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Previous
week I’ve wondered in California, Bay Area to be more precise. As so
many times before, Pacific Coast was my favorite but this time I was also
trapped by the old books of the host’s house library. Several of them
from the beginning of the twentieth century, among them The Adventures
of James Capen Adams by Theodore H. Hittell (Charles Scribner’s
Sons, New York, 1911). As Adams biographer, Hittell did a good job of
narrating the tales of Adams the hunter and Adams the animal trainer, too
good I should say, because at first I was stun by the ’coolness’ with
which Adams describes his animal killings. Proud killer, that type of
passion. Eventually, however, my awareness of how high understanding of
animals, if not love for them, is necessary for an successful animal
trainer let me be in peace with Grizzly Adams.
Grizzly
Adams
James
Capen Adams, well known as Grizzly Adams, was a successful
hunter, very successful, and an animal trainer, very successful. In
the fall of 1852 he took up a residence in a remote valley on a
branch of the Mercedes river. Within four years he was renowned
proprietor of Mountaineer Museum in San Francisco, which featured
"the largest collection of wild animals ever exhibited on the
Pacific coast", and four years latter a partner in a hugely
successful wild animal show on Broadway in New York City. His
trained grizzly bear Lady Washington toted up to 200-pound
loads for Adams on hunting expeditions.
Adams
killed many animals for personal gain and captured wild animals to
supply menageries. So, he was not a naturalist and animals lover in
the modern sense of the word. Nevertheless, even by today standards,
he was a keen and interested observer of wildlife and he enjoyed a
fond and respectful relationship with many of his animals. In the
spring of 1854 Adams captured two grizzly cubs near Little Yosemite
Valey; one of the cubs became Adams’s most famous trained bear, Ben
Franklin.
"My
next adventure, and the most fortunate of all my career, was the
capture of Ben Franklin, the flower of his race, my firmest friend,
the boon companion of my after-year" - says Adams to his
biographer. But before that, in several lengthy paragraphs, he
proudly describes how he hunted and killed the mother-bear just to
get her two cubs. Should I be annoyed by this? The emotion of
chasing down prey and the behavior of killing the prey are
controlled by different circuits in the brain [The biology of
violence by Debra Niehoff, 2002]. We are emotionally wired to
learn prey and not prey but the decision that bears
are for killing reflects the current culture. I’m sure Adams would
use a tranquilizer nowadays to still the cubs. |
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