Lazy Lions and Sleepy Bears

So today was a rather rainy drizzly day, typical for Oregon winter. I spent most of my morning at lion huts today. Here I received my typical morning greeting,

 Tau got a little lazy there towards the end.

We put our three year old pair, Sarabi and Tau, out in the Right Burm Pen, or RBP, today, and the older two, Keeno and Natasha, in the Lower Breeder Pen, or LBP. We also have two other pens in our exhibit area, the Upper Breeder Pen (next to LBP) and the Hut Tree Pen (next to RBP). Normally the kids go out into HTP and the adults into RBP with a switch on Wednesdays and Saturdays, but today we were doing some work in the HTP so we did things a bit different. We recently pulled out one of the black bear pools from their area since they are beginning to settle down to hibernate. Today we brought that pool into HTP and filled it. So, tomorrow we will put a ball and a few squash into the pool for the kids to play with, expect some great pics to come! For the pens we put the lions in today we spread some flavorings for them to smell. We try to do a different form of enrichment every day, whether it be scent, toy, or food enrichment. Sarabi and Tau had some brandy and lemon flavoring while Keeno and Natasha had vanilla extract and soy sauce. They do seem to like scent enrichment, rolling in it or rubbing on the objects we put stuff on, but I think they like perfume or elephant poo a little better than the flavoring. Still it was something interesting for them to sniff. Me and Mandy, one of our three interns, cleaned lion huts today and since the days have had a bit more free time since the bears went down we did a few extra things too. We made some new boxes to help keep out cabinet organized, cleaned off the glove tote (the lid was all covered in meat germs and icky) , and as previously mentioned, got the pool filling tomorrow. But just before we left I got some great footage of Sarabi actually being NICE to Tau. Now if you know anything about lions you may know males are the dominant ones. Well unfortunately Sarabi and Tau missed that memo. Sarabi beats up on poor Tau a lot. His whole back end is covered in scars from her, but he practically never retaliates. Here you can see a rare occurrence of Sarabi being affectionate :)

You may notice how he backs away from her. Still its nice to know she cares.

After we were done at lions we headed down to visit our young black bears. I managed to catch a shot of Donna and Takoda snuggling.

 And Chochmo was begging for a treat.

After black bears we headed to QB, essentially field headquarters for the Carnivore and Cheetah Departments, and worked on some projects (to be discussed at a later date) and made up bear diets. Mind you to make bear diets we go into our giant walk in cooler, and on a day like today it was COLD. I had to wear two big sweatshirts! The rest of the day slid by in a series of projects with some office work (typing up old notes on some vet procedures done in 2006, it was kind of fun!) thrown in. Then we got to head back out to black bears to feed everyone.  We also got to go in side B to clean up and scrub out the pool, which we have not been able to do for a while so it was really nice to get things cleaned up there. Here are just some pictures of feeding time.

Who ever said don't play with your food?

Food set up for the kids, looks like a feast doesn't it?

And lastly,

A nice shot of Little Girl, one of our adult black bears, all snuggled in her culvert for hibernation.


The rest of the evening went pretty smoothly. We fit in some lion training and stopped off at black bears one more time to give the kids their evening dose of meds. We are giving them a preventative round of antibiotics before they go down for the winter. Anyways, hope everyone liked today's pics, more to come tomorrow!