When we see Faith going after Hope to play, we can’t help but feel the loss of Jason. He was a sweetheart. Would Faith still be playing with Hope this much or would she prefer a playmate her own size? Would one cub play with Hope and the other with Lily? Would the two cubs have different personalities? A video of Faith playing with Hope is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FWv_jqsA1k . The joy we see in their play is infectious, but at the same time we think of the questions that will never be answered. Nevertheless, there is nothing else we want to do but bear research.
Actually, that’s not exactly true. Today Lynn played. His wife Donna made him take part of the day off to celebrate Father’s Day with her. Lynn totally enjoyed canoeing around beautiful Woods Lake, photographing bear foods on the forest floor, seeing one of the green frogs that has been strumming its banjo here, and seeing a newly hatched dragonfly filling its wings. Donna said it was time for Lynn to connect with nature without just thinking bears, and it was relaxing.
Meanwhile, Curator Donna Andrews captured video of big Ted standing up thoroughly scent-marking a tree at the North American Bear Center http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7oPimHfTzw . The peak of marking behavior for males is before and during the mating season—now. We were glad to see him doing that. We’ve had Ted on a four-year diet and got him down to around 550 pounds. He now can easily stand up to mark and can stand up to Lucky’s youthful testosterone-induced competitive behavior. It has been weeks since those two have played. All Honey has to do is walk by and the two males look at each other with less than friendly intentions. We suspect they’ll be back playing in a few weeks.
Thank you all so much for making Team Bear’s Special Event Matching Fundraiser a success for the Bear Center! 84 of you donated $3,235 to help reduce the debt. The anonymous donor and her employer, General Mills, will send $2,000. There was another surprise along the way. We found that some of donations were coming in but not being posted to the thermometer. We checked back and found older donations with the same problem totaling $1,379.44. All of those donations are posted now but are buried deep on the list. We can only apologize and be glad the problem is fixed. On the bright side, the thermometer will soon show the debt to be $6,614.44 less than it was a few days ago, which means we only have $53,129 to go. What a celebration it will be to burn the mortgage and move forward! Thank you so much to all who made this possible.
We haven’t yet found a video link for the Northland Voices program that aired this morning in Duluth on KDLH TV Channel 3.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center