In a certain forest, in times immemorial, lived a most ordinary brown bear. They say he never stood out for his intellect, and sometimes he acted the absolute fool. But by the very nature of what he was born to be, our brown character posed a natural threat to all the surrounding fauna, and if he was in a particularly foul mood—to the flora as well.
In a word, he was hopelessly stupid. In his old age, plagued by various ailments and a premonition of his impending demise, he had grown exceedingly vicious and unpredictable. Others used to shun him before, but now, the moment the stench of the old beast caught the wind, every living thing scattered. Who knew what might pop into the old blockhead's mind? Yet, there were no brave souls willing to tell him he was a blockhead—he was a bear, after all. Flying into a rage, he could spend half a day chasing some cuckoo across the entire pine forest in the heat of the moment. On the other hand, he might just welcome a panda that had migrated across the river into his habitat. He wouldn't even object when this dwarf black-and-white little critter shamelessly stripped his raspberry patch or did something even worse. Just a whim of the "master of the forest," you see.
And it was true: why worry? The taiga is vast; there’s enough for everyone. If the raspberry patch ran bare here, you could move to another nearby. It was no worse there. If he fouled up all the glades here, pissed all over the swamps, and left trees bristling with stripped bark and his matted, molted fur—no big deal either. Look at how many more glades and tree-lined swamps there are, how many little spots inhabited by long-suffering denizens, be they meat-eaters or vegetarians. Roam around, help yourself, and deny yourself nothing!
Our brown bear had overstayed his welcome in this world. His agility wasn't what it used to be, and his winter sleep wasn't as sound. He began waking up in his den—at first for a day or two, then dozing off again until spring. But one day, something woke him up while the snow still lay thick, in February. He tossed and turned, shoved another paw into his maw, smacked his lips. But sleep just wouldn't come, and that was that! The bear suffered for a bit, got up, and trudged out to wander over the deep snow crust that still hid the animal trails so heavily trodden in warmer days. Even packs of hungry wolves prefer to give a wide berth to such shatuns (rogue winter-roaming bears), merely hearing the crunch of their heavy footsteps. Foxes darted away in all directions. White hares went completely cross-eyed with terror. It was freezing and bleak all around, and only the ravens croaked in the frost-creaking pines. Look here, they seemed to say, our fool crawled out of his den at the crack of dawn today, run for your lives.
The old winter-roamer understood that there was nothing in the forest yet that his kind usually fed on when it was warm, in nature's appointed time. No spawned-out fish, no juicy berries, no fragrant mushrooms, nor any other appetizing delicacies. He remembered the autumn abundance, and the saliva ran even heavier from his hungry maw. If only he could gnaw on even the most pathetic little bone right now... Catching a live roe deer was something he could only dream of.
The further the bear wandered through the frozen forest during the bitter days of the unyielding winter, the more resentful he grew toward everyone around him. It just wasn't fair that he—so mighty and majestic, the terror of the taiga—was roaming like a lost soul, while all these pathetic creatures, born to be prey—his prey!—simply weren't rushing to present themselves as sustenance of their own accord. No respect, no reverence. Gr-r-r-r! He was so hungry, and there was no hiding from the cold: his den had thoroughly frozen over in his absence.
The rogue bear grew angrier and angrier, pacing, roaring, complaining to the indifferent moon and the murky clouds that someone had deceived him, cheated him, denied him his due. In response, only magpies chattered, and ravens chuckled in the branches.
But then, a week before spring, there came a fine, clear day. At the tail end of winter, even the most timid rays of sun feel like a gift, and even the old bear melted in the warmth, losing whatever was left of his mind out of sheer joy. He remembered himself as young and dashing, forgetting entirely that his paws barely bent, his spine constantly twisted with pain, that fleas had gnawed his dirty hide down to festering sores, and that old scars from bygone wounds were ever ready to reopen and sting like fresh injuries. He believed in himself; he decided he could still achieve oh-so-much. The treacherous late-winter weather went to the bear's head, and so he trudged down the very trail that the forest dwellers had sworn never to use without absolute necessity.
This road, as one might easily guess, led to human settlements. In years past, in his youth, the brown bear had made several forays into those parts. True, he hadn't had the chance to attack the two-legged natives, but he remembered the taste of honey from the beekeepers' hives. Even the bee stings were beneficial; they could be endured, and afterward, his sciatica and other body aches would vanish for a long time. Bees are not only useful insects but delicate ones, too—unlike your typical taiga gnats. Before stinging you, bees will warn you three times of their intentions, and then ask their beekeeper for permission five more times. Weaklings, what can you say. And the human beekeepers themselves weren't exactly decisive folks. Although all these villagers possessed rifles and other weapons for self-defense, their strange human laws strictly limited their ability to use these effective contraptions against forest denizens, especially out of season. Only, supposedly, in the face of an immediate threat to life—and then try proving that the shot wolf or bear actually intended to maul or crush you. Maybe they just wanted to invite you to a game of chess, and there you go, blasting them for nothing with a double-barreled shotgun!
By the way, though our bear wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed, he smelled the advantage here and realized he could visit the little humans with impunity, raiding their apiaries and gardens in search of sweet treats. Incidentally, their raspberries were far superior to the wild forest variety—larger, tastier, and sweeter.
The winter-roamer walked on, his failing eyes barely making out the tire tracks on the trail. The hot sun was already beginning to melt the ruts; his paws sank into the mud and slipped apart. But still, walking along a wide human road was easier than navigating the deep crust of the animal trails. His eyes were failing him, but his ears still worked perfectly, and soon the buzzing of wings reached his bearish hearing.
The bear stopped, looked around, twitched his ears, completely oblivious to the fact that the sound was coming not from human settlements, but from the depths of the thicket. Without a second thought, he turned off the path and headed straight for the insect hum. He walked and walked until he practically bumped his nose into a crooked tree. A hollow was visible in the trunk, and that was exactly where the long-awaited buzzing was coming from. A swarm was waking up, preparing for an imminent flight under the spring sun, before the treacherous weather could change again.
Without further ceremony, the hungry bear knocked the rotten sapling over with a single swipe of his paw and rushed to pillage the bee nest in search of amber, honey-dripping combs. In anticipation, foamy saliva dripped from his tongue; he wasn't roaring, but rather slurping and smacking his lips, his paws shaking and trembling with impatience. The bear went wild, completely blind and deaf to what was happening around him.
And what he didn't see was that these weren't bees at all gathering nearby into a dense, humming swarm. Furious wild wasps, one by one, two by two, were driving their stingers into the bald patches of his mangy hide. Sting after sting, sting after sting. At first, the overexcited old robber didn't notice them, too absorbed in his looting, only he wasn't finding any combs or honey. Then the wasp venom began to take effect. The bear bellowed and took to his heels.
However, "the wrong sort of bees" had no intention of letting their enemy go without a proper punishment. There were so many of them that the sky seemed to darken over the fleeing bear. The entire swarm gave chase, ruthlessly stinging the foul-smelling carcass of the pillager. From the wasp venom, the bear swelled up like a balloon, and was no longer running so much as rolling like a massive brown boulder, roaring blindly. Jackdaws shrieked in the tops of the pines, flocks of ravens flapped their wings, and other small birds darted about in a frenzy.
The bear crashed through the taiga and blindly tumbled right into a den with a mother bear. Whether she was his mate or not, history does not record. As is customary for all bears, during the winter, without waking, she had given birth to a pair of cubs and was now finishing up her sweetest dreams before her imminent awakening. At the crash and roar of the uninvited guest falling on her head—someone no one expected, called for, or ever wanted to know—the mother bear leaped up, and the cubs wailed pitifully. The wasps immediately turned on this trio as well, not caring who was right and who was wrong.
Enraged, the mother bear delivered such a crushing blow to the old fool's skull with her mighty paw that it knocked the life right out of the winter-roamer. He collapsed dead on the floor of the den, only managing to soil himself with a putrid puddle in his terror.
But the mother bear's troubles didn't end there; the swarm had no intention of leaving her or the rest of the family in peace. And so she had to leave her hungry cubs in the den, go outside, and build a new home for the wasps. After all, winter wasn't over yet!
