Tag Archives: cub

The Hitchhiker

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Early Spring in Yellowstone

It’s early spring in Yellowstone, actually it’s nearly the end of the month and where the rest of the country is looking at early flowers and sunshine, up here it’s cold, the snow keeps falling and food is hard to find.

This grizzly and her cub are up early and looking for supper. Problem is there isn’t much in the way of food right now. Snow covers everything and the ground is still frozen so digging for ground squirrels isn’t on the menu yet. Hopefully there’ll be some winter kill around. A nice frozen buffalo that didn’t make it through the winter would be welcome. Anything dead at all in fact would be welcome, she’s hungry and the cub needs its milk so she’s got to get something going in the way of sustenance.

The cub doesn’t know quite what to make of all this white stuff or the cold for that matter. It’s been snuggling with mom for so long that it’s a real shock to discover cold paws. Luckily mom has been through this all before and doesn’t mind the cub’s climbing aboard to get out of the cold wet snow.

As this is the very end of May, tomorrow will likely bring bright sunshine, rapidly melting snow and food. There’s edible grass under the snow, and on the southern side of the hillsides the ground is warm enough that she can dig out some unlucky ground squirrels, and the cub will be off her back and scrambling around discovering it’s new life out of the den. No need to hitchhike anymore.

Quiet Time

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QuietTime9142Grizzly and Cub   Yellowstone                                         click to enlarge

Snowy day here at the Institute. Many of the staff, at least the ones that haven’t snuck off during the night, are beginning to agitate for their two-hour furlough on Christmas day. That’s when we let the select few who can prove citizenship leave for a couple of hours to visit loved ones, or their parole officers, their social workers, or whoever else is near and dear to their hearts.

We try to keep everyone busy during this time of year to keep their minds off disturbances like seeing wives or their newborn children, things that distract them from their responsibilities. Sometimes we run out of our regular work such as repaving the roads here on the compound. Try as we might you cannot pour and spread blacktop when it’s 2 degrees out there. We don’t dare send anymore crews out to cut firewood, we’ve denuded half the national forest as it is, and those Forest Service folks are getting suspicious. Cutting down acres of trees is a no-no, that’s real sacred cow stuff to those guys. Plus I think that some slackers on those crews try to deliberately get caught so they can go to jail rather than report back to work in the morning.

Anyway I thought I’d show a picture of our resident grizzly, Sarah, and her cub, Chip, out for a walk on the compound. Sarah is part of our security team here and its her responsibility to encourage those staff members, and it’s usually the younger interns who try to break and run before their 10 year commitment is done, to stay in their barracks, I mean living quarters, after dark. We have implemented a no biting above the second button on their shirts rule, but Sarah is an independent woman and will often modify our regulations to suit her own needs. Saying, No Sarah! and Bad Bear! just seems to delight her rather than curb her more violent behavior. Maybe it’s just that she’s a grizzly bear and will do what a grizzly bear does and we just have to live with it. Note to self: Put up picture of the foot we found near the razor wire on the interns bulletin board.

Well it’s time to get the crews busy. We started shoveling the snow out of the remaining forest so it looks neater and we can identify what further trees may need to be removed. Enjoy the day.

Keep Me From the Cold

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KeepFromCold8256click to enlarge

Mom and the kid have been cooped up together all winter and it is time to finally get outside and get  some fresh air. Trouble is it’s cold out. Not, don’t blink or your eyelids will freeze shut cold, but cold enough for a brand new cub that has never known anything but the warmth of the cozy den and it’s mother’s ample body. Mom however is hungry, really hungry and she needs to eat something right now. The quickest most reliable meal is a ground squirrel which she can dig up pretty quick and she is working on that now. Wherever mom goes the cub goes too and today is no exception. The weather makes little to no difference to the mother and she basically ignores it. But today is an exceptionally awful day for weather, it’s cold, it’s snowing, the wind is blowing, the snow is wet and heavy and this is probably the first time the cub has been out. Mom is determined to dig up a ground squirrel and sets about that task with fierce determination leaving the youngster to hover about the edge of the activity. Thing is the snow is really cold on little paws, and it is taking a very long time for this ground squirrel catching business to happen, and why can’t we go back to the den, and won’t this wind stop blowing and OK that’s it I’m taking matters into my own hands, I mean feet. The only warm place for miles around is Mom’s back and that’s where he’s headed. This cub probably only weighs 15-20 lbs. and except for the sharp needle like claws digging in she doesn’t even notice him up there. The cub’s only problem now is staying on her back as she goes through the gyrations of digging for this squirrel. He’s only thrown off a few times but now that he’s learned the secret to staying warm he quickly climbs back up and this ground squirrel hunting thing is a lot more tolerable. This behavior won’t last much longer though as mom won’t tolerate it after he gets to a certain size which will happen pretty fast but then the snow going away will happen pretty fast too. It is spring after all but right now it’s really handy to have a mom around.

Tough Love

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Being a grizzly cub can sometimes be a tough job. You have to get up in the morning, follow mom all over because she’s hungry, and if she’s hungry then there is a good chance you’re going to be hungry too. And because you are little you want to eat all the time and all you want is some of that nice warm milk that Mom provides. But like all moms she sometimes wants you to try something new, like some freshly caught and just squeezed Yellow-bellied Marmot.

After she has just spent 45 minutes digging one out of it’s den she is pretty determined that you are going to try some. It seems to be  a fairly difficult task to force down marmot this early in the day and it does not help at all that there are at least 50 or more photographers documenting your every move. The whole marmot eating thing turns out to be a game effort but lost cause because you just can’t handle that kind of food.

Expecting the worst everyone watching waited apprehensively as mom approached. It looked like this was going to be handled rather firmly and not by a time out either. Grizzly moms are known for a rather firm application of right front paw when they’re displeased. Instead mom did the right thing (moms usually do, right?) and carefully nuzzled her offspring’s face to show that it was perfectly ok to throw up in front of photographers. There was a chorus of awwww’s throughout the crowd and we were all happy and relieved to have witnessed what turned out to be a Disneyesque moment. There are a million stories in Yellowstone National Park and this has been one of them. There will be more as time goes on.