Dog Days Of Summer

The dog days of summer are upon us, and no where is it more noticeable than in the hollows and valleys that crisscross Tower road in Yellowstone National Park. Dog days are the days of late summer usually between the last week of July until the middle of August, when the very air you breathe is hot, humid, and oppressive. It saps the vitality and enthusiasm for life right out of your body and leaves you just plain tired. And if the truth be known kind of cranky.

Actually up in Yellowstone, Dog days are a misnomer as there are very few dogs in the park, due to the fact that the wolves and bears like to eat them, so the bears fill in for them. This is Rosie. Rosie has been on display since early March, dutifully bringing out her twins, Virgil and Emma, so the tourists can see real live bears in the wild. The kids have been a handful and hardly notice the weather, Dog days or not, and fill up Rosie’s time with child management skills she has acquired over years and years of raising cubs.

Today’s a little different because she has just about reached her limit. Her teeth hurt, the bottom of her feet are sweating and she had decided to shave off her coat. She has sent the kids up a tree and told them it was quiet time and when they asked her when they could come back down she answered “Maybe in the Spring.” The oppressive air has weighed her down until she feels like she couldn’t move again in this lifetime. She’s been through this before but every year it gets a little tougher to deal with. This year has been particularly trying for some reason. Maybe its because she isn’t a spring chicken any more, or maybe it’s because it really is worse than usual. Anyway she needs to sit quietly, breath shallowly, and think about swimming across the Yellowstone river about a hundred times. Real slow. In fact she might just stop in the middle, it’s shallow there and take a nap. That would be good.

Bears, even Rosie, do not use calendars. They don’t know that there’s only a few more days maybe a long week or so and this will be all over. It will start to cool down, the trees will start to turn and they’ll have to get busy eating Miller Moths, grubs, grass and roadkill to fatten up. The mornings will be crisp and cool. An occasional early frost will rime the grass along the river banks and there’s the den to think about. Right now though that might as well be in the next century. It’s hot now. She may take a nap, and those kids better not come down if they know what’s good for them. Maybe it’ll be cooler tonight.

Up Past Her Bedtime

UpPastHerBedtime2644Black Bear Yellowstone                                               Click to enlarge

Well it happened again. Rosie, the queen of Mt. Washburn, well-known party bear and frequent mother, attended one too many parties and has been caught out in the open by an early winter snowfall.

The younger bears, who have no sense of propriety, invited her to one last bash up on the mountain where they feasted on white bark pine nuts until they collapsed in a heap, satiated and oblivious to the weather. Rosie, usually the image of some what dubious respectability, over-indulged and is now feeling the effects of her behavior.

Rosie knows better and she is beginning to see her lack of good sense has put her in a precarious position. She has to shake off the pine nut induced stupor and get busy finding that den she should already be in. She’s eaten enough for two bears and the twins she is carrying will be well provided for through the long cold winter.

Before we’re too hard on Rosie we need to realize that she has been a good mother and having a new set of kids every two years has taxed her to the limit. She is due to let off a little steam and as one of the most experienced bears in the park she won’t have any trouble ‘denning up’ and settling in for the winter. So before those who would cast the first Turkey leg, or in Rosie’s case the first bushel of pine nuts, begin to chastise her, remember the number of times you went back for seconds or thirds on the white meat and mashed potatoes and cut her some slack. Myself I’m still trying to walk off that 4 pounds of oyster dressing I ate. In fact I wonder if there’s any of that left. Go to go, the refrigerator’s calling.

Sittin’ Here In La La Waitin’ for My …

SittinHereInlala8477click to enlarge

It isn’t often that we’re allowed a rare glimpse into the private lives of the inhabitants of Yellowstone. But that’s the case this morning as we see Rosie, a single mom, taking a few moments to herself. The kids are up a tree, they’ve been fed, and this opportunity to stop and take stock of her life comes all too infrequently. She thinks about the dreams she had as a young bear when anything was possible and she thinks about how full her life has been with two cubs every two years as regular as clockwork. She was a victim of her own biology but it was a choice she willing made at the time. But sometimes she wonders if there wasn’t more to life than she received.

At times like this she sometimes feels that there is something missing. Always in the back of her mind is the thought of Big Red, the bear that has had sired so many of her cubs. She wishes he were around more instead of the visits he pays her every other year, but she also knows that isn’t realistic. They fight, she has to constantly be on guard when he’s around the kids as he is a stern father given to moments of unexpected rage. And of course there is that wandering eye of his, but she misses him, sometimes. Like now.

The kids are wrestling up in the tree and the smaller one is squalling, scared he’s going to fall. She woofs once quietly and they cease their constant bickering. They’ll be down soon, hungry, and she’ll be nursing them until its time to feed herself and then it starts all over again. These moments come too infrequently and she cherishes her time alone. These are first year cubs so she won’t see Red for another year and a half. But there’s plenty to do, twins are a pawfull.