Black Bear paws are used for many things:
Walking
Rooting around looking for food
Scratching
Marking trees
Climbing trees
Swimming
And as plates
Virginia using her paw as a plate for her nut shells
This last use is one of my favorites and all of our bears do this. Sometimes they will place a piece of food on their paw and raise their paw up to their mouth. So cute and functional.
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I was going through old blogs and found one I hadn’t posted yet which was a video of Yona playing with a box.
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Lately, you may have noticed the bears are harder to find on exhibit. Our black bears don’t actually hibernate- it’s not cold enough in Durham but they do slow down a lot! Typically, you can find Gus and Mimi in or by the cave and Virginia and Yona spend their days up on the cliff. You may be able to see a big bear body if you use the camera. Here’s a picture of Virginia sitting up in her comfy pile of hay.
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I thought the bears would be thrilled to have the 15 pounds or so of nuts that my neighbor left on my doorstep last week. However, in addition to the almonds and hazelnuts that Donna left on my doorstep, the bears received their own mail at the Museum. 50 pounds of walnuts arrived at the Museum addressed to the four of them!
2 large boxes arrived, addressed to the four bears
The bears have Kelly Taylor, our Rentals Manager to thank. Kelly absolutely LOVES the bears and asked her family to get presents for the bears for Christmas.
The bears cannot read English so we’ll tell them what the note says
Hey Sherry! That is a cool Christmas story for sure!! Thanks for sharing. (and the education) I did not know bears liked nuts. Go figure!
Happy 2013!
Marlene
I love when we get mail for our animals.
Super sweet gift for the bears!
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“Accession” is a word the zoological world uses to mean, “adding to.” It’s the term applied to newly acquired individuals to a museum/zoo/aquarium’s collection. We don’t have a large turnover in our collection at the museum. Every year we lose some animals due to old age, health problems, or transfers to other institutions and we gain a couple, but our collection stays at about the same number.
Because we don’t take in new animals very often, I found it interesting to learn that the animal keepers here each have a sort of “buddy animal” that joined the animal department at roughly the same time they did.
Sherry and Ursula (Fall 1991)
Kent (Summer 1996) and 2 American Robins (Winter 1997)
Marilyn and Chummix (Fall 2003)
Katy and Virginia (Spring 2005)
Jill and Scout (Fall 2005)
Me and Robin Owl (Summer 2010)
Kimberly and Ladybelle (Fall 2010)
Aaron and Jaybird (Spring 2011)
Jessi and the baby Pine Snakes (Summer 2012)
Great post, I love that Marilyn looks like she’s about to attack Chummix
2013 for me is about enjoying the ‘moment’ whether that moment is truly a moment or a whole day long; “smell the roses” so-to-speak.
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notice the white V on her chest.
Last week we had a bear escape- actually two bears. Well, actually, not really any bears, or at least not any real bears. We practice and drill so we can prepare for the real thing. Sometimes I use stuffed animals- rather large ones that the keepers have to track down and find and return home. It’s hard to mimic reality with stuffed animals, so this past time I enlisted the help of our Human Resource Specialist, Leslie Fann. She did a mighty impressive job playing the role of Virginia Bear. 
I supplied her with the bear “coat” but she added ears, makeup and the beautiful white blaze all on her own. She waddled like Virginia, she slowly and deliberately dawdled like Virginia. She was really quite a pain in the rear. It was perfect!
Kimberly and Katy called her to “COME” and “TARGET” and Lesliebear responded.
LeslieBear targets and takes a peanut reward
Operant Conditioning really pays off. While Katy and Kimberly were calling LeslieBear (saying, “VIRGINIA, COME. VIRGINIA TARGET”) the real Virginia bear came up to the fence! It was so crazy-cool!
Virginia- the real Virginia- came when called even though Katy was calling the “pretend” Virginia.
x
Hahahaha- this is AWESOME!!! Can I be a lemur sometime?
This is awesome. Listening to the “escape” over the radio and all I could think was that I really hoped someone was getting pictures of Lesliebear.
Once Virginia showed up I had to start referring to “Virginia” as LeslieVirginia. Both Virginia’s trained really well!!! LeslieVirginia knew exactly what “target” was and she has never been trained before(as far as I know)!!! She did great at getting the peanuts out of the shell with her mouth too!!! The bears would have been proud of LeslieVirginia.
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During our daily Meet the Keeper program, Gus climbed up on top of a huge hay bale. I thought he looked very handsome.
Gus
I used the camera at over look to zoom in on him
Three of these hay bales were left over from Pumpkin Patch Express, they make great enrichment for the bears. After he finished hanging out on top of this one, he walked over to another one and started tearing into it, ripping hay from it while walking backwards. (the bales are round and roll) You never know what you might see during a program!
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Ranger Greg may have noticed the first signs of the impending season change back in August, but here in the Animal Department, we hold off until the middle of October to make our changes from the summer heat to the winter cold. We also have our animals to let us know when it’s time to shut off the fans and turn on the heaters. Scout, the duck, molts all of his old summer feathers to prepare for what would be a fall migration and he starts running around the farmyard in the morning like he’s training for a race. Henry, the woodchuck, and our 4 bears, all pack on a few pounds with the start of fall and then slow way down, spending most of their days sleeping. The bears, wolves, steer, donkey and many others begin to grow in an extra thick coat of fur to ward off the impending cold.
One of my favorite signs of the season comes from our Red-tailed Hawk, Misha. Our normally quiet, calm hawk becomes very chatty in the early hours of the autumn mornings.
I love that you got footage of Misha doing this! I’ve heard him but never seen him.
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Recently I added a hammock to the Ring Tailed Lemur indoor stalls. I have seen both Cassandra and Satyrus snuggled up together in it but when I reached for my camera they jumped up. I got lucky the other day and snapped a pic of Lycus lounging in it.
I was working for Keeper Jill this past Saturday (who was attending the AAZK conference) and wanted do some fun enrichment for the Bears and for me to watch. So I used a bunch of empty boxes and filled them with their p.m. food and some extra treats. It wasn’t very eventful but it was interesting to see how each of them accessed their boxes differently. Gus just shoved his head right in! Mimi carefully pulled back the tabs on the boxes. Virginia pushed all the tabs into the box and Yona had her box on it’s side.
Front to back: Gus, Mimi, Yona
Virginia
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I just learned there are still some spaces left for the two October evening bear feeding. Come join me on a leisurely stroll down to the bear house and help me give them their dinner. Reservations required- hope to see you then.
Called today and reserved a spot for the Oct 14 bear feeding. The last one I went to was awesome as Gus looked right at me through the fence plus I was able to talk to the bear keepers! It was an amazing experience !!!!!!!!!!
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I have some boxes I need to flatten and recycle here at the house. I think she could be a big help!!