Welcome To Our Home In The Wet Mountains of Colorado!

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I wouldn't want you to miss seeing the new photos!

UPDATE: The season is changing and the bear is now coming well after dark to feed. So, we've been unable to get any new pictures. The good news is that he made it through hunting season and if we see him next spring after hibernation, we'll try to get new photos then.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the pics that I have and visit the links on my last page and learn about black bears.

The guy responsible for "bear care" at our house

A few words of explanation....... Colorado is in the 5th year of th e worst drought in it's history. It's taken it's toll on animals and humans alike. Hard to know how many animals have died as a result of lack of food or water, but there's one little cub in the Colorado Rockies who just happened to "adopt" the right family to help him. This is the story in pictures of the little orphaned Black Bear cub whom we've been caring for since spring. He was less than a year old when he wandered onto our ranch in the mountains drastically underweight and dehydrated. He was looking for water and found our dog's water dish....and then he went away. The next day he returned again to drink and that's when we decided this poor little guy needed a helping hand. We began feeding him and well........see for yourself what a beautiful bear he's becoming! All pictures are taken with our camcorder, and no, he's not a vicious bear. He's very gentle and knows we're not going to hurt him. There's alot of pictures so please be patient while they load. I've reduced the size of many of them in order to speed up the loading process. The larger pics were my favorites.

An Important Reminder about feeding wild animals The first thing to remember is bears who raid people's garbage cans on a regular basis soon acquire a taste for "people" food and will continue to go back to that source of food as long as people keep offering it to them. Bears raid garbage cans for two different reasons. 1.....they are an easy source of food and 2......they "like" the taste ot it. So, if you truly want to help the animal to survive in the wild, it's important to keep "people" food away from bears. Keep tight lids on your garbage pails and keep them from becoming easy sources of food for the bears. The best approach is to mimic as closely as possible the natural diet of the animal. Our bear only gets dry dogfood which is a super source of protein. One bowl of dogfood supplies the same amount of protein it would take a bear a week to get eating insects. And, the dry dogfood is hard and crunchy like acorns which are a normal part of the bear diet. Our bear also gets fruit and berries. Here in Colorado we have hundreds of wild apple trees growing alongside the road which yield fruit for the bears in normal years. This year a late freeze coupled by the drought has reduced the number of apples. So, we buy huge bags of apples for him or get "throwaway" apples from the produce dept. at our local supermarket. Berries, and especially raspberries are in short supply this year, so we supplement his diet with those, too. But....we NEVER NEVER NEVER give him "people" food. We want him to "remember" what his natural diet is so that next year he'll recognize apples, acorns, and berries if we have a normal weather year and those items are in abundance. We're not trying to turn him into a pet. He's a wild animal and we want him to be able to live a normal lifespan in the wild. Studies of Black Bears have taught us that they will not seek out handouts from people when their natural food supply is in abundance in the wild. If we never see him again after hibernation, we'll know he's doing fine and foraging for himself. Now...on to the photos ---->