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lap verb Especially of a bear: to bend or pull a tree limb with its paw and eat the acorns off before they ripen and fall; to knock down (a limb of a tree, bush, or vine) to eat its nuts or berries.

1926 Hunnicutt Twenty Years In the top of a large chestnut tree I saw a bear breaking chestnut burrs. I watched the bear lap the chestnut tree. 1939 Hall Coll (Deep Creek NC) One of my first cousins found a coon a-lapping a chestnut tree. 1956 Hall Coll (Big Creek NC) A bear had been a-walkin’, I thought, goin’ over there and lappin’ chestnuts, eatin’ chestnuts. You know, they just climb up a tree and break the limbs, as many as they thought they could eat, just get down and whack them off and eat them. 1976 Bear Hunting 281 If the nuts hadn’t started falling yet, you might be able to find places where bears had climbed up into oak trees and broken limbs trying to get to them ... “We call it ‘lapping.’ I reckon what give it that name is a bear will just reach out and lap’em in.