Night of the Black Bear by Gloria Skurzynski Page B

he’d be as good a photographer as his father.
    Moments later the door flew open again, and this time Kip Delaney burst in, calling out, “Glad you’re all still here. I just got back from the lab in Knoxville.” Dangling from his hand was a sealed plastic bag containing a digital camera. “Heather and Mrs. McDonald have already left for North Carolina, but I told them I’d send Heather’s camera by express mail as soon as we finished the tests.”
    â€œWhat tests?” Jack asked his mother.
    â€œThe bear had that camera in his mouth,” Olivia explained. “We wanted to check the camera for bear saliva. If we can get gene identification from the saliva, we’ll know when we’ve caught the right bear—if we do catch him.”
    â€œHow’d it go, Kip?” Blue asked.
    Kip shook his head, answering, “No go. Too many people had handled the camera—that Jordan guy, the paramedics, the nurses at the hospital—there wasn’t enough bear spit left to get a good analysis.”
    Olivia looked disappointed until Kip announced, “However…the flash card is still here in the camera. We can look at the pictures Heather took before the mauling.”
    â€œGood job!” Right away Steven inserted the flash card into the card reader. The first pictures to come up on the screens showed a tombstone that read “Howard McDonald 1912–1983 Rest In Peace.” The next picture showed a smaller tombstone: “Grace Neely McDonald 1916–1982 Returning To The Arms of Jesus.”
    Then the photos got exciting. Steven clicked to change the images about every two seconds, making them appear one right after another. It was almost like watching a movie.
    The bear could be seen in the distance, standing up, arms dangling. In the next picture he’d come closer, his mouth slightly open to show those big canine teeth that had ripped flesh out of Heather’s thigh. The following pictures showed him first raising then lowering his head. Next, he lifted one paw as his shoulders shifted, almost as if he were dancing. With each picture he moved forward, his head lowered. In the last photos he stood up tall again, and as his face came closer and closer, Jack felt like those two black eyes were staring straight into his own!
    â€œThat crazy girl!” Blue exclaimed. “I can’t believe she kept taking these pictures. In this final one the bear’s no more than five feet in front of her!”
    Steven added, “Yeah, right before the bear grabbed the camera.”
    â€œUgh!” Ashley cried. “I wouldn’t want a bear coming after me like that. I mean, he’s big!”
    A pause, then, “You’re right, Ashley,” Kip said. “He’s way too big.”
    All of them turned toward Kip, unsure what he meant. But Olivia caught more meaning than the rest of them. Frowning, she said, “Go on, please, Kip.”
    His finger on the keyboard, Kip clicked back to the first picture. “This black bear is a male. Males average around 175 or 200 pounds—you probably thought they were bigger than that, Ashley, but that’s their average weight. The weight changes through the different seasons of the year.”
    He faced them. “At this time of year in the park, the black bears have just recently come out of their winter dens.” To Ashley, Jack, and Yonah, he added, “Maybe you kids know this, maybe you don’t, but the reason bears spend winters in their dens is because each autumn, their source of food decreases or is eliminated altogether. So after most of the food is gone, they just go to sleep to conserve their energy. Nature has programmed them to sleep when there’s nothing much left to eat.”
    â€œRight,” Olivia agreed. “It’s called denning.”
    â€œSo here it is, now—early spring,” Kip continued. “Once bears wake up, their systems are really