pieces of a life

lab work today - parasitology (checking for parasites in our bears faeces - yup the glamorous side of the job), banking hair samples, teeth (bears often bite bars of their cages in the farms causing them to fracture later on), blood, serum etc and in this case histology slides - what you see here are tiny slices of a bears organs mounted and preserved on slides - the pathologists can examine these and help us determine a cause of death and things like the state of health of a gallbladder and liver which are seriously damaged by bile farming....

so meet little pieces of Max - a huge but sweet and boisterous bear who loved to wrestle with his best friend Harley - he died suddenly a few months ago which was devastating as he was so close to being able to go outside and feel sun and wind and rain for the first time..........

can't win them all - but can keep trying

Today our newest little cub (named Little Dragon in Vietnamese as it is the year of the dragon) finished quarantine and was moved up to the cub house - he took it all in his stride and is exploring his new enclosure and new neighbours with the spirit of a little dragon....

Socks moved to a a bigger hospital enclosure and is improving slowly

and just now out of the corner of my eye I saw my little bungalow gecko run across the wall - she's normally very shy and has been hibernating for the last few months - but the last few days she is becoming active and vocal again... soon I'll be finding little gecko poos around the place...am thinking of calling her Doris for some strange reason

life goes on

and the story of Max's life and death will be used to help future bears get their 'freedom'