It’s a girl!

We’re getting pretty brave making pronouncements about the sexes when these cubs are so young—especially starting a week ago when they were only a day old.  We first got an inkling that the dark cub was a female when a brief reflection of what we thought was urine shined from the right spot.  Today, at 11:22:16 the same cub flashed a vulva, which most people would confuse as being a scrotum, but the scrotum is not yet developed in male cubs. A video of the sighting can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_yq0ydOlOg.  We really think we have a male and a female.  This is great because it means there is another female to carry on the trusting tradition of June and Lily.  The male cub will likely leave the study area at 1 or 2 years of age while the female remains.  It starts us thinking more seriously about names.

Another question is about coat colors.  The male is a lot lighter than the female.  At first, we wondered if it was just the light, but it’s consistent.  Could he be our first brown-colored cub?  Some black cubs have brownish fur until the first molt at mid-summer when they turn black, but this one looks lighter than that in this light.  Could Lily have mated with beautiful rich brown Crackle?  We didn’t see her with him, but she roamed far and wide during mating season and was too deep in the forest to join for days at a time.  Anything is possible.

A new den cam went up yesterday and the pond cam came down today.  Today, the Ted and Lucky Den Cam showed them playing in slow motion and later showed Ted calmly stealing Lucky’s bedding material while Lucky watched with no sign of concern.  He has seen that happen before, and he can steal it back when Ted is sleeping.  We love how these two buddies get along.  We are very glad we said yes when we got a call from a rehabilitation facility saying they were about to euthanize a cub but wondered if we could use another bear in the forested facility at the Bear Center.   The next day, we met the cub halfway and were off on a joyous journey of watching Ted and Lucky become friends and playmates.  Gentle Ted, one of the largest black bears on record, wanted to get close to little Lucky, but Lucky was scared.  It took from July to October for Lucky to give Ted a chance.  Since then, their raucous play has made audiences ooh, aah, and laugh.  Lucky has an especially playful personality—even with people.  Given half a chance in the enclosure, he likes to take people down and gnaw gently on them.  When he was a cub, he bit too hard during play.  Now, he can control his bite.  The Ted and Lucky den cam is at http://www.bear.org/livecams/ted-lucky-cam.html.

Lucky’s playful nature even got Honey to play.   After a year and a half of Honey chasing Lucky up trees, Honey made sweet high-pitched grunts to Lucky as he walked past in the snow.  Lucky accepted the invitation, crawled in the den, snuggled behind her, and spent the winter.   The den was visible from the viewing windows at the Bear Center.  At times, we could see motion in the dark depths and could make out Lucky and Honey playing like we saw on the Den Cam with Lucky and Ted today.  Late winter, Lucky and Honey came out together for a few hours one day and played in the sunlight for all to see.  That winter was the only time we saw Honey play.

Ted has wanted to be with Honey, but she usually moves away while Ted bawls loudly and plaintively.  How different bear personalities are.

Now that the Ted and Lucky Den Cam is up, we can compare their minimum activity with what is going on in Lily’s den.

Today, we turned off the Pond Cam until Ted and Lucky emerge in spring.  Then we can go back to it.  We had high hopes for bird and squirrel action in front of the Pond Cam, but Honey had other ideas.  She took down the Christmas Tree before it was even Christmas, and she showed us she would stand up tall to reach the bird feeders.  We moved the feeders to where she can’t get them, but without the Christmas trees the birds are just silhouettes against the snow and the camera doesn’t have enough to focus on and goes blurry too often.  Ted and Lucky can teach us something and, as it turns out, our bandwidth only allows for one camera at the Bear Center.

Some interesting education material is developing.  More on that soon.  And the bidding on The Bear Family and Me script autographed by Gordon Buchanan, Producer Ted Oakes, and others is going to make a difference for the Bear Center.

Thank you for that and all you are doing.

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center