Week #3:
Celebrating Black Bear Half-Birthdays

June 16, 2017

Week #3 started off with celebrating the ambassador bears’ half-birthday!  We celebrate their half birthdays because black bears are born mid-January during hibernation, so we can’t exactly celebrate their real birthdays.  The bear center also uses their half-birthday celebration as a fundraiser by letting people donate and vote for which piñata each bear will get.  This year, Lucky got the soccer ball, Tasha got the flip flop (which was almost as big as she was!), Holly got the teapot, and Ted got the strawberry (just like his favorite food!).

We gave the bears their piñatas Sunday after hours, so you could only see them from the live web cams.  We gave Lucky and Holly their piñatas at the same time.  They shared their treats, but it seemed that Lucky decided to take the teapot instead leaving Holly with the soccer ball.  Ted and Tasha got their piñatas in their individual enclosures and loved breaking into them to get their treats.  It was a delight to watch.

Also, this week, I have taken on the responsibility of doing some of the world-wide podcast broadcasts during the enrichments each day.  I was really nervous at first because I have to address two audiences at once- the visitors that were physically at the bear center and the online world-wide viewers.  Also, due to estrus, the bears have not always been coming down to enrichment and it is difficult to talk about the bears and their behavior for 15 minutes if there are no bears!

An update on mating season: the love triangle has turned into a love square.  At first, it was Lucky wanting Holly and Holly wanting Ted, and none of them getting what they wanted.  Now, we think Holly has given in to Lucky’s affections (caught mating once), but is still pining for Ted.  Tasha has also entered estrus this past week and appears to be interested in Lucky, who is still infatuated with Holly.  Ted is interested in Tasha (in a friendly manner, not mating) but Tasha is scared of Ted since he is such a large male black bear.  However, Ted and Tasha are building trust between each other, they are getting closer to each other before Tasha runs away and they are friendly between fences.

This week I have been trying to bond with the bears.  The easiest way to form a bond is to interact with them for a prolonged period of time and letting them get to know you.  I have been working on forming a bond with Tasha.  I would grab a bucket of shelled peanuts, go sit by her enclosure and feed her and talk to her.  I talked to her about donuts (specifically Hurts Donuts which isn’t that far from Cornell) and the plots of the shows I am watching on Netflix.  She doesn’t seem to care too much about Arrow or Flash.  Other interns have other methods, Alex likes to buy Holly and Tasha’s affection with high calorie treats such as yogurt raisins and yogurts almonds.  If they gained a lot of weight this past week, I am sure he is the culprit.  Morgan discovered that Lucky likes to listen to Hamilton and Queen, because he would just sit there, fascinated as she played the music.

We are also starting to see the red squirrels, ground squirrels, and specifically the chipmunks starting to trust us.  This relates back to my fellow interns Elise and Alex feeding the chipmunks.  Alex has been calling them all “Alvin” and Elise actually hand fed one the other day.  Morgan and I do not want them running up our backs scrambling for food, so we have a different approach.  We stomp at them and toss rocks to scare them away.  As much as we would like to have a trusting relationship with the critters, we just don’t want them climbing up our legs or getting into the food shed.

We went to the International Wolf Center again this week, but this time we were on a behind the scenes tour before the IWC opened in the morning.  We got to see the 5 ambassador wolves and the 2 retired wolves in the back.  Aiden, the alpha, had just got back from surgery, he had a tumor removed from his left leg.  The staff at the wolf center have to be careful about pack dynamics, so to get Aiden to the vet, they had to remove the whole pack from exhibit and then reintroduce them.  To put it simply, you cannot remove the alpha for a period of time and then reintroduce the alpha without conflict.  We also got to see our bear curator, Sharon with the retired 5-year-old female Luna.  Sharon was one of the people who had bottle-fed Luna when she was a pup and Luna remembered her.  It was a nice sight to see.

On my day off, I went with Andie and Morgan to Kawishiwi Falls.  It was very pretty and worth the hike.  I spotted a snapping turtle in the water.  No one else noticed, I guess I have a skill at finding turtles now.  When I talk to people about snapping turtles at the bear center I say they are non-aggressive in the water (because they can swim away) and aggressive on land (because they are too big to pull into their shell) and I was able to see that.  I followed the turtle along the shore, and if it felt bothered, it would just swim away.  We saw a juvenile snapping turtle on land and it was not happy when we stopped it for a quick photo.  It was like a snake ready to strike.

I also got to see a dragonfly after it came out of its nymph form.  It was similar to looking at a butterfly after it has emerged from its chrysalis, it was drying it wings in the sun.  I had always wondered how dragonflies emerged from their nymph form since I took my environmental biology course which covered macroinvertebrates, and now I have a pretty good idea!

I have been learning so much about bear behavior, wolf behavior, and even snapping turtle behavior this week.  I have also been improving on my public speaking skills, which makes me really happy since that was something I wanted to improve on.