"Mama, why do we have to eat dirty ground squirrels?" The boy cub sniffed at another rodent burrow and pawed ineffectively, a weak imitation of his mother.  "Mama, why can't we just drink milk all day?" His sister always stayed near Mama's head, in sight and protected.
     "Son, you will survive even if you don't catch every one." If Mama would have thought of it, it would have been a great lead in to the "eats, shoots, and leaves" bear joke. But she didn't. She didn't even have a concept like "language" in her head. She just was. She was a perfect example of bearhood to her cubs. Every action tight and efficient and central to her aim, her purpose: bearness.  It seems silly to write this down, but nothing is more like a grizzly bear than a grizzly bear.
   "Here's a nest! Stick your nose in. They're in there! Feel it? Get 'em!" Mom was coaching but the boy cub's attention was on that new scent on the wind. It was pretty spicy whatever it was, not healthy smelling at all. What sort of animal gets that funky? Maybe some sort of skunk that eats mountain lion poop? He decided to stand up to sniff higher, he'd seen Mama do it and she looked so professionally ursine when she stood and sniffed. If he would have thought of it, he'd probably admit she looked just like the bears in the movies when she did that, but he never had thoughts like that. He was thankful for that.
     And then Mama stood too.
     He felt instantly miniaturized as soon as Mama struck her trademark pose. He'd been so big, had he been foolish to expose himself without checking with her? He went to join sister, in front of Mama, up the mountain, towards the low pass with snow.
     "It's time to go." Mama was hiding something but he couldn't guess what.
     "Why do they smell so bad Mama? Why does it fill up my nostrils? Can we just eat the smelly deer? They look slow. Go catch one Mama. I'm hungry. They don't have antlers and sharp feet like the mean deer did. Are you scared of them Mama?"
     "Hush!"
     Mama couldn't be scared of them. Mama wasn't scared of anything. She'd successfully seduced the biggest baddest boy grizzly, Rex, just a year ago, unscathed. She climbed mountains with two kids on a daily basis. She roared at that big mountain lion once and it ran! All the other animals were scared of her, almost. Eureka!
     "Are they skunk-porcupines, Mama? Is that why you're scared and they stink?"
     "Son!" This time, her low grumble demanded focus. "Humans! Remember? Remember! Remember."
     If they'd really been having this conversation, the moment Mama reminded him about "humans" would have been like having a friend recall just the right word for you in the middle of your thought. Loose ends connect as you share a moment of mutual thought. He remembered but only vague emotions. The smell of cooking and temptation alongside the searing pain of fire and the deafening blast of distinctly human defenses. Soft tame dogs and soft fat sheep and haggard horses with eyes rolled back. The human distress call and fear. The essential tool that makes or breaks an ambush predator. But humans responded to fear differently than a sheep or a dog or a horse, they play the long game. He remembered how unrelenting and cruel they could be. Bears all over have an unspoken folklore chronicling the total war waged by humans on any perceived threat. It used to be a humorous folk tradition to make fun of the humans for being so touchy about their possessions. It was like how we poke fun at dwarves or dragons for being greedy hoarders. But Mama knew it was 2018 and the stereotypes and ghost stories weren't funny anymore. They come on horseback, they fly over in loud birds, they abduct and do horrific procedures to the bear-folk down south (she'd heard Rex himself had been taken and probed), they even sneak up on foot. There's always word from the outskirts that the rock paths are getting turned into the hot black tar paths, very dangerous.
     If I would have thought of it, I would have started humming "The Bear Went Over the Mountain", I was on top