Fuzzy-Wuzz, a little brown bear of the Sierras

THE stars, twinkling like diamonds on a black velvet sky, looked down that night on a tender sight. A huge brown bear lay in the mouth of her cave in the rocks above the falls,...

HAD the man been nearer, mother brown bear would have fought to save her cubs. But there was time for escape. As quick as lightning she turned and went racing back to the den, h...

Every few hours the Ranger stopped to give him a panful of warm milk, and at night, when the mountain air turned chill, he snuggled the little bear under the blankets, though he...

FUZZY-WUZZ made a big mistake when he tried to grab that owl. For no sooner had he got a taste of the feathers than Clickety-Clack was after him with beak and claws. When they f...

Fuzzy-Wuzz was now a four months’ cub and much larger than when the Ranger brought him home,--a bear as big as a house cat. He made an armful for the children. And where at firs...

YES, sir! Fuzzy was a mighty frightened bear cub as the cougar’s cry chilled the night. He waited in his tree top with straining ears. The cry had ceased, but he dare not climb...

BACKING down the tree trunk, the runaway began looking about him for something to eat. It was the little bear’s first experience at fending for himself. Had he not been taken fr...

HAD the bear cub and the fawn been older, they would never have been friends; but these were both such babies that the little bear much preferred his milk to venison, and the fa...

ONE morning a party of huntsmen stopped at the Ranger’s cabin. It was open season for deer, and they meant to make the most of those few weeks by shooting what the law allowed t...

She had made her big clay nest on a beam of the porch, where the young birds would be sheltered from wind and rain. The young robins would flop to the ground, when she urged the...

The pretty creatures lived along the rock ledges and manzanita bushes that surrounded the Ranger’s cabin. Chuck and Chipper were two young chipmunks who had been born that sprin...

THE Ranger was leading his horse down a steep trail one day, the dust rising yellowly in the noon-day calm, when he came to an inviting bit of shade and took out his lunch. For...

From an entrance hole under a rock just large enough to let her in, and not large enough for a weasel, Mother Chipmunk had built a branching tunnel that led for many feet under...

The season was short, here in the high Sierras. Ordinarily it snowed as late as May, and as early as October. By the last of August one expected frost to tint the mountain sides...

“IT is the queerest thing!” exclaimed the Ranger’s wife, “what can have become of those pine nuts I was saving for Christmas. I had fully a peck in that basket on the top shelf....

He had followed the children to a sandy place among the granite ledges back of the cabin, where they found a colony of the giant black ants. The children had been having a lot o...

He had traveled on top of the pack as the Ranger went his rounds. After awhile he learned to leap to the little donkey’s back whenever he wanted to ride. The burro never minded.

“THERE is nothing like starting early,” said the Ranger one day, “when it comes to training animals and children. I am going to break young Bucky to the pack saddle.”

Earlier in the year the stream had been so high that he could not have done this, but now it came no more than neck high along the banks, as he stood with barbed paw outspread,...

EVERY one enjoyed the camping trip, from the Ranger’s little girl, whose first long trip it was on horseback, to Fuzzy-Wuzz, whose natural love of exploring made it a real treat...

Back from the camping trip, the Ranger’s children spent much time in the great log barn, and Fuzzy with them. How he did love to turn somersaults in the haymow! Like a furry clo...

THE children missed Fuzzy-Wuzz these days, the more so as Dapple, the fawn, had to spend the winter in the barn with the cows. They could not have her indoors, of course.

A WAY back last spring, before the Ranger found the little bear, the canaries had started a nest of five pretty eggs, and there the mother bird had sat, keeping them warm, while...

SOMETIMES the Ranger took the children snow-shoeing through the winter woods. Their game was to find and name as many footprints as they could, of the many they saw criss-crossi...

Of course the fat pup was helpless in the deep snow, but he would go plunging into their snow-shoe tracks, leaping from one to another with the most joyous barking and wriggling...

But down on the rocks where the lake lapped over pebbly levels, the sun shone hot and still. Here the little bear was basking when the yellow pup first sighted him.

He opened one eye cautiously. There on a limb higher up stood a squirrel, scolding him for all she was worth. But she was not like the gray squirrels he had seen. She was dark b...

One hot week in July his restless wandering carried him almost down to the valley. He had been chasing a jack rabbit through the tall grass when he was startled by a sound like...

The quaking aspens along the creek were beginning to turn scarlet when he yielded to a restless feeling that often came, and started on a journey that took him back over the way...

ALL that summer Fuzzy wandered, wandered everywhere in search of adventure. There was hardly a spot within miles of the Ranger’s cabin that he had not explored. For he was looki...

At first glimpse he thought it was a black snake that went gliding through the scarlet fire-weed. The long, humped body with its flat, almost earless head and long neck ended in...

THE little bear felt more and more strongly the call to go exploring. So many things interested him, and he was so apt to find something new and delicious to eat. Besides, he fe...

AS her second summer came to an end, Dapple was seen to be more and more vain. Every day she licked her fur till it shone. She had even made friends with a young cow of almost e...

AS winter approached, and Fuzzy wandered farther and farther afield, the bullfrogs wriggled deep into the mud to sleep the white months away, the trout he had so often caught so...

Wiggledy had gone bounding on ahead, threatening every squirrel and chipmunk with the most ferocious barks. Suddenly he began sniffing at the ground in a way that attracted the...