"And did it happen," asked Alan, "that you met a bear alone?"
"No way," answered the woodcutter. — He looked at me for a long time with his green eyes, then we winked at each other and parted. We are forest dwellers, we have no need to fight with each other.
PAOISTOVSKY
The snow-covered plain
In the morning, the bear came out of the valley and gave himself in the middle of the forest. A dog, a cow, milk, a milkman, a horse, a piglet mixed together and, again, the valley, carrying behind him the clothes of teacher Gevorg Abovyan's grandmother, it's a shame to say that grandmothers wear underwear. There, near the tent, the teacher was standing with a rifle in his hand. They saw each other, stopped, looked at each other's faces, then the bear winked, took the pants and went to the valley. The teacher fell down with the gun in his hand and was rolling with laughter.
"Shoot, what did you do with your mouth open... Go, get off the back, open your mouth, why are you laughing..."
- Koto... ha-ha-ha-ha... it's a fraction, koto-ha!-ha-ha-ha...
They gave their hand to the carabiner, they pulled a horse under it. - Go, get down.
"Nani, where is the one you washed... The one you washed was lying there..." he said, choking with laughter, but the milkmaids did not understand anything.
"Get down, you'll make it, go!"
He urged the horse to go, the horse was a foal, the legs were weak, and he fell.
"Oh clown, clown..."
It was a lie about the pants. the bear was not wearing panties. The rest is correct. The bear entered the pigsties at night, scared the girls into oblivion the next day, then transformed the shepherd's sheep and dog. He pinched the pigs' ears, the bucket of one of the girls held him, he tore off the dog's ear and tail. They laughed in the village. Then he tasted it, he had killed about ten pigs. They decided in the village that he would be killed.
So Gevorg, the teacher, came to the old hunter, Girish, to go and kill him.
"You say it caused damage, huh?" Uncle Girish asked with a smile under his mustache.
- They say he gave it.
"It was!" We will kill. He has caused damage, he has caused a lot, we will kill him. You say let's kill, huh?
- They say kill with Uncle Girish.
- Be it. They said kill, we will kill. - He was talking and fixing the barrel of the gun to the rifle with a copper wire. — You say you were expecting him to come, why didn't you shoot him?
- It was a fraction, I didn't have a bear ball.
- It was a fraction, you didn't have a bear ball, it's understandable. Since you were on a horse, and the carbine was in your hand, why didn't you go?
- I fell off the horse.
"You fell off the horse..." he was talking and secretly laughing. - I believe, it was a fraction, the carbine was brought late, the horse was weak, you fell from the horse, you did not kill him. I believe, I believe. - He was talking and slowly wrapping the copper wire behind him.
He wrapped it, wrapped it, until the cord ran out.
- We went.
"Did they shoot you... with that gun?"
So, Uncle Girish is a hunter, he hunts. All day long, he must be killing many things and hunting forbidden game, and the village council president Nikol comes to his house in the evenings, eats partridge meat, sits down and stays. "Bring him the number," says Uncle Girish to his wife. Nikol of the village council takes the gun away for the forbidden hunting and comes back the next evening. Eating partridge again, carrying a gun again. Thus, ten guns are collected in the office. All of them are a real gun. One real rifle is scattered among those ten and will be scattered among ten more, the barrel of one is real, the rifle of the second, the bolt of the tenth, and the grain of the twentieth will be real, - the rest is carried away by uncle Girish, he makes up. Yes, that passion of a hunter that he has, even if it is not even a part, he will fix it - he will fix it piece by piece and tie it with a wire, so much so that there will always be a partridge in the house. Or bear meat. Or an ox.
And if you want to know the truth, none of Nicol's members ate pigeon meat in his house. It was a chicken. Or a pig. Or mozu. If you want to know, he does not do any hunting. A man is simply drawn by the hand, and he, for himself and for others, makes sense of it by slung something like a rifle over his shoulder; "I am a hunter, I hunt in the forest. this is my gun."
"Will it be possible to kill a bear with that," said Gevorg, the teacher, "with that club?"
— It's your carbine, it kills. it's a good gun.
They knew the place of the den, so they went and stood on top of it.
"The clever one is inside," said Gevorg. It seems like yesterday he was talking about a friend who was drunk and crazy.
- In other words, we will kill. Let him not harm us, let us not kill him... - And the old housekeeper, as if he was entering his brother's house, looked inside.
He woke up, they looked at each other, and the bear came out in a huff. The old man went on his way and said in his ear as he passed by. "You're guilty, aren't you?"
Gevorg shot quite late.
Sitting on the porch of the bear's house, they laughed after the fleeing landlord, argued and invented the report. "We shot, but it didn't hit. You heard the shot."
Then the bear caused more damage, and Girish uncle and Gevorg went shooting, until the volunteer reporter of "Anshegh to Socialism" newspaper found out that bear hunting is prohibited and wrote to the newspaper that bear hunting is prohibited, and Girish uncle and Gevorg Abovyan were shooting. The district center informed about the ban and, among others, the amount of the fine.
The laughter ended.
- The bear, ahar, is that a harmless animal of which day? We will kill, you will fine, let's see how you will fine.
The district center informed that after a warning, the fine is doubled. "We are warning you."
They were afraid.
And the bear continued to cause damage. He killed a cow from the farm. They calmly informed the district center by phone that a cow had been killed and offered to stay by the phone. "We will not delay a new report." And the next day they presented. "It's okay, a heifer with a broken leg, it wasn't even pedigree..." They offered to kill him from the regional center. "It is allowed to kill that bear, do you hear that, and send the meat and fur to the regional center as state property?"
"The bear is a jewel of nature," they said from this end of the phone, "we are not the ones who spoil nature's jewel."
A brigade of hunters arrived. Vasiko Ghoghoberidze, the winner of Olympic marks, approached from behind Vorji, from the left, four-time Transcaucasia champion Hakob Meghrun, from the right, writer-hunter Vakhtang Ananyan, from the right, taxi driver Karapet Harutyunyan and the instructor of the district committee of the party, Vilen Khachatryan. With one shot, they shattered his incomprehensible skull, left his guts here, and took the meat and fur to the capital.
Old Girish now has only one gun, a real one. They pull the handles, take the old man, and, putting meaning in it for others and himself, the old man throws the rifle over his shoulder, as if I am doing a forbidden hunt. Bear, of course, meets. Often they don't see each other, sometimes they stop and look at each other. The old man does not shoot because there is a penalty, the bear does not attack because the gun is real. That's all. And to wink, it doesn't happen that they wink at each other.