It’s like a miracle. It’s like waking up from a bad dream. She had looked so bad. Now she’s her old self. Her appetite is back. She looks good and alert. She has energy. She was the same with us as ever. We didn’t know what to expect when we checked on her. We were prepared for the worst. We took a radio-collar to put on Hope, if she would. In our relief about Lily, we didn’t think to check her nipples for milk and we didn’t even think to snap a picture. We futilely concentrated on radio-collaring Hope. Hope is a girl who knows what she doesn’t want. She anticipates our every move. Will she ever change her mind? We remember the old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” We will try again.
We didn’t actually see Faith, but we heard her and Lily hurried off in response to her cries. Studies of Lily, Hope, and Faith will continue.
After our visit with Lily and Hope we checked out their last bed site to see if we could find any clues. No clues to Lily’s illness, but we did find the ground around the tree littered with red maple branches covered with bursting buds. Yesterday when we checked on the family at this same bed site, we spotted Hope high in the red pine pawing at branches of a deciduous tree. Our attention was on Lily so we didn’t think more of it. Now we know the tree she was pawing was a red maple and she was likely feeding on the swollen buds.
Last year green-up was 2 weeks early. Aspen leaves were bursting on April 18. This year green-up is late. Today we have temperatures below freezing and snow flurries. What this will mean for the wild foods this summer remains to be seen.
A good idea came out of the Lily worries. The Education Outreach Team suggested developing a lesson plan on dealing with grief.
Al Burda of Pennsylvania was the lucky winner of Carol Decker’s beautiful drawing of Lily and Hope. Thank you to all who so generously participated, to Carol Decker for the print, and to Team Bear and Patrick McKibbage for making the drawing possible.
In the Readers Digest contest to win money for Ely, we are holding 6th place, voting like mad as people try to catch up or stay ahead of us. The link to vote 10 times in a row each day through May 16 is http://wehearyouamerica.readersdigest.com/town.jsp?town=ELY&state=MN.
In the Chase contest to win money for the International Wolf Center, you have us solidly in 3rd place with only 3 days to go. This is the contest where we can vote only once through May 4. To vote, go to this link http://www.facebook.com/ChaseCommunityGiving and click “Like.” Then go to this link http://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/411543539-international and register your vote for the International Wolf Center.
The petition to name the black bear Minnesota’s state mammal has 1,308 votes and is at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/BlackBear-MNState-Mammal/.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center