How the Polar Bear Got its Fur

How the Polar Bear Got its Fur


Many thousands of years ago, when the land was still young and the sun only ever got half way across the sky, strange creatures roamed the earth.
Out of all these animals, there was one race that stuck out in any terrain. The small white polar bears of those days had rough, leathery white skin, a definite inconvenience on any hunting expedition. They were also smaller than they are now, and gentler.     
All their lives they had tried to fit in somewhere, moving across continents that were still joined to find the place they belonged. They tried to live everywhere, from the dry African savannas to the dense American rain forests, but wherever they went they were mocked and hunted. Food was scarce and plants just tasted wrong to them.               

Finally the bears came to rest on the edge a clear, sparkling river. It was nice there, but the food was even more rationed and the going was tough.
It was really just one tiny discovery that saved those boisterous bears from extinction, the discovery of fish.
For days the bears watched the fish swim downstream, daring only now and then to claw at them with their sharp nails. It was a young cub that fell in and discovered he too could swim that caught the first fish.

For a while the polar bears thrived, surviving now not only by luck. Other animals started copying them, learning to swim and catching fish.
The river was filled with animals, each hunting for their new found slimy friends. The polar bears still remained the best hunters, living off real experience and finally being happy.

The day the fish stopped was a black day for the small white bears, other animals grumbled a bit and went back to their old ways, but the polar bears had no old ways to return to. Once again they were the outcasts. They were adamant, however, that there were more fish somewhere, and so the search began. They searched east and west, and a little bit south, before finally going north.
The further north they went, the colder it got, sometimes leaving small, white, cold blobs stuck to their skin. The white blobs even covered the ground, like one long plain of African grass. For as far as their small eyes could see there was nothing ahead of them, nothing but that cold whiteness...

It was strange how the cold went away, not away like when the sun shines on you, but away like cuddling next to another bear. One day it was there, and a week later it wasn't. Closer inspection of each other soon revealed to the bears that thin white hairs were growing off them, like a coat of summer defeating winter. It seemed their bodies liked this new climate, but there were still no fish and their days were slowly running out.

The sky this north was very strange, at random times it would light up with an array of colours by far more extraordinary than any rainbow elsewhere. The blue and red and pink lights seemed like signs pointing them onwards, into the unknown.

The day finally came when the bears eventually reached the sea, by this time their coats were thick and fluffy. The small white bears had been transformed and the cold had made them fierce. What had been out of place and small was now large and majestic, by far one of the greatest species.
They had seen the sea before but never one that looked this beautiful, with its icebergs and creatures it was like another world. One with fish.  One where the bears could be happy again, and most importantly, one where they belonged.