The Alaska Zoo held its annual birthday party for their polar bears today, and I was there working at the critter table. The weather was cooperative, for once; being a mere 20 degrees rather than the 14 below it was at their last event. That certainly makes my volunteer work easier.
Ahpun and Lyutyik (affectionately known as Louie) had a huge 8’ tall 3-tiered snow-cake built in the center of their exhibit, decorated with colored sugar water and fruit. As always, a few toys were hidden inside the cake = the bears enjoy digging in to find whatever is hidden in there.
When they were let out of their dens, promptly at noon, they knew just what to do. Ahpun zeroed in on the cake decorations, very carefully picking off the apples and oranges first, followed by the frozen fish and washed down with a few carrots - not her favorite treat, but if she didn’t eat them he would have. Oddly enough, she wouldn’t eat the orange peel: she very carefully broke each one open and scraped the pulp out with her lips, leaving the rinds scattered on the ground around her.
Louie, however, had his eye on the big huge box balanced precariously on top. He stood up on his hind legs, showing off his impressive size, and got hold of the box with his teeth and dragged it off and over to a corner, away from Ahpun. There he methodically worked at it until he got it open. Inside was a bit of popcorn, but he ignored that and went right for the brand new 5-gallon bucket! The peanut butter smeared on the inside was a bonus – once that has been licked clean, the bucket itself will provide hours upon hours of fun for both the bears (assuming they share).
Our critter table had an information board with pictures, maps, and a few news articles all illustrating the recent plight of the polar bears, giving tips on how to do your part to try to mitigate the problem. We had a polar bear skull and a piece of hid with the claws attached for the kids to investigate. The zoo’s photographer had donated a couple of his prints that had been turned into puzzles for the children to try to assemble – one cut to an easy format, the other more difficult.
We also had the cutest polar bear hand puppet that was offered as a raffle: $1.00 per ticket or 6 for $5.00. I had the puppet on my hand as I walked around the crowd talking to people. I’m rather proud to say I personally sold about $56 worth of tickets! That more than made up for the cost of the puppet.
Unfortunately I had absentmindedly locked the keys in my car when I arrived for my shift, so I was a bit distracted wondering how I was going to retrieve them. The maintenance guy on duty that day, James, tried to help but my car is firmly resistant to being broken in to so he was not successful. After several attempts I suddenly remembered that I had a spare key at the house, so I got a ride home with one of the other volunteers and finally got my car back.
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