park-like red pines - October 12, 2011The four GPSed mothers with cubs are status quo. Lily and June and their families stayed put today. Braveheart and Jo and their families continued to move a little.
We know the 3 (hopefully) pregnant bears are in dens—Juliet, Dot, and Cookie. That left us wondering what the radio-collared bears without GPSs are doing. Those include Shirley, Sharon, Jewel, Star, Colleen, and Ursula (whose GPS batteries expired).
We tried to see if Shirley might be making a den. She wasn’t. As it turned out, she was too active for us to catch. She was moving away faster than we could climb the steep rocky hills where she was. The tops of the hills were beautiful park-like red pine stands with few bushes. Visibility was good through the trees, but we couldn’t see Shirley. She was far ahead and getting farther. We gave up. She probably never knew we tried to follow her.
About 4:30 PM, the hardest rain of the summer hit the area. Torrential. Cars were pulling over on the highway for lack of visibility. We need the rain. The bears needed it months ago.
pine marten (file photo)A distressed scream in the garage was unnerving. A flashlight finally revealed a pine marten living in a pallet covered with boxes. The entrance to its home was a hole in the crumbling back wall of the garage. The pine marten is welcome to stay the winter, of course. Hopefully it will habituate to us over time, or we will have to get used to being greeted by its screams.
Ted, Lucky, and Honey are fine as they wait for the extra work to finish on the pond. It was to have been done on Monday, but the cement bunker containing the pumps for the waterfalls ended up with a couple feet of water, necessitating changes. What they did now is foolproof. We can’t wait to see the waterfalls come on and the bears’ reactions to them—probably this weekend. We’re waiting for wire to arrive on Friday and the electrician to run it underground to the pumps.
Speaking of wire, it’s getting down to the wire on sending in your name, address, and telephone number for the $5,000 drawing that a complainant forced open for everyone. The deadline is midnight Oct 16th. But we don’t really have that long. The 16th is a Sunday and entries have to be mailed, so that means they have to be delivered by Saturday. The address is BearHuntersJackpot.com, PO Box 10051, St. Petersburg, FL 33733. For those who missed it last night, the sponsors of the drawing were informed by the Minnesota Department of Public Safety—Alcohol and Gambling Enforcement Division that to be legal they had to open the contest to everyone. Time is short.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center