The Way of the Wild (Hawkes)/Johnny Bear and Other Winter Sleepers
Johnny Bear is born in February down under the ground in the dark, in his mother's winter parlor. But before I tell you more of Johnny Bear and his sister, I shall have to tell you something of his mother, so you will know just how she happened to be living underground.
All through the summer months the old bear is roaming about the fields and woods. During July and August she lives on blueberries, blackberries, and any other berries that she can find. She will stand in front of a blueberry bush and swoop off the berries with her long tongue in a very lively manner. In the autumn she changes her diet to nuts and roots. She occasionally varies this with a young pig or sheep if she can find these delicacies.
Something tells her that the winter will be long and hard, and that she must lay up lots of fat, so she eats and eats until her ribs are covered with fat.
By the time the first snows come she is almost as fat as a pig. Also about this time she feels very sleepy. She tries to stay awake, but spite of all she can do, the drowsiness steals upon her. This means that she is getting ready for her long winter sleep. So she searches about for a place to make her winter parlor.
She usually finds just the right spot under the top of a fallen spruce or pine tree. Here she digs under and burrows about until she has made a large hole where she snuggles down and finally the deep snow comes and covers her all over with warm white blankets.
She is so completely covered up that if you were to go very close to her winter parlor you would not know that a bear was there at all.
The only evidence that she was sleeping there would be a small hole in the snow. This is melted by her breath as she lies asleep. This is the bear's chimney, and the only opening in her parlor. While she is still partly asleep Jolinny Bear and his sister are born. The old bear almost always has twins. Once in a great while there are three little bears, but two is the usual number.
These little bears are very helpless little fellows and you would not think by their looks that they would ever be full-grown bears.
They are hairless and blind for several days. But they do not mind, for it is so dark down in this underground parlor that they could not see there if they had the best of eyes.
For the first month or six weeks they spend all their time nursing the mother bear and sleeping. Sleeping and eating make all young creatures grow rapidly. So it is with the young bears. When the old bear finally brings them forth into the great wide world in April, they are quite respectable little bears, as large as a small cat.
The very first lesson that they are taught, and this is the first lesson that all the woodland babies are taught, is to mind. All the woodland babies mind much better than children do. This is because their mothers are very strict. If mother bear told Johnny and his sister to stay under a fallen tree out of sight while she went for food and they disobeyed her, she would box their ears most severely. This is a very necessary thing as there are many dangers in the great woods and the little creatures must mind their mothers if they do not want to come to harm. So strict obedience is the first law of the wild family.
The raccoon, who is the smallest of all the bear family, and who is often called the Little Brother to the Bear, is also a winter sleeper.
His winter parlor, however, is in quite a different place from that of Johnny Bear. When Mr. Raccoon feels the winter drowsiness coming upon him, he looks about in the woods until he finds a hollow stump about fifteen feet high. He climbs up this old hollow stump and inspects it. If it is hollow for several feet down inside, he concludes it is all right.
When it gets so cold and the snow is so deep that he does not want to venture outside, he will take possession of his tree and there he will sleep most of the winter through.
Chucky, the woodchuck, is another winter sleeper. All summer long he will store up fat, eating the farmer's beans, and other vegetables, until in the autumn he is just a ball of fat.
He goes to bed quite early in the autumn and we do not see him again until spring.
The smallest of all the winter sleepers is the chipmunk. Mr. Chipmunk is a very wise little chap. He has stored up a good supply of nuts and grain under the roots of an old tree. So while the wind howls outside and the snows fall, he eats and sleeps the long winter through.
Most of the reptiles and also the toads and frogs are winter sleepers. It is a very common thing to find in the late autumn a wood frog already sleeping in his bed of leaves. Mr. Wood Frog, who has a spotted, tan-colored coat, will find a place in a hollow where the leaves are deep. Here he will make himself a fine bed by wriggling down under the dead leaves. Finally the winds will cover him completely and with his head bent forward on his breast, and his hands folded on his knees, he will sleep the winter away. As he sits there he looks very mueh as though he were saying his prayers. Perhaps he is saying frog prayers. Who knows?
Once when a boy I found a striped snake in a hollow tree in the winter time. He was frozen quite stiff. As he had his head slightly bent forward, it made a good crook and I called him my snake cane. I was rather careful, however, not to lean too heavily on him as I knew he was quite brittle in that frozen state. I carried him home and set him up behind the stove, without thinking of what might happen.
Half an hour later I heard a scream from my small sister. Mr. Snake had thawed out and was crawling slowly around the room. He was probably greatly astonished and was trying to make out where he was and what was happening.
One of the first things that the toads and frogs do after coming out of their winter sleep is to put on a perfectly new suit of clothes.
This they do by pulling off the old skin. There is a new skin under it, so without much trouble Mrs. Frog and Mrs. Toad are provided with the very latest spring styles. Fortunately for them, however, the styles do not change, so they are all right (if the suit is new).
So you see this winter sleep is simply a wise provision of nature by means of which many of the wild creatures who could not live and procure food outside in the cold, sleep the winter away and come out again in the spring ready for the new life, none the worse for their long winter's sleep. These creatures are called hibernators, which means winter sleepers.