Chapter Eighty-six Little Bear Teddy

  In the early morning, the mountain wind woke up Ju An early. Rubbing his eyes drowsily, he found that his chest felt a bit stuffy. Upon closer inspection, he saw that Wang Fan had placed one of his smelly feet on Ju An's chest. After moving Wang Fan's foot aside, Ju An sat up and saw that Wang Fan had wrapped himself tightly in a blanket, only exposing his foot outside. He threw off the blanket, got dressed, opened the tent door, stretched his waist in the fresh air, closed the tent door, and turned around to see the bright red sun just climbing over the distant mountain top, shining like a perfect egg yolk.

  As he sat comfortably, he saw Old Taylor approaching the campfire, teasing a sleeping cub, and Cree and Anderson sitting in chairs with smiles on their faces. Wu Song saw Ju An come out and abandoned the branch in his hand, running to Ju An's feet.

  As I walked over, the little bear was lying next to the saddle of the horse, with its two front paws holding its head and its two hind legs stretched out straight. Tyler was using his hand to occasionally scratch the sole of the little bear's foot. Every time he scratched it, the little bear would let out a humming noise and then withdraw its paw. After a while, Tyler would scratch the other paw, and after both paws had been withdrawn for a bit, the little bear seemed to feel uncomfortable and stretched them out again, causing the three people to laugh.

  After a while, Ju An noticed that the little bear's body was not the deep brown color she thought it was, but rather grayish, and the fur on its four small legs was even darker, with a hint of black. Ju An curiously asked: "Why isn't this fur brown?"

  Taylor teased the little bear while explaining to Ju An, "He's still young now, and his fur is gray. When he grows up a bit more, his fur will turn dark brown. Little bears are this color, and when they're first born, their fur is even lighter, almost white."

  Ju An smiled and shook his head, Tyler was indeed an old naughty boy, early in the morning he was messing around with Little Bear, greeted three guys, and brought Wu Song, Ju An took down the ceramic pot hanging from the branch, walked to the creek, and started brushing teeth and washing face.

  When they returned to the camp, Little Bear was already awake and licking the milk in the bowl. Tyler and the other two were busy preparing breakfast and tidying up. They got a string of grapes for Wu Song, who squatted at Ju An's feet and started eating them one by one, occasionally spitting out grape skins.

  Wang Fan just happened to pull open the tent and walked out from inside, saw Little Bear licking the milk in the bowl, smiled and said to Ju An: "It seems that this little guy has made up his mind to rely on you, how about it, have you decided now?"

  "Then just raise it, it's just an extra mouth to feed."

  Kerry burst out laughing and said, "An, you'd better think carefully about this. These few kids eat a lot, don't look at how small they are now, when they grow up, the amount they'll eat every day will be astonishing."

  "It's nothing, he can even contribute to society by raising a bear. Anyway, his ranch doesn't need him to worry about it, and raising a bear or something can also cure his laziness." Wang Fan said with a smile, chuckling.

  "Get out of here, go brush your teeth, we can all smell the stench from your mouth!" Wang Fan dodged with a smile and picked up his porcelain basin hanging from the tree branch, heading towards the small stream.

  At this time, the little bear had finished drinking milk and licked the plate clean. He walked over to Ju An, noticed the grapes Wu Song was eating beside him, and hugged Ju An's leg, making a soft "woo" sound twice, turning his head, and staring at the grapes in Wu Song's hand with his round eyes. Wu Song wasn't a stingy person, so when he saw the little bear's expression, he immediately plucked a grape and put it to the little bear's mouth. After eating the grape, the little bear let go of Ju An's leg and sat down beside Wu Song. Wu Song would pick one grape and put it in his own mouth, then pick another and put it in the little bear's mouth. Originally, there weren't many grapes for Wu Song; they were all picked from the cold storage space and put into his backpack. The monkey and the bear ate just a few, and soon they were gone.

  He sat down on the ground with the apple in his hands and started gnawing at it. Wu Song ate elegantly, first peeling the skin off, but by the time he had just finished peeling, Little Bear had already eaten his half of the apple and was now eating the apple peel that Wu Song had discarded.

  After seeing the little bear that couldn't eat enough, he sat down and stroked its fur, saying: "You really are a big glutton, this is almost as much as two Wu Songs. Let's give you a name." After thinking for a while, he still couldn't think of a good name, so he gave up. In the most famous cartoon, one bear was called Winnie and the other wasn't Teddy? So just call it Teddy then.

  Stroking Teddy's back, shouting a few times at Teddy, the other Teddy didn't move, continuing to sniff his nose, on the lawn, looking at Wu Song eating down the apple skin. Ju An looked at Wu Song finishing the apple, this time not throwing away the apple core, but instead stretched out his hand and handed it to Teddy, Teddy happily opened his mouth and swallowed the fruit core into his mouth and started chewing loudly.

  At this time, Wang Fan just finished brushing his teeth and came over, saw Wu Song's posture, and smiled: "My god, I think Wu Song's posture is like some people".

  After a closer look, hey, Wu Song's posture really looks like mine. Every time I finish eating fruit, the core and whatnot are all given to Wu Song to gnaw on for seconds. Now Wu Song is throwing the fruit cores he's gnawed on back at Teddy, which is quite in line with my own style.

  With a pleased expression, he said to Wang Fan: "Look, how environmentally friendly, even the fruit cores are gone".

  "That's right, you eat the fruit, Wu Song gnaws on the pit, and in the end, the pit goes straight down to the bear's skin, it's really environmentally friendly." Wang Fan nodded and said.

  "Now the little bear has a name, I just gave it one, it's called Teddy," said Ju An.

  Old Taylor, who was busy arranging things, praised: "Teddy, with the same name as President Roosevelt, is very good."

  Wang Fan listened to the suggestion and said, "Teddy is too ordinary. Why not call it Zhao Cai or Lai Fu, which sounds more auspicious? Or we can call it Gou Sheng, which isn't bad either. After all, wasn't he discovered by those two guys Hu Tou and Suan Tou? This name not only sounds good but also has a strong Chinese flavor." He then winked at Ju An.

  "If Teddy could understand human language, I reckon he'd slap you to death with one paw. At the very least, he'd give you the middle finger and show some disdain. Names like Zhāo Cái Lái Fú are for your future kids, not for a dog."

  As Anderson shouted, "Dinner is ready!", everyone gathered around the table with a smile, enjoying their breakfast. A cup of milk accompanied by a hamburger. Wang Fan was a bit unaccustomed to the fact that the milk was actually cold. Juren had to explain to him that since they came to Montana, Old Taylor and his family drank cold milk at any time, without the habit of drinking hot milk. When Juren first arrived, he also found it hard to get used to, but eventually got accustomed to it after a while.

  After finishing breakfast, Tyler let everyone rest for a while before they headed back home. A few people packed up their things and the tent was also taken down. When almost everything was done, Ju An and Wang Fan sat on chairs, sipping coffee and taking in the surrounding scenery.

  Before long, several deer emerged from the forest, unafraid of humans, and wandered around on the grass. Wang Fan smiled and said to Ju An, "The deer here are really bold, they're not afraid of people even at such a close distance."

  Kerui happened to be carrying a cup of coffee, walked over and heard Wang Fan say this, so he smiled and explained: "These few deer are all female deer. You see, they don't have much antlers, only a few small ones on top, and they're still young deer. Generally, no one hunts these kinds of deer. When people go hunting, they hunt the ones with more branching antlers, at least seven or eight branches, big male deer. Besides, it's not hunting season yet, in another month or two we can go hunting, you can come then and we'll go together, we can hunt deer and bears, but now it's hard to get a permit to hunt bears, the price is very high, usually only males are hunted, females are not."

  Just then, a deer was leisurely eating grass, and as it ate, it approached the three people. It raised its head to look at them, then squatted down and began to defecate not far from the three of them, leaving Ju An and Wang Fan crying with laughter. After the extremely unrefined deer finished defecating, it turned around nonchalantly and walked away, changing locations to continue enjoying the green grass.

  Jū ān shook his head and said: "The good mood of the whole morning was ruined by this lump of feces."

  Wang Fan also smiled and said: "It seems that they want to drive us away. Are they blaming us for occupying their pasture?"

  Three people started to gather their chairs and move to another place to sit down, after all, you can't stare at a pile of feces while drinking coffee, it's unbearable.

  After resting, Ju An and Wang Fan began to put saddles on their mounts, preparing to head home. Ju An emptied a package and placed Teddy inside, hanging it from Xue Hua's back. To balance it out, he also helped Tyler place a small gas canister on the other side. Wu Song, as usual, sat on the saddle. Teddy crouched in the package, being very well-behaved, peeking out of the opening and curiously looking around.

  One party returned, then circled around. Taylor meant that the tourist route should be this return road, which is more flat, with fewer piles of rocks and mostly grassland, making it easier to control horses and safer.

  After walking for a while, Ju An and Wang Fan felt it, and indeed, many times they could basically gallop, the scenery around was also more beautiful, with wild deer and wild cattle scattered everywhere eating grass.

  Cree told Juan that this was a state-owned pasture, where wild bison and horses roamed freely. If he wanted to catch some wild horses, he could come to this pasture to do so. After spending several hours crossing the pasture, they took a break to eat a simple lunch, and then continued on for another hour or so before arriving at the edge of a crystal-clear lake. The entire lake was transparent all the way to the bottom, but Cree explained that despite its clarity, the water was actually very deep, with depths of over ten meters in the center. Juan was enchanted by this beautiful lake, and thought it would be perfect to build a house on its shore, backed up against a small hill. Unfortunately, however, this too was part of the state pasture, but little did Juan know that he would have the opportunity to take a bite out of this pasture next year. After passing the lake, they arrived at the edge of Juan's own pasture, and in a certain sense, Juan had finally come home.