Almost – the snow is still deep across the meadow, but it has melted around the edge of the pond – where the water is over the ice, and flowing a little along the creek. The seagulls are back on the barn roof. I am waiting for the appearance of the ducks.
Giisus (Mama Bear…you know her name by now) is still sound asleep. Maybe, in the years and years she has awakened to the spring, she does not believe in the first warm sunlight. Sadie, our other resident bear, may wake up if you go and stand by her enclosure, but she will simply lift her head, yawn, and go back to sleep.
The fawns are growing restless – the raccoons are absolutely sure it is time for them to go – explain as we will that the snow is still too deep for them to find food easily.
The foxes are pacing and listening to no explanation about more snowstorms and food being difficult to find. And, of course, away in the back enclosure, the bear cubs are, one by one, waking up.
Though we built them a sufficient number of sheds to make for comfortable hibernation all winter, they chose to crawl into one, pile themselves up in a hot heap and hibernate together. A deep heap it was!
That resurrection is happening now; the cubs are awake, and hungry. The pangs of hunger seem to awaken more slowly than the cubs themselves.
The cubs wander about a few days, looking at the great white world around their enclosure, likely smelling the first of the coming thaw…wondering about the strange world surrounding them.
However, the pangs of hunger begin and each cub suddenly remembers he hasn’t eaten for a long, long time and if he doesn’t clean up every bit of food, all the other cubs will get it and he will be left to starve…and so, every day now, staff carry a few buckets of food away back to the enclosure, and the cubs are waiting.
Even the tiny cub which came so late in the winter, has decided that food is the most wonderful thing in all the world. Meanwhile, we want those cubs to put on as much weight as possible. They have a long way to go before they are safely independent.
They would stay with their mother until at least June, learn from her how to hunt and where to find food…and then, they would take off on their own, and be real bears.
I have experienced the “mother bear” feeling quite a number of times.
A cub who came to me so tiny that he had to be coaxed to suckle on a bottle every three or four hours night and day. And then, very sure of himself, trotting off into the woods, without so much as a farewell look back, off to live his own life.
Which is as it should be. Will be. Spring is almost here.
(Audrey Tournay is the executive director of the Aspen Valley Wildlife Sanctuary and a regular contributor to the Beacon Star.)