Love Baby Animals?

Apparently so does this little fella!




Happy New Year everyone!

If You Just Want Endless Distraction

So if a Black Bear Cam and a Bald Eagle Cam aren't your cup o' feathers/fur, how about a Peregrine Falcon Cam???

There's a nest box with a camera in it in, of all places, Boise Idaho, atop One Capital Center. Last year two chicks successfully fledged from this very site! Wonder what can happen this year.

I am not going to get much writing done at this rate!!

CLICK HERE to see or go to http://www.peregrinefund.org/falconcam/

We will get back to those three squirrel babies shortly!

Black Bear Den cam

If you go to www.bear.org or http://www.wildearth.tv/static/bearden you'll see a pregnant black bear in her cave for the winter.

I guess she's been finnicky about what cave to go in and fortunately picked this one with the camera in it of three she has tried out for her hibernation. Once she realized the camera was in there she was upset, hit it a few times, but settled in. I think that was days ago.

Now, just a few minutes ago, the guys did something in to adjust the camera and she left the cave again. I hope she returns and we can watch her in there as she will have her babies and they will grow enough to be really cute by springtime, when they will leave the cave and enter the world.

OOh, there she is... I think. I keep seeing a bunch of hair block the camera, then moving back... Must be the bear standing close to the mouth of the cave, figuring she will reenter.... let's hope. Like when I gave out the Bald Eagle nest cam (thank you to commenter Sizzie for the link), I often tuned in in the morning and left the thing open in the corner of my screen so I could see movement as I worked on other things. It was so great to see the baby left in the nest and what it would do to not get bored... and as it grew, how it would try out flapping it's wings til one day it flew. And it was really exciting to see the mother fly back with a fish for her baby to eat.

Hey, now I can see a little bit of snowflakes falling.. and woah! Breath from someone's mouth or nostrils is showing up in the air!!! Cool! I can hear her breathing too!

I have always wondered how bears, who get hungry like us, and want to eat daily like us, go into some kind of altered state and manage through frigid winters to stay curled up in some kind of den for several months, with no need to eat, go outside or even get up to pee. I mean, we are all stiff after 8 hours of sleeping (well, at least I am these days) and if we don't get up in the middle of the night, using the restroom is top priority when we get up. How do you submerge all those things for 3+ months at a time? And giving birth while in this state? Is that the equivalent of a full body/mind epidural?

Oh wow, it is DEFINITELY the bear standing to the side of the lens now, deciding whether or not to go back in that cave. Whew, it's almost like she is right next to me. I expect this is more action than I'll see most of the winter, until the little ones are born, that is.

I guess this bear has been named Lily and has a Facebook page all her own (little does she know). You can Friend her, lol, if you get on the website. Let me know if you sign in, and if you know of other sites like this...

thanks to the website mentioned above for her FB pix

Speckled Bears

Have you ever heard of a speckled bear? I hadn't before I started to work with the carnivore keepers at the zoo. I just thought there were bear bears. Big and scary, grizzly, black or brown perhaps, but speckled? You can see from the pictures below why they are called this.



...well, that's a guess on my part. We have a pair of speck bears and while I was taking some VIP zoo members on a morning tour that included the bears, they seemed quite in the mood for posing. I was amazed at how these pics I snapped turned out. Don't professional photogs wait all day to capture poses like these?


Maybe they're hoping I'll send them on to Tyra Banks or some other model mogul. I think they'd readily take their pay in fresh salmon!

The Poo of Pooh

I struggled to open the ridiculously long, industrial strength plastic bag while wearing protective latex gloves, but I tried my best to mask it. I wanted to impress. This was the moment I'd been working toward, being a Carnivore Keeper's Aide, and I was given my first task -- shoveling bear sh*t. I knew it was a part of the job, but I suppressed a snort when it was the first thing I was assigned. I wondered if it's an inside joke among the staff to throw newbies right into it and see what they're really made of. All I know is, I was determined to make it look like I'd been doing it all my life.

As I scooped up the morning-fresh puddle of gunk, I almost keeled over from the stench. Between that and the weight of the shovel and my gloves sticking to the bag that just would not stay put, I swung it best I could in the direction of the opening and dumped it. It mostly got on the sides, leaving me no clear spot from which to grab it and shake things down. The smell made me care a little less about neatness and more about being done so I brought back the second scoop hoping my aim would be better. It was, but I still had to figure out how to carry the mess with me as I tidied the rest of the habitat. At that moment the very nice keeper took pity and showed me a way to roll and set the bag so I'll do better next time. Still, I did all this with a wry smile on my face thinking: for the rest of my life, this will be a fun story to tell.

I admit, I was shaking in my knee high rubber boots when we first entered the enclosure. I think it crosses everyone's mind that there can be mistakes (if it doesn't, you've done it too long). The keeper told me the bears were properly locked outside so I plunged ahead, though it felt like I had ginger ale in my veins. When I was done collecting carrot remnants and refilling their pool, I watched as he prepared their arthritis

medicine. He mixed it with honey in a Tupperware bowl, then headed around the corner with me in tow. He squatted down and I stopped short in my tracks. What I didn't expect was to see a GIANT grizzly right THERE.

A GIANT bear, did I mention that?

In my pre-Aide interview, the first 30 minutes were essentially warnings consisting of things I should not or could not do for my and the animal's safety. At the end they asked if I had any questions and I joked, "Um, what can I do?" So I expected this bear to fling himself against the bars, roaring and swiping at the bowl with claws as long as my fingers. I figured we'd have to push the bowl toward him from a great distance with a very long indestructible pole, as if he were Hannibal Lecter.

But the keeper was kneeing right against the bars cooing to the bear, who had his paws curled up under him like a pussy cat. He was so big he disappeared into the shadows of the cage. But his head was fully visible, apart from the hulk of him -- and it was massive, with thick dark fur only serving to make it bigger (and by the way, this guy is the smaller of the two on exhibit). Yet he could not have been more sweet and docile, sticking his tongue way out of his long snout to reach the honey/meds in the bowl. It took me a moment to collect myself before I thought to whip out my iPhone. I didn't know if it was OK or totally unprofessional to snap a pic... but since I saw volunteers taking pictures here and there, I risked it. This hasty stealth move accounts for my fuzzy shot, but it does capture them moment for me to keep. 

At the end the keeper stuck in the spoon and asked the bear softly if he'd like to lick it, which he did. These are old bears and maybe that accounts for it, but this ruddy, masculine keeper's tenderness toward them was a great example of the effect animals have on people's hearts.