Bertram

Bertram was a bear, not a cute hug-able bear, but a big, bad ass grizzly bear with an attitude. Bertram was the kind of bear Indians used hate to run into. He wasn’t stupid and the Great Spirit was strong inside him. This made him clever, but also cautious.
He didn’t throw his weight around--much.
He was getting older and grouchier with every year. He had lots and lots of offspring spread out through North America. Chances are the bear in your zoo is related to this old cuss.
Bertram was waking up from a long nap, not hibernation just a lazy Sunday snooze when he got the idea in his head to go pick berries down by a certain stream. He wasn’t a berry picker really, it was more of a roving hurricane that blew past, taking all types of fruit, nuts, berries, even roots and what have you with it.
Bertram chewed carefully on a paw full of wild raspberries that also contained an unlucky grasshopper or two, he had been so busy eating he hadn’t noticed he was now down near the rapids, where quite a few other grizzly bears were having a hay day eating salmon.
Bertram stood up on his hind legs to get a better picture of the situation.
On the opposite bank, there was a grizzly bear that was huge and beautiful and female and though Bertram didn’t get the urge that much anymore, (he was after all sixty-nine) this bear turned his head. He sauntered down to the water and took a bath all the while noting where she was. She had two cubs that were just old enough to be on their own soon.
“Rats,” Bertram thought to himself. “They’re always more receptive when they don’t have kids.” He forgot that it was because males sometimes killed cubs and not always by accident.
He went on through the river casually, and up the other bank seeming not to notice the other bears who fled in terror before him. One young, but fully-grown adult male bear decided he’d find out what was happening. He was the most dominant male in the area and huge as grizzly bears go. Bertram was bigger.
“Take a walk kid, you can have the rest of them: alls I want is her.”
“But they’re all mine. I fought by rights for all of them.”
Bertram snarled at this: “I’ll not tell you again.”
The other bear thought it over a short second, then made a dignified retreat. Bertram once ate one of the males that challenged him.
“Get the hell out of here you old coot,” was the greeting Bertha the bear gave him. “And stay the hell away from my cubs,” she was snarling up a storm.
“I could care less about those cubs of yours. I came all the way over here for you.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah: beat it.” She said with a growl that verged on a roar.
Bertram was digging the heck out of this chick: “Pretty feisty, I like that.”
“Look, I’m warning you...”
About three hours later she was smiling that smile and was carrying Bertram’s genes inside her.
She had two cubs. The last Bertram ever sired. One boy and one girl, the boy grew up to be just a little bigger than Bertram, and the girl just a little smaller than her dad which made her one of the largest females ever. Many confused her for a him, except other bears that is; they always know. It’s in the walk. Bertram ran into her one day in a pine forest munching on some pinecones.
“Hey, pop,” she said. “How ya been?”
“Getting old. How bout you?”
“Pregnant.”
He nodded. “Well, see you around.”
“Have a pine cone,” she said rolling one at him. They wound up talking for hours. Somehow she knew that she was his last daughter, and the winter coming was his last winter.
She smiled, and savored the moment.