Neither the Black Bear nor the grizzly is really a sociable animal, but free Black Bears occasionally play together, which grizzlies never seem to do. Under ordinary circumstances, however, Black Bears have a funny trick of pretending not to see each other when they meet. If one of them comes into a marshy meadow or a small open glade in the woods where one or two others are already feeding, he will make the most laughable pretence of not seeing them. He will stop at the edge of the opening and go through all the motions of examining the country, carefully looking, however, everywhere but in the direction of the other bears; all of which is vastly amusing to one familiar with the keenness of his senses and the alertness of his attention, and the practical impossibility of getting within seeing or hearing distance of him without his knowing it. Meanwhile the bears already on the ground play their part in the little comedy with all the good will in the world. They have undoubtedly been aware of the approach of the newcomer long before any human watcher of the scene could have suspected it. But they give no outward sign of being aware of the new arrival. If, however, the intruder had happened to have been a grizzly they would undoubtedly have taken to their heels or taken refuge in the nearest tree with loud puffings and snortings some minutes before he reached the scene. Yet these same bears, once they have fed their fill, will frequently go to playing together as one never sees the grizzlies do. Two of them will stand up and wrestle, roll each other over and over, chase each other about, and generally have a fine romp. As a rule, however, this sort of play takes place between bears of different sizes, and the smaller one sometimes gets well thrown about and mauled.
One of the most entertaining experiences that I ever had in the woods was connected with just such an after-dinner romp between two Black Bears. I was photographing grizzlies in the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming, and had set up my camera and flash-light apparatus near a likely looking trail. My flash-pan was placed on top of a ten-foot pole stuck in the ground under a small pine tree, and a fine wire was run from the switch that operated the apparatus across the trail and tied to a convenient bush. I had completed my arrangements about half-past four in the afternoon and had concealed myself in a mass of fallen timber some seventy-five or eighty feet away prepared to wait for dusk.