A Beary Beary Day

Yesterday was a busy day. I did my first tug-of-war training session by myself. Rayna and Phil were there helping, but every other time I have done lion tug-of-war Sarah and Valerie have been with me and I have been just jumping in as needed. So it was cool to do it and be running the show. Unfortunately Sarabi didn't want to play very much, she just wanted to sit there with the rope, but at least she enjoyed herself. Tau did better but we still have to work on the "release" command with him, he just does not want to give up his rope once he has it, even for food. He is getting better but Sarabi is still much better than he is at releasing on command. We also tried a new 2" rope today it was a lot lighter than the 3" rope we tried and I think much better for people to handle, so we may end up using it for the encounters.We also worked on my project again and it is so close to being done it was frustrating to not be able to finish it then. We spent some time down at black bears and got all the yards picked up and the hut sprayed out. I got some nice shots of Takoda sitting on top of the culvert.

Takoda and Donna

Takoda posing all cute

Chochmo eating an orange :)

These three are not that excited about food right now, but they still aren't completely going down for hibernation. We have some cold days coming up though so they may den up for a few days, we will have to wait and see. In the wild these guys would sleep until April, but hibernation is also a learned behavior and Chochmo has never hibernated before. Last year was Takoda's first year going down (he learned from Donna) so it's not that surprising that this year they did not really go down with Chochmo out with them. All the same they have gotten slower and had a decreased appetite. Hopefully next year they will really go down for hibernation.

Today was a very exciting day in Carnivore world. We let our five brown bears out of their den today for the first time since October 31st. Normally we keep these guys in for hibernation until March but they were getting a little more active this year so we decided to let them out a bit early. Now this is a big project because once they are out we have to clean out all the hay (7 bales, 7 bales, and 10 bales) that was in their rooms. I went with Michelle, one of our Cheetah keepers, to let lions out and get those huts cleaned. Then Sarah had us get the power washer from maintenance. By the time we got down there, they had already finished getting all the hay out! So Michelle and I stayed to finish cleaning the huts. We had to hose everything out from top to bottom. This includes the upstairs floor and rafters, the hallway, five rooms, and front room. Once EVERYTHING was sprayed out (this was tough because we had to spray out all the leftover bits of hay) we then had to repeat the whole procedure with the power washer. As Michelle finished a room I would go in and scrub it out with bleach.By the time we finished that whole process it was around 12:20. So we neatened up and went to lunch. After lunch I went back to bear huts with Rayna and we rinsed out all the bleach and squeegeed everything. Because it was their first day out we brought the bears in a bit early, around 3:00. But this meant there was not as much time as we like for the huts to finish drying, so we gave the bears a whole bunch of boxes with their dinner so they could tear them up and make a bed. They had a lot of fun with this. While Val and Rachel were bringing bears in I went down to feed black bears. Takoda happily went in to eat but Donna and Chochmo didn't really care much about their food today. That is a good sign for hibernation. At close I brought up lions with Valerie. We out Sarabi's diet in a box but it did not take her long to go right through it to get her meat. Anyway, here are some picture of Russel and Claire out today.

What are you looking at?

Whatchya doing Russel?

♪ Look for the bear necessities, the simple bear necessities of life!♫