With the cold weather we’ve been having recently (especially in the evenings), the moat in our bear exhibit has frozen over sooner than usual. We always expect freezing of the moat to occur in late January and through February, but this winter it has happened in December! Even with temperatures now getting warmer during the day and typically melting any ice or snow on the ground, the warmer weather doesn’t necessarily thaw the ice in the moat because it doesn’t get direct sunlight.

Well, the ice in the moat finally became thick enough that the bears could walk on it. Yesterday, Kimberly and I watched Yona and Gus venture out on the ice to come greet us while we were breaking up the ice with long poles from the bear viewing area.  Although Yona and Gus did some playing on the ice that we didn’t capture on video, I still got some footage of Yona investigating her newly frozen ice rink. You might notice the large sheets of ice that are frozen into the new ice that had formed overnight. Those sheets of ice are from Sherry breaking up the moat the day before, and then the water re-freezing with the broken sheets inside of it!