Midge - July 2008Today was a mundane work day without a bear fix. We upgraded computer security at the Bear Center. Office tasks were tackled. We worked to get odds and ends out of the way to prepare for the Team Forward Cleaning Crew which is coming this weekend to ready the Research Center for our annual health inspection. We gathered and sorted receipts for our bookkeeper. We pulled data together for our annual report to the MN DNR.
Highlights today were talking with several members of the Miracle Team (i.e. staff) at the Bear Center, saying “Hi” to Ted Bear, and thinking about which bears to study with Den Cams this winter.
We're glad to see our peer-reviewed paper about the natural death of 26-year-old Midge is published. The link to the abstract for “Fatal disseminated blastomycosis in a free-ranging American black bear (Ursus americanus),” which we co-authored with veterinarians from the University of Minnesota's Veterinary Diagnostic Lab, is http://tinyurl.com/Midge-abstract. Eventually, we’ll have a hard copy of the whole paper and make it available for everyone at Bearstudy.org/Publications/Published papers/Black Bear.
For those interested, a graphic photo taken during Midge's necropsy is posted at http://tinyurl.com/Midge-necropsy.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center