eyes all but popped from his head. And STILL Noozak PAID NO
ATTENTION!

It was then that Neewa crinkled up his tiny nose and snarled, just
as he had snarled at Noozak's ears and hair and at sticks he had
worried in the black cavern. A glorious understanding dawned upon
him. He could snarl at anything he wanted to snarl at, no matter
how big. 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.