Bear With Me

Timing is everything. My sister sent me this photo she took this week as she headed through the Lake Placid, Florida area. The same day she sent it, we had two FWC guys do a lesson on black bears for our kindergartners. (We borrowed a spare portable for the space to have three classes together, which explains the very plain area in the pics.)

Here, one presenter is showing a tracking device.

The kids got to explore the items brought in.

This is the plaster cast of the track of a three-year-old female bear and the hand of a five-year-old male kindergartner.

Compare to that of a cub.

This is a jawbone from a three-year-old female. They can count the rings in a tooth to determine the age.

But the most exciting to the kids was the preserved-in-polymer bear scat. Gallberries and blackgum seeds are what we are looking at.

When the presentation was over, I took each of my students’ pictures with the bear skin. I will email the pictures to their parents. (The original pictures of course did show the child!)

It was grrrrrrreat!