Teddy (Pet Bear)

Three versions – Henry/Elizabeth/Tony  — The stories may vary slightly but this is how they each remembered the family bear.

What have you heard?

Teddy Bear – by Elizabeth Malinowski Rogers

When Tony was a teenager, he met a man, someplace up on the Wishkah. The hunter had two (black bear) cubs. One was a male and one was a female.  And Tony bought the male for three dollars. Ours was always very good-natured but they said the female got ornery. They had to get rid of it.  We called ours Teddy.

He was so small when we got him, he could fit inside of a man’s hat. We fed him with a baby bottle, which he soon held by himself. We’d put the milk in a bottle and he’s hold it with his paws. He ate other things, too later.  He liked bread and honey, corn which we cooked for him.  We never gave him meat they said that made them mean.  I can’t remember what else we fed him but I remember he ate a lot of corn.

When he grew, he grew quite fast.  He always laid on the couch and slept. We put a blanket on one end.   He was always good-natured. He seemed to be house broken right from the start.  We kept the bread in a tin bin, which was a part of the kitchen table. He learned how to open it and get out his own bread. He wrestled with our Collie dog, climbed ladders, took baths in a tub of water, and played with the hose; Usually fed himself.  It was Tony’s bear but somehow I got the job (of feeding the bear).

When he got a little older he would open the door by himself  then come back in. He walked on two feet a lot. He’d go outside and he never ran away but he always stayed right there.  Quite often he’d get under the couch and grab at our feet, whichever of us happened to be sitting there.  But he was always just playing. Tony would even put his whole hand in his mouth.  And he would just play.  He wouldn’t bite him.  We gave him a hose with little water running.  Mary had all these things and I think she gave them to Dick Anderson[1] because he had something for the school. So I think he had all the pictures.

We kept bread.  We had a table that had a bread drawer in it and he would go in there and get himself a loaf of bread and sit down and eat on the floor. He’d hold the loaf in his paws.  We always put some honey on it. We had ten hives of bees. We had some woods not far from our house. He was even better natured than a dog. Mary’d often get mad at him because he’d bring a little mud in and she’d chase him with a broom.  He’d run out of the house but pretty soon he’d come back again.

One day when he was quite little, I was going down the Wishkah road.  I don’t remember if he went first & I followed anyway he climbed a tree, a big fir tree.  I thought for sure that he was a goner.  I called him but he wouldn’t come down. I started back to get Tony. But he saw me leave and he really climbed down that tree in a hurry and followed me. He always bawled, they make a sound like a calf or something, and he came running and came home with me.  He didn’t want to be left. He never went any place except the house and the yard. Sometime he played in a tree close to the house. Quite often a car would stop to watch him. All the school kids and the teacher came up to see him. That was when we had consolidated schools.

One time Rose and Adam were visiting from Oregon. Adam was at a quarry; he was the boss up there.   They brought two men with them that worked for Adam.  One was Johnny Gallow; he was a sort of foreigner.  He talked a little broken.  Then there was a Swedish one his name was Martin.  They came with Rose and Adam, up the Wishkah and stayed a few days while they were there.  Arne & Mary worked with Adam so Mary knew quite a bit about Johnny Gallow.  She said he was really funny at camp.  Everybody knew he couldn’t read because he’d ask the men read his letters for him.  But he’d always take a newspaper and sit and flip the newspaper.  Sometimes he’d even laugh a few times. We were telling them about the bear we had. We showed him pictures and said he could open windows.  He could open doors and comes in whenever he feels like it.  Said he left but expected him back anytime.  In the night Johnny Gallow started having a nightmare and yelling. He thought the bear was back.  He started yelling, thought the bear was after him.

Later on just before winter, he left and we thought he’d probably just run away or something.  We didn’t know where he was. But we found a place with evergreen trees.  Tony & Henry found a log that wasn’t too far from the house where he had stayed and hibernated in a hollow log.  We didn’t really expect him back.

One time in the spring I was home by myself.  My mother and Dad, Joe’s twins, Frances and Joe were with them. They stayed with us for quite a while until Joe got moved down to Aberdeen.

I was in the house by myself. I saw the doorknob turning.  I saw the doorknob turning and I thought it was one of the twins coming.  I went to open the door and there was the bear. He pushed right past me and went to the bread drawer.  He got out a loaf of bread and just like he always did, he sat and ate the bread. This time he ate the whole loaf, he was so thin.  I brought him honey. I gave him berries and cooked him some corn, just like we used to feed him before.  After he got through eating he laid on the couch and slept for quite a while until the other people came. But he stayed in nights too; he stayed in the house just like a dog.

Later after he left that time, he didn’t stay home that much.  Tony figured he had to tie him.  He had a chain that he put around his neck.  But his head was so little compared with his neck that he’d pull the collar off.  Then he’d go.  He’d go visiting the neighbors.  One day he went into a parked car and went to sleep. When the man started the car up, the curtains were cloth in the back of it at that time a lot of them were, and he shot out the back of the car. Most everybody knew him so they weren’t really afraid of him.

Along the Wishkah Road there were some evergreen trees that weren’t too big and he’d go sit up in there. And the cars would all stop and watch him.  Tony once brought home the whole school came to look at him. I was the one that had to feed him.  I figured if he wanted to eat I had to do it.  I figured that was my job.  Tony used to feed him once in a while and he played with him a lot.  Tony was the one that took pretty well care of him except that I fed him.

One day there was a man named Brigger Sevitch. We used to call him Greasy Cabbage.  He had a kind of baldhead and mustache that kind of went downwards instead of upwards. He was always afraid of the bear.  This time he came; he was drunk or partly drunk anyway.   So he went out, right out where the bear was chained to a little house that Tony made him.  And the bear just put his paws all over his head, but he didn’t scratch him at all. So when he got sober and we told him, he almost had a heart attack.

One day I was down at Soph’s.  I was down at Soph’s a lot.  I had to take my last year of high school down in Aberdeen and just come home on weekends. So Henry told me quite a bit what he (the bear) did.  He said one day he got away and went to Davis’s.  There was a neighbor that wasn’t too far off.  And I think they knew it was our bear, but they were still scared of him. He came and tried to open the door and they locked the door.  They had a ladder leaning up and he climbed up on the roof.  Davis shot a hole through his roof trying to shoot him. Then he ran off. Then he came home.

Well, I don’t know how old he was, when he stood on his hind legs he was four maybe five feet. Tony figured we had to do something with him and he called the Portland Park, the zoo.  So they came after him.  And when they came, they came with a big cage and put him in.  Henry said he looked just like he was waving. He wasn’t very happy to go in that cage.

I went down to Mrs. Remsen’s soon after.  I went down there to go to Millinery School.  Mary & Rose knew Mrs. Remsen.   She was a widow. Her husband worked for Adam and he was killed working. So they knew she was close to Portland, Woodland.  Mrs. Remsen had Sylvia my age, Marguerite and Chet. Sylvia was my age, about eighteen. Chet and Marguerite were younger.

So I had quite a long way to go on the bus. But I stayed with her.  I didn’t see it but she said there was a piece in the Portland paper about the bear and they called him Tony. He got away from the people who came after him.  They said he went into a store and scared everybody. Then he climbed a tree and they couldn’t get him.  So they had to chop the tree down. They got him down anyway and put him in there (the park).

So I went there I told Mrs. Remsen where he was.  We went down. They had a real nice big place for bears, a creek and a big place under the sidewalk. Then a room lined with heavy wire where they could come up and see the people.  All the rest were brown bears and ours was black. It was maybe a year or so before I went down and he had grown an awful lot. He really got big.  But I know it was the same bear.  He was the only one that stayed up.  They had a big cage and they were feeding peanuts and things.  And he knew a few more tricks. Most of the bears were wild, but this one very big one was up by the people. I’m sure that was our bear. The zookeeper wasn’t there so we couldn’t find out for sure. The people were feeding him peanuts, etc. Anybody could have trained him because he was so good with people and wasn’t a bit afraid. But I’m sure he was the one, but he really grew. He must have weighed 300 pounds. He was big, really big. So it was a good thing we got rid of him.  I wouldn’t have wanted him around that big.

As I was down at Soph’s quite a bit Henry knows quite a lot more about him than I do.

A Bear Called Teddy  –  by Henry J. Malinowski

When I was about 15 years old my brother Tony paid a man three dollars for a little cub bear. I think he had killed the mother bear. It wasn’t illegal to take little animals out of the woods in those days.

We fed little Teddy milk from a baby bottle. He held the bottle in his paws like a real baby and he was small enough to curl in a man’s hat fo ra cradle. When he was hungry he would bawl like a little calf and we got used to his Waa-waa when he was ready to eat.

As he grew he had the freedom of the house and he learned to open the bread drawer when he got hungry, much to our mother’s displeasure. He also learned how to open the door and many a time my sisters took the broom to him when he tracked muddy mud on to a newly cleaned floor,

We had a big Collie dog that enjoyed wrestling and romping with the little bear, but when Teddy got big enough to hold him down that stopped. He kept out of the bears reach after that.

When Teddy was about a year old and winter came he disappeared and we thought he’d be gone to the woods to hibernate as wild bears do. About two months later my sister heard the door open in the middle of the night. In came Teddy and out flew the bread drawer, when all the bread was gone Elizabeth gave him some honey. He finished everything in sight then went and stretched out on the couch and went to sleep as if he’d never been gone.

After that he started to roam the neighborhood and as he was getting pretty big most of them didn’t want him around. He went to one man’s house in the middle of the night and scratched on the door. When the man opened the door and saw the bear standing on his hind feet he got very frightened and slammed the door shut. There was a ladder leaning against the building so Teddy climbed up on the roof. The man got a gun and shot up through his roof, but he didn’t hit Teddy.

After that we had to keep him tied up and that was hard on him and us too. I don’t remember how many times a day I had to go get him untangled. Once he climbed up in the garage and got his chain wrapped around the rafters. He was bawling and fighting the chain and I had a hard time getting him loose. I was afraid he would choke himself, and by the time I got him out of there I felt like doing it myself.

We decided to offer him to the Portland Zoo and they sent a man up to get him. The last I saw of him was his paw waving out of the cage as the car went down the road. Several years later Elizabeth was in Portland and she went to the zoo to see how he was. He was the only black bear in a cage with several brown bears. She said he seemed to enjoy seeing people and was doing summersaults and other tricks to coax people to feed him.

He was often a nuisance and I often think how much better off he’d have been if he’s been left in peace in the woods with his mother. That is where little wild things belong.

 

The Bear – Tony Malinowski interview by Emily Airhart

E: How old were you when you got your pet bear?

T: I don’t remember exactly.  I must have been 12- 14, I guess.

 

E: How’d you ever get it?

T: Oh. There was some fallers fell a tree and there were some cubs in the tree.  And they wanted to sell the bear and Ed bought one for me. Paid $5 for it. And them Ramsey kids from the lower end of the district got the other one. And theirs got too mean. They couldn’t keep it.  I think they had to do away with it. But mine, I got along good with it. Course I don’t think it was the bear; I think it was the kids.  Everybody teased their bear they had. And my bear didn’t pay any attention to anybody but me. I mean it practically…that bear was no darn different than a pup.  She was just a good pet.

 

E: How long did you have it?

T: I had it…oh I don’t remember but it was over a year. I think it was closer to two years. I know when I got rid of it; I sent it to Portland to the zoo there.    I don’t remember but I think that included the crate, but that darn bear weighed 175 lbs. I think though they probably included the crate there.  But it was a good-sized bear.  It wasn’t fat either, I tell yah, he wasn’t fat. By golly I couldn’t reach around his arm like that around his wrist. They’ve got terrible muscles.

 

E: Did you have it trained to do tricks?

T: No. No. All it’d do is eat.

 

E: Cuz I know in one picture it was on the ladder.

T: Oh. Yah.  Course it would get up on the ladder.  And it would play with the water hose practically drown itself trying to drink the hose dry. And course I kept that darn thing loose all the time.  Didn’t have to keep it penned up. So it run free.

 

E:  Well. What made you decide to get rid of it?
Henry was the one that didn’t like that bear. He didn’t…he never said nothing…  But he was talking about that bear… (Laughter.) And he couldn’t stand ___ the bear (Laughter.) Well they don’t smell very good a bear, yah know.  I remember one time that darn bear was gone for about 4 or 5 days.  And of course it didn’t know how to find any food, so it got back home and it was practically starved and that darn thing come in the house. (Laughter.) And it smelled some fresh bread just took out of the oven and it went straight for that bread, first thing. And he practically run everybody out of the house and got his belly full of bread.T: Oh. I don’t know.  It was just getting so, I don’t remember, but it was just getting t

oo big to be safe around there. Old Gregor Savage, one time he come down there and he was pretty well lit up. And there was a house up there, kind of an attic and the bear would get up over that and old Gregor, he wanted to go up and see the bear.  And he walks inside there, kind of dark anyway. There was no window in it, he couldn’t see anything.  Pretty soon that bear popped him on the baldhead.  Well he could have killed him you know. But they pack an awful wallop. So I don’t remember…I wouldn’t.

 

E: And Gramma didn’t make you get rid of him then, huh?

T:  Well. I don’t remember just what happened.  But I know that bear was…well when he was hungry and you got between him and food, you got trouble. And one thing about a bear, it will eat practically anything. Well, I don’t know what.  They’ll eat vegetables.  They’ll eat meat.  They’ll eat practically all.  It just depends what they can find. They’ll…you know they claim they’ll eat honey.  Well, they’ll eat honey all right but it’s really the bees they’re going after. They’ll eat insects like the dickens. And of course a hive of bees, where can you find more insects in one spot? Those darn bears, yah know, the bees will sting ‘em but that doesn’t bother them.  They’ll just keep on.  Around the only place they can sting ‘em is around the nose or eyes, yah know.  They got fur, they can’t get through it. So they really go for bees.  They eat the bees first and when they’re out of bees then they eat the honey.

 

T: The Egerers…that was Beth’s sister.

E: I remember the name Egerer but…

T: That Egerer was up there at that time.  He was over on the west branch.  He was related in some to the Fortney’s.  You know there used to be the Coates– Fortney and the Army? logging up there. Well that had some pretty tough times there. Well Coates– Fortney…well the old man Fortney was a congressman.  And he also owned a big part of the logging company, Coates-Fortney. And Ed Egerer was in some way related to Fortney. And he was up at this dam on the west branch of the Wishkah.  And when Joe was watching the other.  They’d splash and the water would come together, yah know, to get the logs down. They had the timing. Anyway there was a road in there that they could in the summer time drive an old car in there.  But at most time it was walking in there just like goin’ down a trail. An Ed came down for his mail.  He’d come down generally once a week or so and he asked me if my bear was home.  And I said, “No. He isn’t.” “Well,” he said, “there’s some guys up there, got a bear up a tree and I think it’s yours.”  So I went up about a mile up there, where he turned off to go home. And there was that bear way up a little bit of a fir sapling, a big tall one.  And there were a lot of people down on the ground, yah know, trying to get it down.  Course that bear totally ignored them.  All he’d do is try to climb a little higher. Yah know, if they’d get to making too much noise.  Well, yah know, he was up plenty high already. But, yah know, when I came near; that bear came right down that tree to me.  Right now!  Boy I tell yah, he didn’t…no guess work about it!

 

E: Did the rest of ‘em scatter?

T: (Laughter.) Well, they didn’t bother him any.