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National Geographic : 2002 Mar
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sister could look after them. The little bears devoured formula from baby bottles and then snuggled contentedly in a spare bedroom for much needed sleep. The Kilham family house overlooks the pic turesque green in the center of Lyme, and it's no stranger to orphaned animals. Ben's father taught microbiology and medical history at nearby Dartmouth College, and the family developed a passion for helping injured and orphaned animals. "We had owls, red-tailed hawks, prairie fal cons, ravens, crows, raccoons, ferrets, a fox. There were always animals wandering around the house," Ben told me. "We even had a young beaver that kept trying to dam up the toilet." When Ben returned to his hometown in 1982 after a career with Colt and other gun manufacturers, he set up shop as a gunsmith. His family background, however, soon led him to take up animal rehabilitation. He obtained permits from the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department and worked with fishers, skunks, porcupines, raccoons, and in 1992 his first black bear, a sick yearling he named Wobbly. "I didn't plan to study bears," Ben explained, "but working with Wobbly got me hooked. I'd always had the idea that the way to learn about animals was to start with a young one and watch it grow, that you would learn more that way than just by watching adults. Two things I didn't realize when I began were how little was known about black bear behavior and how much these little guys would teach me." It surprised me too that so little is known about an animal with which we live in such proximity. We grow up with bears: Teddy bears keep us company in the crib; Smokey Bear warns us about fires; Winnie the Pooh and his countless cousins populate our bed time stories. WE MAY LOVE BEARS when we're children, but we haven't tol erated them very well as adults. Ursus americanus once roamed throughout North America, living in every habitat from the swamps of Louisiana and Florida to the chaparral of the Southwest and the dense for ests of the Pacific Northwest. But European colonizers viewed bears as pests and hunted them mercilessly. In modern times the hunting continued, and bounties for killing bears were paid into the 1960s. The New Hampshire population dipped to below 500 in the 1940s, when there were only 175,000 black bears in all of North America. Mot ea rhailtaor inmie umn onac wt thi chag. No Kilha. Whe a foese broughthi Hod- th-66 rittncbmvdit Kla s gstroo "The bond . 6n' hard to est , S h sas,"They'd do an thereucaio bean "Th ide is to let the ler in thi ow/ 92 6AINI 55GRPHC MAC 20026 *5^^^^^^6 -6 56- 6 *^^^^^^^^^SmS~sfS~w S^^6^^^^ 6 6^^^^^^^^^ -^ ^^
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