Norman the bear

Spring has sprung at the shelter, all the snow has completely disappeared, the sun is shining, and occasionally the rain comes pelting down, but being from England i'm pretty used to this and always receive some weird looks when i'm feeding animals in my rain coat insisting that it's 'just water, calm down'.

With spring comes baby animals so we are busy preparing for the baby season which starts next month. However we did receive a very cute guest a few days ago.

Meet Norman.

Norman is a baby black bear around 3 months in age. He was found alone in the Penticton region of BC which is around 650 miles south of where the shelter is. He was transported up to us and currently resides in the hospital pen where he is doing very well.

Norman is in relatively good shape, if a little underweight. For comparison the three cubs we looked after in March, despite being a month younger, weighed more then Norman when they arrived. These bears are good examples of what the prime weight should be, as they have (except for one night) never been separated from their mother. The fact that Norman weighs less than them and is around the same size could be cause for concern. However he is very active has been put on a diet of milk, porridge and apples.

Did I mention that he is also too cute for words? He has two cuddly toys for comfort and watching him play fight with them, or attack pieces of straw is adorable. He shows that straw who's boss. In the hospital pen there is a shelf around a meter of the ground. Norman, despite being tiny, somehow managed to climb his way up onto the shelf, only to then get stuck and was unable to get down without help. He kept doing this until we eventually made a ramp so he wouldn't get stuck anymore. Only now that there is access to the shelf he suddenly isn't as interested in going up there any more. Typical man.

Norman will stay in the hospital until he gains weight and starts eating more solid food once he is off the milk and big enough he will eventually be transported to one of the outside pens up on the hill, where he will continue to hopefully gain weight and be monitored until it is time for release in just over a years time.

The time we saved a whole family of bears.

So a while ago something absolutely incredible happened here at the shelter. I put off posting about it because I was afraid that if something went wrong or if it didn't all go according to plan I would have to make a very sad follow up post. However now that it's all over and everything turned out ok I think I can share the experience.

On March 9th we got a call at the shelter asking if we had room for 3 bear cubs. Black bear cubs are all born at the end of January or beginning of February which would have made these cubs around a month old. Of course the answer was an immediate yes, but we weren't quite expecting what followed. We were asked if along with the cubs we could take their 275lb mother! That was a first for the shelter. 

It turns out that the den of the bears had been disturbed and woken the mother bear up. It was close to a residential area and could have been dangerous. The conservation officer wanted to try and save all the bears so asked if we could take them all. We couldn't turn them down.

However as it turned out tranquilising a fully grown, adult bear was more difficult than expected. The CO managed to eventually knock her out, only she was in a tree at the time and got stuck. They had to fell the tree in the end and then we picked up the bears and drove them back to the shelter.

Because of the whole ordeal of getting mum out of the tree we would have to assess for injuries, so the cubs had to be separated for a while. Since they were so young and they can't go more than 10 hours without milk this meant that for one evening we had to bottle feed. Cue me, sitting at the kitchen table at 1am, with a tiny 3lb cub sitting on my lap trying to get it to drink milk from a little bottle. I am not hesitating when I say it was the most adorable sight I have ever seen. I placed the cub on the ground in order to reheat the milk and I kid you not the cub stumbled around in the cutest way ever. They could barely hold themselves up at this age and I nearly melted at the sight. We then had to repeat this process again at 6am before it was established that mum was fine and they could all be transported up to our grizzly enclosure where hopefully they would fall back asleep for a while.

In order to protect the cubs from the harsh cold wind we carried them up after mum had been placed in the den (still tranquilised). I then rubbed the cub I had all over the mother's fur in order to cover up the human smell. We also rubbed vapor rub on the mother bears nose to further disguise the human scent. Finally we helped the cubs latch onto their mum so they could nurse and the happy sounds they made whilst drinking I don't think I will ever forget. Again, I was standing in a den with an adult bear and her three cubs. It was quite surreal to say the least!

Thankfully the bears stayed in the den and in hibernation for a few more weeks before we saw any activity. It wasn't long after that the CO's returned and we could transport them back home. An area was found where they would be away from people and hopefully undisturbed. Before leaving we once again weighed the cubs and checked over the mum. All bears were alive and well and the cubs had even gained weight. A trap was set right outside the artificial den in our enclosure and we didn't have to wait long before mum came out and we were ready to go.

They were released a few weeks ago with ear tags and a radio collar and we can do no more now other than hope that they will make it.

I feel so extremely grateful to have been part of something this incredible. We saved the lives of an entire family of bears, and even though I left covered with scratches (bear cubs have wicked sharp claws) it was all worth it in the end.

Horsing around

Hey, guess what - It's still winter here! Honestly it's getting kind of stupid now. It warmed up considerably, reaching 9 degrees on a couple of days (meaning I was sweating buckets because apparently anything above freezing is too hot for me now), so all the snow started melting (giving way to sloppy mud - joy!) only for it to dip back to zero one night, snow all day and all night and put us right back to where we started again. How I long for winter in England where we get two days of snow and lots of rain. Really I never thought I would be hoping for rain.

So another week, another  blog. I confess I am still struggling with this whole writing thing. I am still finding it difficult to come up with topics that I think are interesting enough to warrant a blog post, and most of all I am very much struggling with the fact that anything I write down I think is utter crap. I received some encouragement from my family though and was told some wise words spoken by my late grandfather who I unfortunately never got the chance to meet.

He said: "There is no such thing as useless information - Just information whose time has not yet arrived". This did put into perspective my idea that the stuff I am writing about is boring and dull because 'honestly who wants to read about endless days of snow'.

Enough of the depressing - onto the blog. With this seemingly endless winter continuing on, much to my chagrin, I have taken some advice and decided to talk about horse riding and horses in general.

When I planned my trip here I had no clue horses would be involved at all. I knew bears, moose, big cats and a whole host of other wildlife of varying sizes in between. What I didn't know was the shelter has a sister business in the shape of a trail riding company. When I first arrived here in summer I was invited to come on a couple of trail rides. Having never been on or near a horse before this was a bit daunting and also a bit exciting. There are also a few stories to tell because let's face it, it wouldn't be me if stuff didn't go hilariously and horribly wrong would it?

On my first trail ride, I was originally planning on riding a beautiful draft horse named Pixi. I fell in love with her as soon as I got her on the halter, only it turns out that she had been having some issues with bolting in the middle of trails recently. Putting someone with no horse experience on a horse that was likely to gallop off into the sunset without any prior warning was not the best idea it was concluded and instead I was left with Oprah. Oprah is a very sweet, very lovely old horse who unfortunately comes in one speed setting only - agonizingly slow. No matter what you do, what cues you give she will not go faster than her own snails pace, which meant that I ended up significantly and embarrassingly far behind the rest of the trail.

My second trail ride was arguably better and simultaneously worse at the same time. This time I was riding Tonka, another gorgeous white horse (Pictures of him can be seen back in my 'meet (some of) the animals' post from November), who did not have the tendency to go running away with his rider. He was very attentive, payed attention to my cues and this time I was able to keep up with the rest of the trail. Only Tonka seems to have his own agenda when it came to which horses he did and did not like. He appeared to have a strong dislike of the horse in front of me and kept nipping at it's butt. This didn't seem to be an issue (other than the noises of discomfort coming from the horse ahead), until it decided enough was enough and it kicked back at Tonka (who frankly deserved it at this point) sending him into a bit of a fit where he sped up and kicked back. Pretty nerve wracking when i'm on back clinging for dear life.


I also had the joy of going and visiting Ricki yesterday. Ricki is a foal born 2 months before I arrived at the shelter. He is quite possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life and I got to work with him a fair bit, feeding him each day. He has a huge personality for a young horse and we seemed to get along very well. He moved to a farm a short drive away as they were willing too look after him for the winter and with their heated stalls and huge acreage this was an opportunity we couldn't pass up. I visited him for the first time since we dropped him off before Christmas and I was so happy that he recognised me and instantly walked up for cuddles. It was the highlight of the week for me!

There are also seven foals being born this year, in May and June. I am hoping I will get to help out at least a little bit as I have discovered working here that I really do love horses. However there are going to be volunteers dedicated entirely to the horses and with baby season at the same time, I might not have enough time to do both. I will at least get to see cute little foals around the farm for a few months which I am looking forward too!

As I said in a previous post, we are hoping to start riding again soon, and this time I will also hopefully be having actual lessons, which should make me feel a bit more at ease with the whole trusting a horse with my life thing, because frankly I don't want to be bucked off anytime soon. I'll make sure to keep you posted about how the riding goes, because honestly it will probably be entertaining to say the least.