What is it like being Hope?
June 21, 2010 – 10:13 PM CDT
We thought little Hope, all alone, might bond with caregivers more readily than cubs that have mothers. The opposite is true. Maybe it’s just her personality. Maybe it’s because she has the responsibility of protecting herself. She is surprisingly defensive and wary. She behaves like there is danger all around and is slow to trust us. But she trusts us more than the dangers she perceives in the forest. This evening, she would grab a nut, hurry close to her big red pine, and focus her ears toward the wall of leaves and stems that limit visibility to maybe 30 feet. With each bite, she went and focused in the same direction, standing with her back to us, ignoring us. Sometimes, she started up the tree. We have no idea what had her keyed up. When she finally was full of 16 ounces of formula, a cup of nuts, 2 cups of red grapes, and some mealworms, she looked in the usual direction and raced high up the red pine as it was getting dark (picture at right from last night).
She seemed extra hungry. We were disappointed to see her disappear up the red pine when we dearly wanted a scat to see what she had been eating today. It had rained, so we would expect her to be a little wet, but she was soaked when she arrived. We wondered if she had been catching crayfish. A scat from a few days ago was half full of crayfish parts.
According to the trail cameras, she did not visit the feeding site today until we arrived. We suspect she is ranging ever more widely to forage. And well she might. Yesterday, we noticed that blueberries on a sunny ridge were ripe. Juneberries there were nearly ripe—red but not yet purple.
We’re happy to see wild foods developing as they are. With little Hope out there having to forage on her own, it’s a good year for berries to be abundant. We feared they would get frosted out with the early spring causing early blossoming, increasing the chances of a spring frost killing the blossoms. But it’s going to be a good year. Chokecherry trees are unusually loaded with green berries. Same for pincherry trees. Many of the juneberries, a favorite, are very small and dry, but some are fairly juicy. A moderate crop of hazelnuts is coming on. Wild sarsaparilla, another favorite, will be reasonably abundant.
Hope should do fine. Of course, there’s always a chance of something bad happening. The area has a good population of wolves and coyotes, but they can’t climb trees. Hope can climb like a squirrel, and we suspect she is living her life near trees. Even bears less vulnerable than she is do that. We have tracked nearly mature bears that went from one big refuge tree to the next, staying as safe as they could.
Thank you for your support of the research and education.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center