A FAMILY OF FOUR

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 6, Issue 41, 22 January 1943, Page 7

A FAMILY OF FOUR

. A mother bear with four eubs has been rivaling the mountain laurel and purple rhododendron as a tourist show in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park this year. Only once before have, black bear quadruplets been reported by wildlife experts. They're so unusual, park naturalists discounted the first reports of them in the Great Smokies. ! But they arc really there. Throngs now gather . around the big, 300pound mother bear and the four romping little ones that look like the ted.dy bear dolls, from the store. The mother stays along the roadside near Indian Gap ami begs food from passing tourists. She is there almost every day. Her quartet of cubs usually romp in the grass and undergrowth near by, of scamper up and down near-Joy trees. Occasionally, the mother takes them across the road. The cubs wrestle with each other. Two were seen to climb a tree, and go to sleep on a branch. Ed Green, park wildlife technician, says that climbing is one of the first things a young bear learns, because only high in a tree is it relatively safe from its enemies. The little, cubs climb by their claws, rather than by hugging the tree trunk. A group of tourists had gathered about the mother and two cubs on one side of the road, when the mother noticed the two other cubs romping on a bank on the opposite, side. She stood on hind, feet to get a gooil look at them over the top of the car. The people between her and her two other cubs sensed danger and. scattered. A second later, the mother dashed between cars across the highway to the romping cubs, gave them a slap with her paw, and brought them back across the road to the others. Mother bears insist on strict discipline from their young. These quadruplets arc believed to be the second set born in a national park. In 1939, a set was born in Sequoia National Park in California. Many magazines carried articles and pictures of them. American black bears are usually born in litters of two or singly, although triplets, are not uncommon. One bear in the Great Smokies, seen at a lower elevation on the road to Newfound Gap, bore triplets this year.