The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
The Junior Classics, Volume 8: Animal and Nature Stories
By Various Authors
8 Oct, 2020
Little Cyclone is a grizzly cub from Alaska, who earned his name by the vigor of his resistance to ill treatment. When his mother was fired at, on a timbered hillside facing Chilkat River, he and his brother ran away as fast as their stumpy little le
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Little Cyclone is a grizzly cub from Alaska, who earned his name by the vigor of his resistance to ill treatment. When his mother was fired at, on a timbered hillside facing Chilkat River, he and his brother ran away as fast as their stumpy little legs could carry them. When they crept where they had last seen her, they thought her asleep; and cuddling up close against her yet warm body they slept peacefully until morning.
Before the early morning sun had reached their side of the mountains, the two orphans were awakened by the rough grasp of human hands. Valiantly they bit and scratched, and bawled aloud with rage. One of them made a fight so fierce and terrible that his nervous captor let him go, and that one is still on the Chilkoot.
Although the other cub fought just as desperately, his captor seized him by the hind legs, dragged him backwards, occasionally swung him around his head, and kept him generally engaged until ropes were procured for binding him. When finally established, with collar, chain and post, in the rear of the saloon in Porcupine City, two-legged animals less intelligent than himself frequently and violently prodded the little grizzly with a long pole "to see him fight." Barely in time to save him from insanity, little Cyclone was rescued by the friendly hands of the Zoological Society's field agent, placed in a comfortable box, freed from all annoyance, and shipped to New York.
He was at that time as droll and roguish-looking a grizzly cub as ever stepped. In a grizzly-gray full moon of fluffy hair, two big black eyes sparkled like jet beads, behind a pudgy little nose, absurdly short for a bear. Excepting for his high shoulders, he was little more than a big bale of gray fur set up on four posts of the same material. But his claws were formidable, and he had the true grizzly spirit.
The Bears' Nursery at the New York Zoological Park is a big yard with a shade tree, a tree to climb, a swimming pool, three sleeping dens, and a rock cliff. It never contains fewer than six cubs, and sometimes eight. Less