"Bear"ly Alive . . . Thank Heavens!
February 15, 1999

Three tiny orphaned black bear cubs which were "bear"ly alive a little more than two weeks ago have a much brighter future thanks to the Appalachian Bear Center (ABC). Although their fate is still up in the air, the cubs' chances of once again roaming free in the wild improve with each passing day. The three cubs have had a lion's share of bad experiences in their short three week old lives.

Their journey began in late January when a logging company in North Carolina accidentally cut down their mother's den tree. A few hours later the loggers heard the helpless cries of the cubs but could not locate the mother anywhere.

Wanting to do the right thing, they left the cubs alone in hopes that she would return. She never did.Shortly thereafter a call was placed to the ABC, a local non-profit group specially designed to care for orphaned or injured black bears. "I received a call at 1:30 a.m. from a woman wanting to know what to feed three hungry little bear cubs," says Daryl Ratajczak, Curator of the Bear Center. Knowing all too well the urgency of the situation, Ratajczak instructed to woman on immediate care and put the wheels into motion for the cubs eventual transfer to East Tennessee. It's not as easy as it sounds.

"These cubs are neonatals, which means they are still dependent upon their mother for milk and warmth.", says Tom Brosch, President of the ABC, "That means drastic measures are called for."

Typically the ABC will adhere to its strict "hands off" policy when rehabilitating black bears. This policy prevents the bears from becoming dependent on people for food and thus becoming a nuisance upon their release. However, since these neonatal cubs need to be bottle fed daily, a special plan had to be devised. This plan called for the cooperation of a number of state and federal agencies.

The ABC had to contact the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, The University of Tennessee and the National Park Service to get permission to carry out a detailed "adoption" procedure. The idea is to have the ABC care for the neonatal cubs until wild surrogate mother bears are found who will "adopt" the orphans.

Hopefully if all goes well, each orphan will be introduced to a wild surrogate mother and be successfully adopted while she is still in her den. Since she will be in the middle of her hibernation, she won't be fully aware of what is going on.

By the time she awakes in Spring, she won't even know the "extra" cub isn't hers to begin with. Luckily, this method of adoption has been quite successful in the past. " This gives the cubs their only reasonable chance of returning to the wild," Ratajczak admits, "People cannot teach bears how to be bears, only a real bear can do that." Therefore, researchers at The University of Tennessee, under the guidance of Dr. Mike Pelton, will begin looking for viable surrogate mothers within the National Park next week. In the meantime, the ABC has its hands full trying to care for the neonatal cubs.

To make their stay at the bear center as least traumatic as possible, the staff has tried to create a friendly atmosphere for the young bears. Their temporary "den" is a large Rubbermaid storage container. It is lined with a number of clean towels and has a large "Momma Bear" (stuffed animal) for comfort. There is also a "ticking" clock wrapped in a washcloth near the bears to simulate mom's heartbeat. Warm water bottles are wrapped in towels and placed in the pen every four hours to provide warmth. A heating pad placed under one end of the box also provides warmth. Should any of the cubs become too hot, they could simply crawl a few inches to a cooler area.

The less than two-pound cubs have to be fed every 3-4 hours. Considering it takes almost an hour for preparation, feeding, and clean-up, there's not much time to do anything else. Luckily, a number of volunteers help out to make this task easier. But the ABC can't relax too much. One area in which the Center really needs help is paying for the neonatal's care.

"Once twelve-ounce can of specially formulated milk costs about five dollars. Considering the cubs go through a few cans of milk a day the expenses quickly add up," adds Cheryl Ward, Fundraising Chair, "It's at times like these when we really need help from the community!"

There was a happy ending to this story, all three cubs were successfully placed with wild surrogate mothers.  One was placed in Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area, the other two were placed in the the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.