Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1893-05-04
BRUlN AS a SEAiER.
How the Polar Bear Secures an Occasf OVAL
Feast,


Feast.
Like conditions produce similar ha bits
in men and animals During the cold
and darkness of the polar winter in
Greenland there are no other substances
than ice AMI snow that can be use as
building materials and no possibility of
making extended journeys to procure
better. Consequently the Esquimaux,
or, as they are now called, Innuits,
build, as is we'll known, their winter
ha citations of ice and snow.
The Greenland seal does the same, for
the temperature of the Gre ,nland win
ter is too severe for her unshel cred
young. Breaking a hole through
the snow-covered ice before it is
thick, the female seal digs out
with her ripper a spac, sufficient
for her purpose, space which
she forms into d dome-shapei apart
ment resem bling the interior of an In
mutt hut. Here the young seal is born,
and here it rests upon its ice-shelf until
the feeble arctic sun melts away the
snow that shelters an protects it, after
which it is old enough to take care of
itself
One of the most incomprehensible
circumstances connected with this seal
nursery is the manner in which the
mother is able to feed her baby. Diving
through the hole, which she always
keeps clear, breaking the new ice as
soon as it forms, she travels for miles,
and is not only able to return directly
to the hole near which her young one
awaits her, but catches fish in the utter
darkness, below many feet of ice and
snow, of the water in which she swims.
How this is possible is an IN solved
problem in natural history. Her nur-
sery is well hidden. Above her stretch
miles upon miles of untrodden snow,
that betrays no sign of her retreat, eX-
eept very small aperture, from which
issues thin and almost invisible
stream of warm vapor, the breath of the
seals
The unaided intelligence of man would
be unable to discover a seal iglu, as the
nursery of these animals is called. The
Innuits discover it by means of their
dogs. The white bear finds it out for
himself When he encounters elbow
hole" or breathinghole, he not only
digs about it with all the might he has,
but leaps up and down, using his pom
derous weight to crush in the
snow that roofs the seals iglu. Hav-
ing effected an entrance, the savage
housebreaker catches the baby-seal, the
mother easily escaping before he can
get to her He now commits. a cruel
deed-so barborous and fendish a
stratagem, it would seem that no ami
NAL but man could be guilty of it.
Catching the helpless little seal-baby
by one fipper ne deliberately reaches
down and plays it about in the water
beneath the ice, in order to tempt it's
mother within reach The fisher is al
ways successful.
Drawn by maternal love and solicit
tude, the mother-seal rushes TO the res
cue of her offspring, the bear catches
her with his disengaged claw, and gets
a supply of meat that satisfies even his
voracious appetite, and enables him to
live a while without food, for with
bears and Innuits in Greenland, it is
often long time between meals.
The Innpits themselves have learned
this trick of the white bear. When a
young seal is captured a cord is at
tached to a hind ripper, and the little
creature is let down through the ice,
while the hunter watches the opening
in the ice, ready to spear the mother as
she appears to help her little one.-N.
Y. Ledger.