Cub born to Lily the black bear dies
NEAR ELY, Minn. -- Stories spun by Mother Nature don't always have happy endings.
That is certainly the case with one of two cubs born this spring to Lily the black bear, a creature with thousands of fans thanks to her highly publicized web cam.
Bear researcher Lynn Rogers says the cub named Jason has died, and he plans to conduct a necropsy to find out why.
Rogers and co-researcher Sue Mansfield looked on as Jason took his last breaths just after 4 p.m. Tuesday. The cub had struggled for several days, and Rogers noted in his daily web update that Jason appeared weak and skinny.
The cub was one of two born to Lily over the winter in an Ely-area den where Rogers had again placed a video camera that sent images of the bears to computers worldwide.
The other new cub, Faith, appears in fine condition, as does Lily's one-year-old cub, Hope, who spent a second winter with its mother.
Rogers tells the Duluth News Tribune they decided to hang back away from Lily and Jason and monitor the situation, although the researchers weighed other options, such as taking the sickly cub to a wildlife rehabilitation center.
"We know how you feel because we know how we felt being there, seeing Jason struggling to live while we struggled to decide what is right or wrong for us to do,'' Rogers wrote in his update. "The biggest question was, what if we interfered and took Jason and Lily came back for him? She was only a third of a mile away. We felt we had to let nature take its course.''
Rogers said it's unclear why Jason fell behind Faith in size and weight, as they appeared to start out at the same size. He says on Lily's facebook page that it may be because Lily didn't not have enough milk for two new cubs and one-year-old Hope, who is still nursing.
-----------------------------------
With information from the Duluth News Tribune
(Copyright 2011 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)
This is copied from the internet. I claim no ownership to this material.
No comments:
Post a Comment