Week 10:
Climbing and Cooling Off

August 5, 2017

We started off this week working at the Blueberry Arts Festival in Ely, MN.  This is an annual arts festival held in Ely each summer and lots of vendors and artists come to display their wares.  Like so, the North American Bear Center was there advertising their presence and handing out dollar off admission coupons.  We would talk to people about the bears if they were interested, but many were going about their ways.  We also got a chance to enjoy the festival itself, and we were all able to enjoy some blueberry pie and ice cream!

We also had our last meeting with all of the interns- this is because Wednesday was the last day for fellow intern and friend, Elise.  She was moving back to Truett-McConnell University in Georgia for her last soccer preseason.  Our director of education and our bear curator, JT and Sharon, congratulated us on a job well done and gave us some nice end of internship goodies.  It was a small, but sweet gesture.  We were then able to get a group picture of all us outside.  The rest of us will be working the next week without Elise.

Wednesday night we went to the Wildlife Research Institute for the last time this summer.  We saw 17 black bears in a span of 2 ½ hours.  We saw familiar faces such as One-Eyed Jack, RC, Ty, Crackle, and V-dot.  But then we got to meet new bears such as Roman (a young male who appeared lanky because he had very long legs), Timmy (male yearling), Stratton (2 year old male), Herby, Freddy, Burt, Guy, Samantha, and Wacky (who was named for his tendency to whack the window at the window feeding station if he sees a person in the room).  There were also three other bears, but they were too far away to identify from their behavior or markings.  It was the best night at the WRI and we celebrated with ice cream cake.

The bears at the bear center have been holding up well, because this week has been a hot one in Ely.  The temperature was consistently in the 80s and there never seemed to be a cloud in the day.  Great for people enjoying the great outdoors, but not so great for black bears.  Even though our females, Holly and Tasha fully have their summer coats, they still overheat in those high of temperatures.  They were smart and swam in the pond and hid in the shade when they could.  Our males, Ted and Lucky, on the other hand, are still shedding their winter coats.  Ted looks fully brown as he is shedding the old sun-bleached coat and Lucky is halfway through his.  Ted stayed in his personal pool and napped a lot while Lucky swam in the big pond.

One observation I made this week was Tasha doing a lot of stomp walking and dribbling urine everywhere.  Holly would then do the same thing.  Both females are marking and remarking their “territory”.  All I can think of is when dogs follow each other around and mark and remark trees in a neighborhood.

An update on the chipmunks: one has finally crawled on my leg to get some peanuts during a behind the scenes tour.  Also, the bears had had some interesting interactions with them this summer.  They mostly ignore the chipmunks and only slap their paw down if they get annoyed by them, which scares them away.  However, Ted accidentally slapped one across his enclosure, Tasha pressed one against the fence when it tried stealing her peanut, and Holly pooped on one.  Although the last one was not intentional- the squirrels forage for undigested nuts in the bears scat and squirrel went for it thinking Holly was finished. She was not.

I will be spoiling the bears as I continue on to my 11^th and final week of my bear internship.