Carpet Bears
Carpet Bears
Entity Classification*
*From a non-official source, verbatim to amateur records of first documentation:
Aggressiveness | 2/5 | We straight up were able to pet one. Pet its ears and everything. But, it's a live bear still, so, I guess it could probably rip your face off. |
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Frequency | 1/5 | No one I've ever talked to has seen one of these things. I guess they're pretty rare. 1/5? |
Intelligence | 1/5 | The guy was really lazy so I'm not sure if he can do anything cool. From what I saw he just lies around and digs for termites. |
Pritoria Index | 1.3/5 | There is a certain emotion you feel when you see another living creature out here. I'm happy to say this one was ok with us hanging around. |
"I am quite happy to leave this humourous first impression of the bears in the official documentation. I felt almost the same way when we found Bowser poking his snout into our backpacks for morsels. Regardless of its tongue-in-cheek delivery, this is a fine and accurate representation of these soft-natured beasts."
- Ethan “Papa Bear” Mulrooney, UNCB Citizen
Entity Number: Bear
Habitat - The Halls
Description
As if growing out of the floor itself, these shambling mounds of coarse tan fur like to nap with their faces covered by massive paws. The illusion is quite convincing: to the untrained eye, you would be hard-pressed to notice that this lump was not a carpet at all — but very much alive. The Carpet Bears of the Halls are slow-moving, massive, and rather remarkable creatures.
Behaviours
There is little energy to spare in the environment of the Halls and carpet bears need to act accordingly. Carpet bears could be considered as highly specialized troglobites — perfectly adapted to their unforgiving surroundings just as cave creatures are on Earth. Hunting for game is no way for a predator to survive here, and so their diet consists mainly of insects. The bears' snow-shoe-like paws sport claws as long as 4 inches long which they use to tear through carpet, accessing the rotting floorboards below to the teeming cultures of termites, beetles and other delicacies. Once a bear discovers a suitably infested patch of floor, they can graze and eat their fill at their leisure, expending little energy while consuming entire colonies of bugs over time.
But bugs can be difficult to find, even with the sensitive nose of a hardy Backrooms Ursidae. Once a feeding ground has been picked clean of termites and beetles, it is time to find another. The carpet bear, when not blending into its surroundings during a cat nap, will wander the hallways of the Halls for new places to feed. Claw marks along the floors of rooms are telltale signs of a migrating hungry carpet bear — same with walls or doorframes rubbed clean and polished from a travelling bear with an itch.
Between meals, the bears love to sleep. They are large, and any movement for them is an expenditure of precious calories. This sleepy lifestyle has made them fairly docile, eager to ignore anything that isn't a termite and happy to lay in place and camouflage with the carpet below. Despite this, their imposing size and powerful claws can tear through even strong wooden flooring with relative ease. It would be unwise to lead one to aggression, for even a languid bear cautious of spending calories will no doubt defend itself with a ferocity unmatched by most in the animal kingdom.
Biology
These hulking gentle giants can be over five feet tall at the shoulder, and, if standing on their back legs could reach heights of over thirty feet. No means have been found to appropriately weigh a carpet bear, but one source claims they could easily grow to a quarter ton. With such imposing stature, it is unlikely that any creature would dare attempt to hunt one, and carpet bears by size alone may sit as the kings of the Halls' food chain. Ironic they subsist on the smallest of creatures to survive.
The coarse pelt of a carpet bear is very akin to their name. Their hair is short, nappy, and rough to the touch, and shines in various shades of mellow tan undertones. The rough hair feels and looks almost so similar to carpet that you could almost imagine it to be manufactured. It's believed this natural camouflage is a handy adaptation to not only blend them into their environment but also to keep away pests and confuse common parasites.
Discovery
"We were supposed to study anomalies of the Halls, but we found Bowser instead. He quickly became our new prime directive, and I've been 'Papa Bear' ever since."
The first rumours of the bears came from weary, hungry wanderers telling stories of shambling mounds of carpet jutting out of the ground like living stones. Until any photographic or physical evidence could be produced, the tales of bears were discarded like so many stories of strange happenings in the Halls. Carpet bears reside deep within the Halls, spotted only rarely by those who are terribly lost, so proof of their existence was slow to make its way onto record.
In time bear claws, pelts, and preserved meats were traded through UNCB settlements, and eventually, a photograph was added to the archives. This article's in-depth account was only made possible by some sheer luck and a curious bear living outside a UNCB aligned outpost. 'Bowser' the bear made his presence known while trying to steal rations from our field researcher Ethan Mulrooney. Now credited as the UNCB's 'Papa Bear', Mr. Mulrooney was the first to officially study these docile enigmatic giants by following Bowser over a number of cycles and learning the bears' natural behaviours.
What still remains a mystery, however, is the rumour of 'Nanook'; the wandering queen of bears. A child, taken in as one of their cubs, raised by entities, and now living as an ursid queen of the Halls. They say she travels with a pack of them and is a savage, terrifying hermit of the deep. Though these could be stories made to scare porter children from getting lost, and nothing more.