The cub dug and dug, determined to find whatever lay beneath the mound of dirt.

His eyes glittered, his tongue lolled about as his head swung left and right, right and left.

When the hole was six inches deep, he paused to look inside. He squinted his eyes and sniffed.

It wasn’t edible, it had no smell, but there was something. Something shiny, something round, something interesting to a small bear.

            “Look, Mama,” he said. “Look at what I found.”

            Mama bear trundled over, bent her massive head to one side. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” She sat on her haunches. “Keep digging.

            The cub scooped out pawful after pawful, creating an ever-growing mound of dirt behind him.

            Soon his entire front end was inside the hole, but he kept digging.

            The dirt mound grew into a small hill. Then a bigger hill. Then a small mountain. And still he dug.

            “I can’t get it out,” he said with his head deep inside the hole.

            “Keep digging,” Mama bear said and she clean her claws.

            The small mountain grew taller and taller, without growing in width, almost like a dirt and rock tree. Rubble piled up around the outside of the mountain, a jumble of leaves and dirt and rock. And still he dug.

            The cub’s body was completely in the hole by now, but his mama wasn’t concerned. She had rolled over and fallen asleep.

            The small mountain grew into a tall mountain, and then an ever taller mountain.

            “I’m quitting,” the cub said. He sat in his hole and cried and cried until his mama woke up and rescued him.

            “Did you have fun?” she asked.

            The cub nodded. “Yeah even though I never freed that shiny thing.” He looked up at his mama. “Do you know what it was?”

            “Of course I do. Don’t I know everything?”

            The cub looked at the mountain he’d created. “I made that,” he said. “Me, a little cub, made that giant tower.”

            The two sat in the shade of the tower all afternoon. When the sun rose above them and the temperature soared, they lumbered away.

            From that day forward, Mama and Cub returned to the tower and relaxed in its shade.

            “What shall we call it?” Mama asked.

            “Bears Tower,” the cub said.

            And from that day forward until Man changed the name, every creature knew it as Bears Tower.