Our two newest arrivals are doing well.  Our curator reports that Loretta(the smaller bear) is calmer than her sister, Rose. She likes nuts and goes for peanuts and pecans first. Rose climbs up, over, and through the culvert den, pausing briefly to grab an apple which she then carries… with her up, over, and through the den. The sisters don’t really like leaf lettuce, and aren’t particularly fond of carrots. Their typical diet is apples, dry dog food, nuts in shell (peanuts and/or pecans), grapes, and a few novel foods, like dry corn on the cob, and eggs (turkey and goose).They seem to like these. They don’t care for cabbage trimmings much, but the neighborhood racoons reach through the wire mesh to steal what they can. The girls are a year and a half old; unlike very young baby bears, the sisters have spent their whole lives in the wild. They just need ABR’s helping hand for a time, and then will be released back to where they belong.

We are interested to learn that the girls are not attracted to the greens and roots(carrots).  In the wild, they would have eaten grass and leaves in the early spring, and also would have had some roots.  Bears seem to prefer to eat what would be seasonable for the most part.  Although apples and grapes would not be found in the wild now, they are fruits, which is probably why they choose them.  Here are new photos of the two lively girls.