'Bear' feetAs the wonderful bear course ended today, we went into recovery mode, doing odds and ends in the office. The course participants will begin recovering from the travel, fun, and exercise when they arrive at their homes as far away as England in the next few days.
Ted, Honey, and Lucky continue to recover from whatever bug caught them earlier this week—although they were less active than usual on this hot, humid day. Ted spent time in the pond and in his shadowy window den. Lucky napped in the white pine a bit but spent time being his mischievous self, pestering Ted and Honey. His runny nose may have disappeared by this afternoon. Ted’s runny nose is drying up, too, and his cough was much better. Honey’s runny nose was also much better, and she responded loudly to Lucky’s advances. Staff thought she looked even better than yesterday as she ate her romaine lettuce, grapes, pear, apple, tuna fish, and sunflower seeds. We were delighted to see them recovering so fast as seems to be typical of bears. Studies of bear illnesses show them to be very resilient to many common ailments.
Thank you for letting us know about the videos of fighting snapping turtles on YouTube. Interesting to see and better understand something we never saw before. Looking more closely at the turtle pictures in the update last night, we believe the first one shows one turtle biting the other. The second picture shows one turtle with its head up-stretched and mouth open as the other turtle bites its neck. They separated a minute or two after that. Lynn is interested in snapping turtles after his youthful adventures swimming underwater to catch them. One of the lakes in his Michigan neighborhood—Emerald Lake—carried a lot of stories about huge snappers that made the underwater adventures of those days take on an air of mystery. Good memories.
Tomorrow we plan to meet with a computer scientist from this most recent bear course. She has offered to write a program for us to automate the transfer of weights from the ‘Magic Scale’ to an Excel spreadsheet. This will speed up the process of recording weights, eliminate the need for the tedious data entry, and free up some of our time. We’re excited about this opportunity. So many wonderful, talented people attend the bear courses.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center