Among the Bears: Raising Orphan Cubs in the Wild - Hardcover

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Because we had two females this time we needed names to distinguish them. We named one Curls for the curly hair on her forehead; the other, who was smaller, became Squirty. The boy we left at that-The Boy. Almost immediately they began to show not only their physically distinguishing marks, but their personalities as well. Within a month, while the cubs were still upstairs, The Boy began escaping from the pen and letting loose with a series of distress calls as soon as he found himself separated from his sisters, who would then try to join him. Already he was showing himself to be the explorer of the group.

One of the immediate differences I could see between raising these new cubs and the first two was that I could now recognize their behaviors as they developed. Whenever they were scared, either by a sound or a smell, they would "tree" to the highest pillow on the bed or on me if I were with them, all the way up to my head and shoulders. They suckled my ears and fingers and wrestled to bond with each other and with me. In my case they wrestled with my hand, but I knew what it meant. Even today-in her sixth year and at times well over two hundred pounds-when I meet her in the woods every spring, Squirty and I wrestle to get reaquainted.