Hope is fine
April 2, 2010 - 9:17 PM CDT
Hope is coming along great. Today, we caught up with Lily and Hope as they were moving to a huge white pine 219 yards from the one where they bedded yesterday. Hope was doing her best to keep up. When Hope came to a log she couldn’t get over, she screamed, and Lily came back to help her. We left them as they settled in at the new bed site.
Some hours later, we returned. Hope responded appropriately by climbing 25 feet up the white pine. She can’t yet run up the tree like a squirrel, but she steadily climbed to a branch to sit on. Tiny cubs climb trees by releasing one foot at a time and moving it upward—‘spider-walking’ up the tree. They come down the same way—one step at a time. Slow but sure. Lynn took Lily’s heart rate (80) while Hope was up the tree.
When Hope realized we were not a problem, she started down, but that was harder. She climbed back up on the branch, cried for help, and Lily came up. Hope stopped crying the moment Lily was beside her. Lily climbed back down, and Hope soon managed to spiral down the trunk to join her. After nuzzling Hope at the base of the pine, Lily moved down-slope from the tree and raked out a bed. Hope joined her and promptly fell asleep! No nursing, no play, just sleep. Climbing trees is hard work for a small cub. They napped together for a couple hours. Then it started to rain and we ended observations.
It was great to see that little Hope can now walk that far and climb a white pine. She’s getting stronger every day. They are now 355 yards (324 meters) from the den.
A team is currently working to convert the Bear Center web cam (the ‘pond cam’) into streaming video. We’re purchasing small video cameras to capture video clips of Lily & Hope while we walk with them. We’ll also carry our usual HD camera, but these small cameras will make it quicker and easier to upload videos to YouTube—then we will link to them from bear.org. The Lily and Hope story is not over yet!
We ran into a two-week manufacturing delay on the Bearwalker DVD, but orders will be filled just as soon as the DVDs arrive. The Bear Center staff has prepped the packaging for the orders so the shipping process should go quickly.
Thank you all for your contributions and support of our research.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center