Printable version Email this to a friend
Keeper Diary - May 2008
This month I returned to my old section to say goodbye to the bears, who were moving to their brand new home at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.. I was asked to help with the move as I had trained the two younger bears, Colombo and Ursula, to take hand injections for anaesthesia.
© ZSLThis was needed to get them in their boxes for safe travel. As mentioned previously in zoo diary, hand injections are given to reduce the stress that can be caused by darting the animals.
It was very sad to see the bears go, but, they were moving to a nice new enclosure in our sister zoo, ZSL Whipsnade Zoo.
The translocation went well. Even Lanka our elderly bear settled in very quickly. The move presented a good opportunity to give her a good health check. It showed her to be in good health, only needing one bad tooth removed. Within two hours of the anaesthetic, she was happily investigating her new den.
© ZSLThe two youngsters also moved successfully and I was able to hand inject Colombo. They were soon settling into their new dens, constantly sniffing as they do.
All that was left for me was to say good bye. I will really miss them as they all had such funny, individual characters, but they are definitely moving to a much bigger and better home. There are endless amounts of rotten logs at Whipsnade, which they love to rip open.
I’m sure they’ll be vey happy and I’ll certainly be going up to visit them a lot.
