A Pair of Bear

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As cataloged by Yarcs Lluks

Tim found it balled up in wax paper, deep in a crate labeled “CAMP: ROUGH RIDER, DO NOT OPEN.” The paw was matted, claw tips dulled, but unmistakable: bear.

I confirmed it. The scent of pipe tobacco and gunpowder. The memory of trust betrayed by a single bullet. This was once part of a bear rug.

This paw? It’s from another bear. A real one. One Teddy shot, a clean kill. Probably charged the camp.

Sniffy smelled it and shivered.

“Still mad,” he whispered.

“At Roosevelt,” Tim asked?

“No. At being turned into upholstery.”

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The paw might twitch on dark nights. It might smell of campfire and justice. It might whisper stories from Yellowstone. Or demand to be reattached.

Should we keep it in the vault or place it beside the “McKinley Lint Jar”?

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You see, Teddy Roosevelt, was mid-bite — venison stew, second bowl — when the branches cracked.

The fire popped. The horses screamed.

He didn’t curse. He didn’t shout. He didn’t spill.

He stood, grabbed the Springfield leaning against the log, turned toward the blackness between the trees — and fired once.

The bear crumpled ten feet from the table. A charge stopped cold. A heartbeat spared.

He wiped his mustache with a napkin. Sat back down. Picked up his spoon.

“Needs salt,” he said.

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What remains is not the stew pot or the bullet.

It’s the paw — severed and cured, eventually stitched into a trophy rug, then forgotten.

But Yarcs has it now.

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It twitches, sometimes.

Just once.

Like it’s still finishing the charge.

On cold nights, it smells faintly of firewood, coffee, and blood.

If you touch it wrong, you might dream of pine trees and panic.

If you listen, it might whisper Yellowstone trail routes in old military code.

Where to keep it?

It’s up to you.

But don’t lay it flat.

It hates rugs.

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Yarcs Curio Log:

• Object: Cured grizzly paw, stitched remnant of late-19th-century trophy rug

• Smells like: gun oil, canvas, ash

• Effect: Unsettling dreams. Minor motion during temperature drops.

• Placement recommendation: Not near other mammalian remains. Especially not the raccoon skull.

Now the bear that lived. In 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt went hunting in Mississippi. The day was long, the dogs were tired, and the trackers were desperate.

So they found a bear. A scrawny old thing. Tied it to a tree.

“For the President,” they said, proud of their offering.

But Roosevelt looked at the beast — wounded, winded, its dignity shredded by rope — and refused.

“I will not shoot a tied animal,” he said.

“It would be unsportsmanlike.”

He walked away.

That one moment — a simple gesture of principle in the woods — sparked headlines. A political cartoon captured it. A Brooklyn toymaker saw the cartoon and made a stuffed bear. His wife stitched the ears just so. They put it in the shop window with a handwritten sign:

“Teddy’s Bear.”

It sold.

It sold again.

And soon, every child in America wanted one.

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But that bear — the real one — lived.

Some say it limped off into the forest and died peacefully.

Others say it waits, still tied in some deeper layer of the woods, growling not at Roosevelt…

but at the lie.

“They called me mercy,” the bear growls.

“But I was a warning.”