Bear News – August 16, 2021

Holly and Tasha bob for apples, Ted’s big adventure and Lucky doesn’t want visitors.

Bear weights:

Ted 633 lbs., Lucky 490 lbs., Holly 317 lbs., Tasha 347 lbs.

Fun fact: There are eight members of bears in the family of “Bear”.

The eight are in three different families. The American black bear, Polar bear, Grizzly/Brown bear, Sloth, Asiatic black bear and Sun bear belong to the Ursinae family. The Andean or Spectacled bear is in the Tremarctos family and the Giant Panda, Aliuropoda family. The Spectacled bear is the only living relative of the Giant short-faced bear. It lives in South America.

Holly put on quite a show in the water this past week. She found an apple and first played with it before trying to eat it. The guests on the deck, as well as myself, were very entertained. Holly doesn’t swim much but she took complete advantage of the pond and was playing and splashing as she tried to bite into the apple.Tasha also took advantage of the pond and enjoyed herself on the logs. She was stationary for a bit but then decided to maneuver the logs and push them in the water. She too was trying to retrieve an apple. I’m not sure why the apples taste better in the pond. The bears will leave them in their food bowl but eat them from the pond. I assume it’s just more fun.I took a couple of pictures of Tasha near the pond. Was she admiring herself? She is very beautiful. I also got a nice shot of the yellow mustard growing near the pond. The reflection was pretty so I thought I’d share it. There is nothing nicer than to see the bears standing with flowers in the background.Ted had his big adventure on Thursday. The summer interns decided to call it Ted’s big adventure, so we’ll keep it at that. He does enjoy his time out.Lucky is truly slowing down. He has been bothered by the presence of bears outside the fence. With the food sources so low in the northwoods we are seeing more and more bear movement around the bear center property; although it makes our bears nervous, they are safe from outside bear visitors.

Spencer and I are currently working with our three fall interns. As they move forward with all their tasks, their biggest challenge is to get the bears to listen to them. Our new interns are Natasha,  from Minnesota, Cassandra, also from Minnesota and Teagan is from Illinois. We welcome them and hope they have the best educational experience working with our staff, guests, and our four ambassador bears.

Thank you for all you do,
Sharon Herrell, Sr. Bear Keeper

2021 List of Updates