the grandest animal of the North American continent, an animal whose qualities of courage, independence, and intelligence overshadow the bald eagle as a symbol of America.

The bear is called
grizzly
because his silvery white-tipped fur looked, to the early explorers who named him, like the gray in an old man’s hair. Webster still defines “grizzled” as “sprinkled or streaked with gray,” although the word seldom is used nowadays. The grizzly is grizzled, to be sure, but there are wide variations from bear to bear and observer to observer. A grizzly standing in dark shadow in the deep woods may show no silver whatever; seconds later, backlighted by the clear blue sky, he may look as though he has been frosted in a subzero blizzard.

Grizzlies also vary in their underlying color, and the big bear comes in every conceivable shade of black, brown, and white and all possible combinations, from pure white through cream, buff, burnt umber, sienna, chocolate, charcoal gray, charcoal black, midnight black, and gradations in between. To make matters of identification more confusing, some grizzlies have fur of two or even three different shades, or swatches down the back or across the shoulders, or varying colors on their faces and ears and jowls, and all grizzlies change color slightly through the year. Thus it comes as no surprise to naturalists when six people look at the same grizzly and offer six different descriptions.

All will agree, however, that
Ursus arctos horribilis
large, powerfully built, extremely wide across the head, and possessed of a hump above the shoulders that makes him unmistakably a grizzly and not a black bear,
Ursus americana
, the only other bear species common to the continental United States. As the grizzly moves along a trail, its heavy head swings from side to side, the better to sniff the wind and examine the surroundings through its extremely poor eyes. With its hump and its short back legs, the grizzly looks like an animal trudging uphill. But if something should arouse it, such as the most insignificant whiff of man smell, the illusion of ponderousness is immediately dispelled, and the grizzly is sprinting away and out of sight with a speed that eternally confuses those who think of all large bears as slow and ungainly. The grizzly’s speed is somewhere between the speeds of man and horse. Based on estimates made by those few who have been able to clock the animal over measured distances, the big bear would beat the world’s fastest humans by 30 or 35 yards in the 100 yard dash, and by a third to a half mile in the mile run. In forest terms, this means that a grizzly on a ridge 300 yards away can be at one’s side in twenty seconds if he chooses to be. Fortunately, not one grizzly in 10,000 chooses to be.

Anatomically, the grizzly is a magnificently designed machine with heavy, powerful muscles, thick bones of dense cellular structure, and a collection of joints that are loose and flexible, similar in principle to the universal joints of an automobile, enabling the animal to function from almost any position. The teeth are canine and the molars large, equipping the grizzly for both cutting and grinding, and the jaws are powered by two massive muscles that make the side of the bear’s head seem to jut out and enable him to crunch through almost anything softer than steel. The muscles of his forelegs are similarly oversized, and there are numerous cases on record of grizzlies fracturing the skulls of bull elk and full-grown horses with a single swipe. As if the front paws were not lethal enough already, they are equipped with curving claws from four to six inches long, useful for the digging that grizzlies enjoy and the fighting that they usually try to avoid. All four feet are plantigrade, like man’s, with rudimentary heels and balls and nails in the form of the razor-sharp claws.

The grizzly’s hearing is about equal to man’s, his eyes markedly inferior, his nose one of the sharpest in the animal kingdom. Woodsmen used to say, “The pine needle fell. The eagle saw it. The deer heard it. The bear smelled it.” Indeed, if the grizzly does not smell something, he remains doubtful that it is there, even if the something is as big as a house. Because he stands alone at the top of the North American peck order, the grizzly is not in the least reluctant to approach anything that moves until he gets close enough to make a positive identification, either with his inferior eyes or his superior nose. Sometimes this approach is made at top speed, and many a hiker in places like Glacier Park has had the wits scared out of him by a grizzly that seemed to be charging down the wind at him but at the last second whirled about and ran upwind twice as fast. Some park officials attribute at least half of all reported grizzly “attacks” to the phenomenon of the bear’s poor eyesight and limitless curiosity, which sometimes cause him to get closer than he himself intends to get. In almost every case, the grizzly will depart at high speed the instant he recognizes his one natural enemy on Earth: man. This does not keep the unsuspecting human from climbing trees first and asking questions afterward. Not frequently, but often enough to keep the hiker honest, a grizzly will keep right on going and bowl his victim over. This is part of the animal’s vast reservoir of unpredictability, an unpredictability that is the quintessential nature of the beast. Former
Sports Illustrated
editor-conservationist Andre Laguerre had a saying to the effect that no statement about wildlife is more than 60 percent true; in the case of the grizzly bear, one is tempted to lop off an additional 10 or 20 percent. For example, it has been recorded for decades that grizzlies cannot climb trees, this inability having something to do with the tremendous weight they must pull up with muscles made for other uses. But every four or five years, someone reports a case of a grizzly high in a tree, chasing another animal or looking for some greenery to stuff in his stomach. One such report of a tree-climbing grizzly came from Jasper, Alberta, Canada, and the observer may be reckoned to have known what he was talking about: The bear, enraged about something or other, was coming up the tree after him. It reached him, pulled him down, and knocked him silly.

If there is such a thing as a creature of habit and unpredictability, it is
Ursus horribilis
. In some of the wilder parts of their habitat, grizzlies frequent trails used by other bears, and the result is a peculiar sort of path with a high crown a few inches Wide in the middle and two deep ruts alongside, where the heavy claws of hundreds of bears have scraped away the dirt. There are grizzly paths where individual steps have been worn into the ground by habit-bound bears literally following in the footsteps of others. Another bear habit is the scratching of long slashes in trees, and one can tell when a grizzly is around by the exceptional height of the marking.

Female grizzlies keep their cubs with them for two years or more, and during that time they evidence no interest in matters of sex. When at last the female is ready to accept a mate and begin another family, she puts the male grizzly through an absolute hell of frenzied anticipation. For days, she will allow him to follow her around, but she will not permit him to lay a paw on her in passion. The two bears will play together, sleep alongside each other, hunt as a pair, and stuff their stomachs together, but until the female is good and ready, they will not unite in physical matrimony. Each time the randy male comes too close, the sow lopes away, and the fatigued suitor must follow her and await his chance or go and seek another mate who will only treat him the same. When the great event takes place, after days and days of frustration and miles and miles of travel, it lasts for twenty or thirty minutes, and then the two big furry lovers scurry toward different points of the compass as though they can no longer stand the sight of each other.