For everything ran away from Noozak his mother.
All through this first glorious day Neewa was discovering things, and with each hour it was more and more impressed upon him that his mother was the unchallenged mistress of all this new and sunlit domain.
Noozak was a thoughtful old mother of a bear who had reared fifteen or eighteen families in her time, and she travelled very little this first day in order that Neewa's tender feet might toughen up a bit.

They scarcely left the fen, except to go into a nearby clump of trees where Noozak used her claws to shred a spruce that they might get at the juice and slimy substance just under the bark.

Neewa liked this dessert after their feast of roots and bulbs, and tried to claw open a tree on his own account.

By mid-afternoon Noozak had eaten until her sides bulged out, and Neewa himself--between his mother's milk and the many odds and ends of other things--looked like an over-filled pod.
Selecting a spot where the declining sun made a warm oven of a great white rock, lazy old Noozak lay down for a nap, while Neewa, wandering about in quest of an adventure of his own, came face to face with a ferocious bug.
The creature was a giant wood-beetle two inches long.

Its two battling pincers were jet black, and curved like hooks of iron.