Grizzly Bear Needs Help Healing A Wound On Its Paw | The Zoo

We have some honey for Ronnie. Ronnie likes anything sweet. And we have some dog food, which Betty loves because she likes anything that's savory or meaty. Every morning we walk the exhibit, make sure there's nothing in here that shouldn't be in here. For this enrichment, we're just trying to get them to move around the exhibit a little bit more, kind of forage for their own food like they would in the wild. They really seem to enjoy the exhibit and they have an awesome view. You forget that you're in the middle of the city while you're like working and then you turn around and you look up and you're surrounded by skyscrapers. Prime real estate that the grizzly bears get to take up, so it's pretty fantastic. Are you guys ready to go out? All right. Have a good day, Ronnie. The two grizzly bears we have here at the Central Park Zoo, Betty and Veronica, they were both rescued as young cubs. They had not been taught how to survive in the wild on their own. They missed the important lessons on how to find food, how to behave like a bear, how to defend themselves, so they would not have survived in the wild. So they got a new life by being rescued by the Bronx Zoo and they lived at the Bronx Zoo for many, many years before they came here to the Central Park Zoo. You see it? What is it doing? It's resting. Ronnie bear, we think, is about 28. That's pretty old for a bear. She has this significant wound on one of her feet. Since the issues with this foot have not gotten better over several, several weeks now, despite some treatments, the veterinarians recommend that we do an immobilization, do a full workup on her, get some samples. Certainly an immobilization is scary in itself for an older bear, but we need to find out what's going on in order to make her feel better. With the foot, there may be some cleanup of wounds there. There may be something surgical. We'll just wait and see what there is, you know, once we have her down. Our goal, of course, is to examine the foot, get x-rays of the foot, get some specimens for biopsy. We don't want her to have her golden years be spent dealing with a problematic foot, so to give her good quality of life, to make sure she's happy, it's worth the reasonable risk of anesthetizing her. Most grizzly bears don't even live to be 15 or 20 in the wild, just because of all the pressures that they have, but here at the zoos, they can live a much longer life. Good girl, Ronnie Bear. Take a little nap, okay? I've known Ronnie since the day she was rescued by WCS in 1995, so I worked at the Bronx Zoo when these two ladies came in. I care about her, you know, I have a history with her, so I'm a little nervous. I hope everything goes well. She's getting, she's starting to get tired. She's laying down. There's also a risk we could find out that some of these wounds are significant, and she might need some further care, maybe even surgery or something like that. We're all hoping for the best. Ready? One, two, three. There we go. All right. As soon as you're done, I want to take some x-rays. I'm going to get a culture, so I'll go ahead and get a portico out. It looks like the hole goes pretty deep. He got some biopsy samples, which will be really helpful, but is concerning because we really don't know what it is. Is it just a wound? Is it a disease process? I think that's what we're most concerned with. So we'll see what the biopsy says. So that's it. Okay, twist it up. You see the bear down there? I'm gonna go ahead and let her out. This is polar one. There'll be a second bear on exhibit in two minutes. All right, Ronnie, enjoy your day. The test came back, and we discovered that the disease that Ronnie has in her paw is cancer. It's a cancer that's really, in the vast majority of cases, not really a treatable situation. Bears in the wild can certainly get cancer, but if you're a bear in the wild, no one's there cleaning your foot. No one's there putting you on medications to kind of keep it from getting infected. In the zoo setting, we can at least promote quality of life for quite some time. I'll give Kim a heads up we're on our way. We're on our way with the vet. She went out okay? Yeah, she looked good. And the appetite? When she's hungry, she'll finish everything as soon as you put it in. That's probably the most common skin cancer. So the fact that it's in her foot isn't a surprise, but the foot looks pretty good, all things considered. What we hope for Ronnie Bear is that every day that she'll feel well enough to want to get up, go on exhibit. Do you see the bear? Do you see dad's bear? Working at the zoo over a long period of time, you see a lot of animals come and grow, and in this case, you know, we followed Ronnie from the time she was young to now she's actually an older bear. Ronnie's prognosis is basically good. It could be months or it could be years before there's a significant change. So until then, we just have to manage her care, make sure her foot is kept clean, just be really careful to observe any small changes. There's a good bear. Good job, Ron. We brought the New England Aquarium little penguins now to the aquatic bird house. We've done some modifications of the exhibit and kind of given it a different look. You know, we've added some more burrows, so everything's going to look a little bit different, and that'll put all of the birds pretty much on the same playing field. Come on. That's everybody. So all the new birds have the wing bands, and all of our birds have the leg bands. Oh, now they're singing. They're having a meeting. They're just introducing themselves. They're making new acquaintances now with the Bronx birds. Oh my gosh, how many will fit in there? The real estate in New York can be difficult to find a good property. A lot of meetings going on. Two males having a discussion.