Join us August 3rd for WATERMELON DAY. This will be our 5th year spreading the watermelon-love to our critters. (Click here to read about our first year). While we won’t be doing watermelon carving, the bears and other animals will be doing watermelon eating. Of the over 1,200 posts we’ve published, some of my favorites have to do with watermelons: Watermelons for our Farmyard Friends Watermelon Storage Watermelons in the bear pool. and of course, Watermelon poop (take a look, it’sRead more
Posts filed in: Exhibits
Wobble Wobble
The bears have a new structure in their yard! It looks a bit like one of the Observatory Towers in Queens, New York, only smaller. Keeper Autumn, and our amazing exhibits staff, built a “wobble tree” for the bears! It’s a food dispensing tower that’s nearly 14 feet tall. We load food onto the platform on the top, then the bears need to push or pull the tower to make the food fall out. Here’s a video of Mimi knockingRead more
QuikPost: Red Wolf SSP meeting 2015
The Red Wolf SSP meeting this year is being hosted by the Endangered Wolf Center. Last year the SSP meeting was at the Akron Zoo. I’m looking forward to seeing my red wolf friends from other Zoos and Conservation Centers from around the country. There will certainly be a lot to talk about with all that is going on with the Recovery Program. Check out Ron Sutherland’s opinion piece in the N&O. News from the meeting when I return. Read more
Welcome to our new Skunk
Meet Florian, our five-year old striped skunk (formerly known as hunk-the-skunk who was rescued by CLAWS). Florian, meaning “Flower” in Latin, is the first skunk we’ve had here since Flower, our old female skunk, died over 10 years ago. (She was well-loved and it seemed appropriate to have him named after her). CLAWS had Florian since December, when a home was needed for him after his last location. The folks at CLAWS worked long and hard to get some weightRead more
Keeping Cool–Bear Style!
As Sarah mentioned earlier, is has been HOT lately. In addition to getting showers, we make large ice treats for the bears to help them keep cool. We usually add a variety of fruits or items that may be expiring soon to encourage them to dig though the ice. This is by far one of my favorite enrichment items for the bears! They always go right for them and spend a long time working out all the goodies! Below areRead more
Max and more behind-the-scenes difficult news
It’s been two week’s without Max and life is still strange. The emails and cards and notes and drawings help to remember how much impact he had. All the tests are not back yet but it seems that Max aspirated some of his food for no apparent reason and died of choke. It doesn’t seem to be common and there isn’t anything we learned to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. Maybe the last tests will tell usRead more