Houseboat Chronicles: Notes from a life in Shield Country (2002) by Jake MacDonald

Author:Jake MacDonald
Format: epub
Published: 2002-06-06T16:00:00+00:00

24

I cooked dinner and waited for the sun to go down. What I knew about bears was a combination of information from old-timers like Junior Robinson, book research, and some first-hand experience with bears in the bush. They were intriguing animals, and I liked them. But I liked them in daylight.

When the first Europeans arrived in North America they encountered three species of bears. The most abundant species was the blond-haired plains grizzly, Ursus horribilis, a behemoth that prowled the plains from Mexico to the Arctic. When Lewis and Clark travelled up the Missouri, they encountered these bears almost daily. Grizzlies have a touchy sense of personal space, and they often attacked the explorers on sight. The expedition members carried only primitive muskets, and sometimes had to fire a dozen balls into an attacking bear before it died.

It’s very difficult to visualize the Great Plains of that era. Driving across Manitoba or North Dakota today, through a manicured landscape of roads and geometric cereal farms, you have to make a considerable effort to visualize the Serengeti-like wilderness that once existed on the prairies. You have to imagine a rolling ocean of thick green grass spangled with wildflowers. The dominant species of grass was big bluestem, a magnificent species that grew eight feet tall. A prairie covered with bluestem rolled off to the horizon like a purplish-green ocean, changing colour in the gusts of wind. Big bluestem was tall enough to hide a rider on horseback, and herds of buffalo flowed through it like schools of fish.

No one knows how many buffalo roamed the Great Plains. It was certainly tens of millions. In 1870 Phil Sheridan, who was an excitable boy, saw a herd of buffalo he estimated at 100 million. But only ten years later they were all gone. One autumn day in 1883 a large bull ran through the town of Souris, Manitoba, crashing through fences and clotheslines. A local man named A.S. Barton grabbed his gun and his horse and chased the bull. Here was a chance to bag the last one! Barton lost the bull when it swam the Souris River, and although the Plain Dealer notified the public, the bull was never seen again. With the passing of the buffalo the grizzlies also disappeared. Modern-day farmers occasionally dig up a skull, but grizzlies no longer survive on the plains. A few grizzlies still eke out a living on the northern barrens, but most have retreated into the dense forests and mountains of British Columbia.

The second species, polar bears, live in the Arctic and spend most of their lives either hunting on the ice or hanging out on the coast, waiting for the ice to return. They have a Velcro-like coating on their feet, which provides traction on the ice. Polar bears are actually black, but their translucent pelts make them appear white. Each hair is like a hollow fibre-optic cable that pipes sunlight down to their skin. Bears are highly individual animals, and trying to predict a bear’s behaviour is like trying to predict a person’s behaviour.

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