We saw ‘The Bear Family and Me’ program 1 and liked it. It tells the story well and should help bears. One nice thing about Gordon taking the lead is that it helps bears more than if we were doing it. If it were us, people would think only experts could do it. It says more about the bears if someone who knows little about bears steps in, doesn’t really know how to read them, makes mistakes, and is unhurt. Even the controversial bite scene, which was simple communication and not a real bite, left no mark. We were on the edge of our seats watching him do things we just wouldn’t do. Gordon was out of line, doing everything wrong, and he still emerged unscathed. It took us awhile to learn good bear manners that avoid stress for the bears. Watching Gordon showed us how very restrained Lily is. She is a gem that makes us want to work doubly hard for protection. Overall, the public should take away a better view of bears. We plan to show all four programs (including the very high def version of Bearwalker) in the theater at the North American Bear Center this year.
On the little thing that ran down into the bedding in Linda Gibson’s video, your consensus seems to be that it was an animal. We’re leaning that way, too. Best guess: a shrew (Sorex sp.). Of the five shrews around here, three are that small. Again using names listed in Mammals of North America (2002) by Roland Kays and Don Wilson, they are: Cinereus Shrew (Sorex cinereus), Arctic Shrew (Sorex arcticus), and Pygmy Shrew (Sorex hoyi). It couldn’t be a baby of any kind because shrews and mice breed only in spring through early fall around here.
Lily is doing a lot of rearranging of bedding. Last year, she had less bedding in the den and went outside to get more as she approached parturition. This year, she has plenty of bedding in the den and is gathering it up into a deep, fluffy bed in the back corner of the den. In the process, she displaced Hope from her snug spot behind Lily—between Lily and the back wall of the den. Lily seems to be taking over that spot. The way Lily is raking a high wall around herself, she will be immersed in insulation. Will the wall exclude Hope from Lily and any new cubs? Or will Hope wiggle her way back into her snug spot behind Lily? If she is behind Lily will she have a harder time accessing Lily’s nipples when Lily is hovering over her cubs with her head tucked under her chest to breath warmth on them. Will Lily respond mainly to the helpless cries of the cubs and ignore Hope? Will Hope show any motherly instincts this early in her life? We know new cubs in mixed aged litters have survived before, but is that the rule or the exception? We’ll be learning a lot together and have set up a schedule for Lily fans to record data as they did last year. We’re still looking for more observers to record data once a day for an hour. To apply to help with data collection, email
Hope made plaintive noises today. Part of that might have been because she was displaced from her warm spot and wanted to get back there on this cold day. If it meant she wanted to nurse—which was the occasion for her more insistent noises a couple days ago—we were glad to see that Lily did not comply. That gives us encouragement that Lily won’t give in to sharing milk when the big supply comes in after parturition.
The wall of bedding makes it hard to see. We’ll be looking for ideas to remedy that on our visit there tomorrow. The electronic part Bill Powers sent to improve the sound arrived today. We will also attempt to fix the Pan-Tilt-Zoom camera mounted outside the den so we can control it remotely. At this point we can power it up but not control it to aim it at the den.
The little radio-collar on Lily is like a necklace. She could easily take it off like she did last winter. We’ll be surprised if she keeps it on.
At the North American Bear Center, Jason Sawyer’s Den Cam in Ted and Lucky’s den is proving to be interesting and we’re anxious to get it up and streaming over the Internet for all to see. Ted is breathing loudly, sometimes snoring, about twice a minute with some lapses between breaths as long as 50 seconds. Ted and Lucky periodically steal bedding from each other. For the most part, though, they are much less active than Lily.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center