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In the canonical version of this ursine parental horrors tale, parents intent upon getting a picture of the cute bear kissing the baby smear honey on the child's face. The bear tears into the child, ripping its face to pieces. Did this ever happen? We've yet to find any news story documenting such an attack. On the other hand, the papers contain many accounts of fatal bear maulings and close calls involving both adults and children. Though the honey-smeared child tale may well be nothing more than legend, its cautions against taking bears lightly are well-founded. People are stunningly unaware of how dangerous bears can be and mistake the creatures' seemingly slow movements for signs of docility. Deep in my photo box is a photograph of a black bear at Canada's Algonquin Park. This photo (along with others now lost) was snapped by my parents in 1969 as the three of us (and numerous others) observed the bears as they came to browse the park's garbage dump at twilight. Though we maintained what we felt was a safe distance, in truth we were placing our trust in the bears' preoccupation with their garbagy finds. Had that preoccupation dissipated even for a moment, or had a camper gotten close enough to the bears to be perceived as a threat, those photographs could well have recorded a far different scene. Though bear attacks are relatively rare, they can be fatal. Bears have pulled people out of tents and eaten them. These are not creatures to be mistaken for something cute and harmless. Although the attack described might never have happened, at least one photograph of a bear licking a honey-smeared child exists; indeed, it's possible memories of that photo sparked the legend. A two-month-old bear cub was found during a forest fire in May 1950 in New Mexico. The game warden flew the cub to Santa Fe, where a vet nursed him; a photographer, dabbing honey on the chin of the warden's daughter, got a picture that captured America's heart: the cub licking her face. The bear went on to take up residence in Washington's National Zoo.
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