It's A Bear! - September 10th, 1944

For over a month the Teenie Weenies had been hunting frogs, for frog ham is their main supply of meat. They catch a few crawfish and preserve the meat from the claws in Teenie Weenie jars, and they usually pickle and smoke several minnows, but frog ham is their favorite meat. If takes a lot of work to put up enough frog hams to last them through the Winter, because frogs have to be caught, dressed, salted and smoked before the hams can be stored away.

The little folk were lucky this Fall, for they had caught six large frogs which made 12 hams and 12 shoulder hams. They were cured and well smoked with hickory and sassafras wood. Then they were left hanging for a few days in the tomato can which the little people used for a smokehouse. Being a stout can, it was quite safe from thieving mice, but one night a powerful thief pushed if over and ate most of the hams.

The Old Soldier with a wooden leg discovered the theft when he went after an armful of fire wood for the kitchen stove one morning. The smokehouse lay on its side and nine hams were gone. The Old Soldier gave the alarm and excited Teenie Weenies flocked to the place. There were a few faint tracks around the smokehouse, but the little people could not fell what animal had made them.

"They're bear tracks!" shouted the Dunce.

"Looks more like mink tracks," said the Policeman. "Wish the Indian would come. He could tell us what kind of tracks they are."

The little people searched all around for more tracks and finally they found some leading toward the creek. The little folk followed the frail until if disappeared into a hole beneath the roots of a big tree. A well-gnawed ham bone lay near the hole.

The Policeman cautiously tiptoed up near the hole, but when he heard a faint growl from within, he turned and ran, shouting at the top of his voice, "It's a bear! It's a bear!"

The frightened Teenie Weenies ran back to the Teenie Weenie village certain that the animal was a bear. However, the Indian, who had been away hunting caterpillars returned just then. He took one look at the tracks and smiled.

""Skunk tracks! Good thing you no make him mad, because he throw bad smell everywhere." said the Indian. The Teenie Weenies all breathed a great sigh of relief, for, as the Dunce put it, "It's better to be smelly than to be eaten, but we'd rather not be smelly."

It's A Bear! - March 11th, 1951

The Teenie Weenies store their Winter's supply of food in the cellar of the shoe house. It is more than a foot square and 13½ inches under the surface of the ground. Part of this vast hole is under the Teenie Weenie kitchen. The walls are lined with shelves of jam and jelly. There are bins of corn, wheat and wild rice. Thimbles of pickled crawfish meat and shells of frog sausage are in one corner. Potatoes and apples and piles of nuts are in this storehouse. So even this large space is hardly big enough to hold all the food the little people need. That's why the Teenie Weenie men have been digging out the earth to make more room.

One evening the Cook sent Gogo for a two-drop jar of jelly. Gogo lit a Teenie Weenie candle and went down the flight of steps which leads from the kitchen to the cellar. The Cook remembered he needed a piece of walnut meat. As he hurried down the stairs he was swept back up to the kitchen by Gogo, who was traveling with the speed of a rocket.

"What's the matter with you?" shouted the Cook, picking himself up from the kitchen floor.

"B-B-B-Beah!" gasped Gogo. "There's a beah in the cellah!"

"Nonsense!" put in the Doctor, who was getting a drink from the water thimble. "A bear couldn't get into our cellar."

"It's a beah all right!' Gogo insisted.

"Let's have a look at your bear," said the Doctor.

He took the candle from Gogo shaking hands and went boldly down the cellar steps. The Cook and Gogo trailed behind, nicely balanced for a quick return up the stairs.

The Teenie Weenies were just in time to see Gogo's "bear" disappear through a hole at the spot where the men had been digging. Its pink tail vanished like magic."He's stuck," was all Nipper would say.

"That's a mole!" said the Doctor. "A perfectly harmless creature, it lives underground and is a powerful digger. A mole funnels through the earth with its huge paws almost as fast as a Teenie Weenie can swim."

"Do you suppose it was after our food?" asked the Cook.

"No," answered the Doctor." Moles eat worms and insects. He just happened to dig a tunnel into our cellar by accident. Moles are nearly blind and have no ears, but they are great diggers."

"Yes, suh," said Gogo. "But it sho did look sorta like a beah."

Bear Scare – July 26th, 1953

Four Teenie Weenies came charging into the shoe house one evening with very white faces and bulging eyes. We've seen a bear!' shouted the breathless Dunce.

"Looked like a polar bear," added Gogo.

"Nonsense!" exclaimed the Doctor. "There are no bears around this part of the country."

"Now just calm down and tell us what you saw said the General.

"We had gone way down the creek looking for frogs," said the Dunce. "It was getting dark and we thought we had better take a short cut through the big woods if we wanted to get home in time for supper. We found a trail, and started through the deep brush, and then we saw funny tracks."

"Looked all time like birdses trackses," put in the Chinaman.

"Pretty soon the tracks led into a hole under a big tree and when we stepped up to look into the hole a bear popped his head out and snarled at us," said the Dunce.

"Then what happened?" asked the Doctor curiously. "What did the bear do?"

"Lawsy!" exclaimed Gogo. "We didn't stay to see. We just lit out of there as fast as we could go."

"What did this beast look like?" questioned the Doctor.

"It had pink ears and nose," answered the Dunce.

"And it had a light grey face," added the Sailor, "and the rest of it seemed to be a dark grey."

"Bears all time have long noseses and velly black little eyeses sad the Chinaman.

"What you saw was an opossum," smiled the Doctor. "It's far from being a bear, but it is one of the oldest animals we have. It hasn't changed much in thousands of years. A mother opossum has a little pouch like the kangaroo and it carries its babies around in the pouch until they are old enough to take care of themselves. Opossums eat anything that comes handy and they have been known to dine on chicken."

"The opossum can't defend itself very well," said the General. "It is a slow moving creature and not much of a fighter, and when it meets an enemy if pretends that if is dead - hoping to escape by being left for dead. It is from this habit that the proverb, 'Playing 'possum,' came to be used by people."

"It didn't play any 'possum while we were around," said Gogo.

It wasn't afraid of Teenie Weenies," said the General. "It probably thought that the four of you would make a mighty nice tid-bit for supper."

It's A Bear! - December 26th, 1954

While Gogo and the Dunce were carrying a thimbleful of salt to replace some they had borrowed from Grandma Pettigob, they accidentally upset the thimble and spilled some salt on the trail that leads up to the big lane. The two Teenie Weenies were able to pick up most of the salt but quite a lot remained on the ground. In their haste to be on their way to Grandma's house, Gogo lost one of his mittens at the scene of the accident. That evening he went back to look for his mitten, but he didn't find it, for he saw a big animal licking at the ground where the salt was spilled.

Any animal bigger than a chipmunk is a bear in Gogo's mind, so he ran to the Teenie Weenie village shouting, "A BEAR! A BEAR!" He burst into the shoe house and yelled, "Saw a bear bigger than our house!"

"Nonsense!" said the Doctor. "We don't have bears around here."

"Yes, sir, I did see a bear!" answered Gogo. "He was licking the ground just where we upset the salt thimble this afternoon."

"That wasn't a bear," said the General. "It was probably a porcupine."

"What did it look like?" asked the Cook.

"If was a big animal with lots of sticky lookin' hair on its back."

"That was a porcupine," said the Doctor. "All of them are very fond of salt. They eat the bark of trees and leaf buds. Sometimes they fish lily pads out of ponds. They will eat apples and some vegetables, but they are especially fond of anything that's salty."

"They can throw their sharp quills like arrows, "put in the Dunce.

"That's wrong," said the Doctor. "They can't throw their quills, but they can strike with their tails which are covered with long sharp quills."

"Porcupines are quite harmless, Gogo," said the General, "if you don't bother them. We'll put out some salt for him, then we'll watch to see what he does."

Next day the Teenie Weenies put salt on a log near the trail and then hid nearby.

Presently a porcupine came waddling down the trail. He began to gnaw the bark where the salt had been spread and the Teenie Weenies came and stood quite near while he ate.

They saw the long, sharp quills on the porcupine's back and they could even see his great orange-colored teeth as he gnawed the bark. The men watched until they grew cold and then they went to the shoe house, where the Cook made a pot of sassafras tea.