Wading into the water a bear will knock out the
salmon right and left when they are running thick.
Flesh and fish do not constitute the grisly's ordinary diet. At most
times the big bear is a grubber in the ground, an eater of insects,
roots, nuts, and berries. Its dangerous fore-claws are normally used to
overturn stones and knock rotten logs to pieces, that it may lap up the
small tribes of darkness which swarm under the one and in the other.
It digs up the camas roots, wild onions, and an occasional luckless
woodchuck or gopher. If food is very plenty bears are lazy, but commonly
they are obliged to be very industrious, it being no light task to
gather enough ants, beetles, crickets, tumble-bugs, roots, and nuts to
satisfy the cravings of so huge a bulk. The sign of a bear's work is, of
course, evident to the most unpracticed eye; and in no way can one get a
better idea of the brute's power than by watching it busily working
for its breakfast, shattering big logs and upsetting boulders by sheer
strength.
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