Food Fest - Day Twenty

Cameras ready from the start of the day, we headed through the sanctuary with an eye out for something interesting, obviously, been in a bear sanctuary, points of interest aren't rare. But with the intention of getting something new and something we haven't seen before, that was the challenge for the day. It was for me at least.

Few times have I seen the bears been fed and today I got to see the workers throwing the food over the fence attracting the bears from all over the enclosure. They all slowly made their way out of the woods and towards the edge. Some bears would take a chunk of food, like a piece of the ice cream (frozen piece), into the woods for them to eat in privacy. Others just wander through the mass of food, smelling each one to pick the best, and then just eat it there and then.

One of the picky bears not fussed by the need for privacy, or etiquette.

This time around, there were two bears going for the same piece of food which caused an issue not solved in the same manner as people, well, not always. They did their growling, their snorting and their territorial stances. One quickly backed off and waited a short while to make his way back to the edge of the scattered food.

Making our way further towards the main building and following the fence, rather than the path, we encountered a bear I've decided to name "The Beast". This one is huge in comparison to the other bears in the sanctuary and had an aura of dominance about him. This was soon demonstrated when he growled and started running towards another bear who had decided just to walk past him.

"The Beast"

Moving on, we finally made it to the main building to be greeted by just one dog, Wolfie, as the others had already run off to follow the truck full of food (to feed the bears). With no delivery or food to sort in sight, we grabbed our rakes and started to make our way to clear more leaves. Just as we made it out of the building, the delivery van arrived so we were saved briefly from an exhaustive level of manual labour in the early morning.

After the fruit and veg had been sorted, we headed for lunch followed by attacking the side of the road with our rakes (clearing gullies). When we had built large piles of leaves, we were greeted by Isti instructing us to fill the black bags with what we had just collected.

Last time we did the same task, the workers, as well as myself, simply picked the leaves up and threw them into the back of the truck which seemed like a better method than filling black bags, then throwing them into the truck, then dropping off the leaves by ripping the bags open. Fortunately, this time at least, this was a task not completed as the delivery van passed us and we were required to go and help out.

We emptied the van, emptied boxes of eggs into a wheelbarrow, and then stood for a little while staring at the masses of frozen food awaiting to freeze our hands the following day. With little that we could, or wanted, to do we decided to open some of the meats till home time.

When we got back to the flat, Birgitta suggested an outing as it was a warm and sunny, blue sky, no clouds day. We somewhat begrudgingly obliged as we were tired but willing and therefore proceeded to walk into the square to sit down for a drink and some food.

Tiring day, but a nice one to work in.