This bear wasnt playing nicely!

The trouble with Boris was not that he was a bad bear. It was that he had never, in his long and distinguished career of being a bear, encountered a concept so baffling, so utterly alien to his nature, as the game of croquet.

The set had belonged to the Henderson family, left behind in their summer cabin when they fled the first early snowstorm. It was a handsome set: varnished mallets with blue and red bands, a set of wooden balls painted in corresponding colours, and two wire hoets, or hoops, or whatever one calls those things one prods balls through.

Boris, a bear of considerable girth and even more considerable curiosity, had discovered it while investigating the scent of varnish and forgotten picnics. He sniffed a mallet. It smelled of pine and varnish. He gave it an experimental lick. It tasted of pine and varnish. Dissatisfied, he batted it with a paw. It made a most satisfying thwonk as it skittered across the wooden porch.

Ah. Now this was a language he understood.

He soon discovered that the red ball, when struck with the mallet, could be made to rocket off the porch and disappear with a soft thump into a thicket of blueberries. The blue ball, with a well-aimed swing, could be sent clattering magnificently against the metal rain barrel. This was not croquet. This was Bear Ball, and Boris was the undisputed champion.

The problem, you see, was that the forest’s other residents had been watching. They had seen the Hendersons play. They knew the rules.

A red squirrel named Pip, bustling and officious, was the first to object. He chittered from a nearby pine, “I say! That’s not how it’s done! The objective is to navigate the sequential hoops in the correct order!”

Boris paused, mallet held mid-swing like a furry, bewildered golfer. He looked at the squirrel, then at the ball, then back at the squirrel. He grunted, a low sound that conveyed a profound lack of interest in sequential order, and sent the yellow ball sailing into a spider’s web.

A badger named Barnaby, who considered himself something of a traditionalist, waddled out from the ferns. “The squirrel is correct,” he intoned, his voice a gravelly rumble. “The mallet is for gentle persuasion, not for… for projectilisation.”

Boris, feeling ganged up on, responded in the only way he knew how. He found the game’s little wooden peg, the one meant to be driven into the ground as the final goal. He picked it up, sniffed it, and with a thoughtful crunch, ate it.

This caused a general uproar among the assembled spectators – a family of rabbits, a bored-looking fox, and several scandalized birds.

“He’s eaten the stake!” piped Pip. “Barbaric,” muttered Barnaby. “Un-sportsbear-like!” added a brave, if grammatically inventive, blue jay.

Boris, now feeling decidedly picked on, decided to demonstrate his own version of “winning.” He grabbed the remaining croquet mallet in his teeth and shook it vigorously, reducing it to splinters. He then sat on the croquet box, flattening it irrevocably. Finally, he located the last remaining ball (green), placed it delicately on his nose, and with a powerful sneeze, launched it into the next valley.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Pip the squirrel sighed in defeat. Barnaby the badger shook his head and retreated to his sett. The audience dispersed, murmuring about the decline of civilized games.

Boris was left alone on the porch amidst the wreckage. He wasn’t being mean. He wasn’t trying to be a bad sport. He was simply, wholeheartedly, and with immense bear-ish joy, playing his own game. And by the only rules that made sense to him – the rules of thwonk, clatter, and crunch – he had won, resoundingly.

He gave a contented rumble, lay down amongst the splintered remains of the mallet, and took a nap. It had been an excellent, if not terribly nice, game.