The Bear and the Buried Rope

Transcript

A Greenland whaler’s captain sought to catch a bear without harming its hide. In this anecdote recorded in A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals, the bait was placed inside a rope noose. The bear removed the noose with its paw and escaped with the meat. The sailors tried again, this time hiding the rope beneath the snow. The bear scraped the snow away, tossed the rope aside, and escaped once more with the bait, unharmed. That is the reported turn of the tale: twice the snare was set, and twice the bear got away with its prize.