When we gave June her medicine today we found her in a big clear-cut eating raspberries and tearing apart logs for ant pupae. The picture (left) shows raspberry bushes as light green in the background and wood debris that makes ant colonies in the foreground. The cubs were not far from a white pine—the preferred refuge tree—just out of the picture. It felt good to Lynn to see that big white pines are now being left to grow for another few centuries as generations of shorter lived aspens and other trees grow up around them. As the surrounding trees grow up and are cut to grow again, the scattered white pines provide diversity that benefits many species of wildlife, including bears. The cubs ran up the white pine for security to watch as June got her medicine. How the white pines came to be spared in Minnesota is a longer story with repercussions that last to the present. June’s eye looks ever better. The picture shows the opaque area about 2 o’clock from her pupil. We’re trying to judge whether it has gotten smaller or is the same. We scanned her further for BB’s and found 3 more for a total of 7 in addition to the one that went in her eye and the one that had lodged in her eyebrow. The new ones are in her groin where each leg joins the body and on her left side/abdomen a little farther back from the first two we found there a couple days ago.
Today, 4-year-old Baby Devil showed up at the Research Center for the first time in 3 years, She weighed 135 pounds and has 2 cubs—a male and a female. We have no idea where she’s been. She’s from Keefer’s litter of 2007.
Also today, we spotted a new female in the study area—a mother with 2 male cubs. This is an older mother with a wider head. She is larger than Baby Devil but her cubs are smaller and still have the brown fur of their first coat and brown inside their ears. At this time of year, bears often make long journeys, so she may be passing through. Some years back, we spotted a strange family and managed to place a radio-collar to learn where they came from. On October 22, the family began heading north. A couple weeks later, we flew in that direction and found them denned 44 miles north near the Namakin River in Canada.
Why would anyone name a sweet cub Baby Devil? We let a special person pick any name they wanted. We expected that she’d name the cub after her grandmother or something, but she saddled the poor cub with a name that raises nefarious expectations. In truth, this very timid mother is anything but a devil, and she is no longer a baby, but Baby Devil she will be for perpetuity. We just wanted to set the record straight about her personality.
To vote for Soudan Underground Mine State Park, go to http://m.livepositively.com/park_details.jsp?parkId=556 and vote over and over.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center