Magnolia, the last of our yearling bears, went home to Louisiana on October 19. Here is a review of her time at ABR. The rest of the story will be in our next post.
Magnolia Bear came to ABR from Louisiana soon after the time of family breakup, when mother bears disperse their yearlings. She was 16 months old and weighed just 21 pounds.
Magnolia on arrival in May. She’d been having trouble finding food on her own.
She was released into her Wild Enclosure after 10 days.
She started foraging right away.
Magnolia started to gain weight. She did well in her Wild Enclosure.
She balanced on the log and drank from her pool, but didn’t go in.
Speculation was that her mother in LA had warned her about bodies of water that might harbor dangerous critters. Magnolia sat in her smaller drinking tub to cool off.
Magnolia stood in the tree. Note that she is wet from the waist down.
She played with her swingy ball and destroyed several.
Magnolia was often seen resting on a daybed.
We learned that LA bears prefer daybeds for resting places.
Magnolia climbed the trees in her enclosure.
Sometimes she rested in a tree.
A fine closeup of a growing bear.
A few days before her release, she still had not gone into her large pool.
She was still using her daybeds right up to the day of release.
In our next post we’ll show how ABR prepared our Louisiana yearling for her trip back home to Louisiana.