Medium Hot - Day Fifteen
Medium hot is what the day felt like today. It wasn't cold, it was fairly warm, but had rain and storm clouds present. So it was dramatic photo day!
Moving on, today was another busy, fun packed day. On the way in, we took Birgitta to meet Mia, the young bear in qurantine. She was as lively as ever, climbing on the cage and rolling around on the floor. I managed to stroke her paw today, touch her nose, and also get snorted at. She was particularly lively today so it was an appropriate scenario to bring out the video camera; my phone.
If you don't want to watch the whole video, skip to 1 minute 55 just to see Mia do a rolly poly.
Arriving at the main building, we started on the fruits and veg, but with one woman short, Estelle had taken the day off to spend time with her visiting sister and brother in law. No worries, we kept on going strong. Straight after that, we moved on to the dairy products and the meats. We moved the boxes outside to where we could sit inbetween two enclosures and spend time with the bears whilst preparing their food. They were semi-active, occasionally getting up to have a look at what we were doing.
After a short while, one of the workers came up to me and called me away from the other two. I headed out of the building and was waved to get into the truck (as in car truck, not lorry truck). We drove a little down the road (still in the sanctuary) and then were filling up boxes with the leaves we had taken out of the trenches (I'll explain the trenches later) and then emptying them into the boot. When the boot was full up we got back in the truck and drove into some area of woods to empty the contents well away from the trenches so that they wouldn't blow back in. We had to make a total of three trips, there was a lot.
So the trenches, they are all around the sanctuary, on either side of the road and where there are roads, there is the fencing for the enclosures (for the bears!). I presume they are to stop flooding when there is a downpour, though I hear it doesn't really rain all that much in Romania, perhaps when there is snow, and it melts then it could be an issue if there is a lack of a drainage system. In any case, they do well to catch leaves.
When we got back to the building, Kristen and Birgitta were still making their way through the food so I went to help out, but then we decided just to go to lunch and then continue.
After lunch it started to rain, only very little, but looking up at the sky, the cloud were dark and there was a distance sound of thunder, or something loud, noisy and weather like sounding. So we decided to move the food indoors. About perhaps 30 minutes later we looked outside and no, no rain, was actually quite nice, not extremely bright, but reasonable, and it was warm, well, medium hot :)
So we headed back outside. Time passed and we hadn't finished but we had made it through quite a bit.
Today was Kristen's last day at the sanctuary, so she asked Razvan yesterday about getting some phrases to say in Romanian, to thank the workers, wish them well, etc. She decided it best to wait until the end of the day till she attempted to talk to them, as a sort of closing to the time she had spent there, as opposed to saying goodbye at the start of the day and then still seeing everyone for the following five or six hours.
Anyway, she waited too long. By the time we had finished and moved the food around, the remaining boxes back into the kitchen, everyone had left! She had her time with the bears though, to say goodbye... and practise her Romanian on them instead.
As it was a fairly warm day, the bears were all out and about as we were walking to the pick up point. They were somewhat aggressive to one another which may have been due to the heat, or maybe some came out of hibernation and trying to claim territory. I can't say for sure. It's certainly quite a sight to see some bears in the pools swimming around, shaking off the water when still in the water, whilst just a few metres away two bears are grunting at each other over a small section of land, and then there's another bear perhaps 20 metres away standing up to have a look at what's going on!
Moving on, today was another busy, fun packed day. On the way in, we took Birgitta to meet Mia, the young bear in qurantine. She was as lively as ever, climbing on the cage and rolling around on the floor. I managed to stroke her paw today, touch her nose, and also get snorted at. She was particularly lively today so it was an appropriate scenario to bring out the video camera; my phone.
If you don't want to watch the whole video, skip to 1 minute 55 just to see Mia do a rolly poly.
Arriving at the main building, we started on the fruits and veg, but with one woman short, Estelle had taken the day off to spend time with her visiting sister and brother in law. No worries, we kept on going strong. Straight after that, we moved on to the dairy products and the meats. We moved the boxes outside to where we could sit inbetween two enclosures and spend time with the bears whilst preparing their food. They were semi-active, occasionally getting up to have a look at what we were doing.
After a short while, one of the workers came up to me and called me away from the other two. I headed out of the building and was waved to get into the truck (as in car truck, not lorry truck). We drove a little down the road (still in the sanctuary) and then were filling up boxes with the leaves we had taken out of the trenches (I'll explain the trenches later) and then emptying them into the boot. When the boot was full up we got back in the truck and drove into some area of woods to empty the contents well away from the trenches so that they wouldn't blow back in. We had to make a total of three trips, there was a lot.
So the trenches, they are all around the sanctuary, on either side of the road and where there are roads, there is the fencing for the enclosures (for the bears!). I presume they are to stop flooding when there is a downpour, though I hear it doesn't really rain all that much in Romania, perhaps when there is snow, and it melts then it could be an issue if there is a lack of a drainage system. In any case, they do well to catch leaves.
When we got back to the building, Kristen and Birgitta were still making their way through the food so I went to help out, but then we decided just to go to lunch and then continue.
After lunch it started to rain, only very little, but looking up at the sky, the cloud were dark and there was a distance sound of thunder, or something loud, noisy and weather like sounding. So we decided to move the food indoors. About perhaps 30 minutes later we looked outside and no, no rain, was actually quite nice, not extremely bright, but reasonable, and it was warm, well, medium hot :)
So we headed back outside. Time passed and we hadn't finished but we had made it through quite a bit.
Today was Kristen's last day at the sanctuary, so she asked Razvan yesterday about getting some phrases to say in Romanian, to thank the workers, wish them well, etc. She decided it best to wait until the end of the day till she attempted to talk to them, as a sort of closing to the time she had spent there, as opposed to saying goodbye at the start of the day and then still seeing everyone for the following five or six hours.
Anyway, she waited too long. By the time we had finished and moved the food around, the remaining boxes back into the kitchen, everyone had left! She had her time with the bears though, to say goodbye... and practise her Romanian on them instead.
As it was a fairly warm day, the bears were all out and about as we were walking to the pick up point. They were somewhat aggressive to one another which may have been due to the heat, or maybe some came out of hibernation and trying to claim territory. I can't say for sure. It's certainly quite a sight to see some bears in the pools swimming around, shaking off the water when still in the water, whilst just a few metres away two bears are grunting at each other over a small section of land, and then there's another bear perhaps 20 metres away standing up to have a look at what's going on!
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| Marking territory whilst the other one just watches from the water |
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| Just checking to see if anything is happening |
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