Month: July 2023

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URSUS MARITIMUS

In case you didn’t know, my second favorite animal is a polar bear. Orca’s first but polar bears right behind. Every time we go to the zoo, I take a polar bear selfie. This is from July 15th when Colton and I went to see the seals. This sleepyhead didn’t wake up while I sat here and stalked it.

In early June, Colton booked himself in to the Behind the Scenes at the zoo to see the seals. I tried to get myself in to see the polar bears that day but it wasn’t running that day or it was booked, I can’t remember. So I started looking for days that I knew I had to be in Winnipeg and low and behold, July 19th had an opening. I immediately registered myself. At that time I figured this was going to be my summer adventure. At the time I didn’t know that I was finally going to fulfill something from my bucket list and finally go whale watching.

So we meet at the Tundra Grill that morning and head over to the smaller building where the penguins were when the Journey to Churchill first opened. It is now office space. So we cut through there which led us outside behind the old bear exhibit. The plan was to spend an hour with Star.

This is Star. Star loves this sort of thing and she knows what’s coming because there are buckets full of romaine lettuce by her enclosure. Yes, romaine lettuce. And carrots. They also feed the bears watermelons and pineapples. Star ate about 8 heads of romaine in the hour that we were together. I lost track of how many carrots she ate.

Star and Blizzard (who died in 2019) came to our zoo in September 2014 at approximately one year of age. Suspected to be orphans after being spotted by a helicopter patrolling for bears near the Hudson’s Bay Coastline, Star and Blizzard were observed alone. Searches were made for their mother but they could not find her. At that time researches deemed Star and Blizzard to young to defend themselves without their mother due to their lack of maternal protection and lack of survival skills.

So, here we are situated in front of Star’s current home. Of course the first thing I want to know about this situation is why Star isn’t in the big exhibit with the big pool and all the other bears and not back here alone. So I asked. Apparently Star has been a part of the big enclosure and while she does okay there, she is not happiest there. Polar Bears are typically solitary animals and while the other bears have adjusted to communal living, Star hasn’t. The main exhibit is home to 9 other bears. Storm being the #1 who keeps harmony over there. Its busy and there are more male bears over there than females. So right now, Star is back here in what they call the Cub Care Centre. Down the way is Aggie, the movie bear from BC. But I’ll talk more about that later.

I also asked if our bears would be used in a breeding program and they will not be. Not at this time and likley never.

So we talk about bears, we ask questions about bears and finally they asked, would you like to interact with the bear. Hell, yes. So we get a target and the instructions about how to use the target. I’m ready cause I’ve done this with a seal already. Now I don’t say anything while we are getting the instructions but my target has a defect. My target end as a plastic end protruding out of it but I figure, they must know, they are the polar bear care professionals. So I approach Star, give her my command and she bites the end of my target. Not once, but three or four times. But this works for me because this means I get to spend more time interacting with her. Finally I tell them what I think the issue is and get a new target. And guess what, Star follows my command and does what she is supposed to do. She put her booper right on the target.

If I was fighting the urge to touch the bear before this whole thing started, I’m really fighting it now. I understand at this point that I risk the chance of never, ever being allowed at the zoo again. But I control myself. In this picture you can see her teeth on the end of my target.

So why is target training important? Well, this helps the trainers get the bear where they need them to be to examine them without having to put them out. So they can check eyes, ears ,etc. It is also used to vaccinate them.

Moving on, she now asks who wants to feed Star? Well that was a really stupid question!

She I get myself a pair of tongs and a piece of romaine and I feed Star. Why I am hanging on to my purse strap I do not know because I am not scared. I think I’m actually vibrating at this point and trying to ground myself. I feed her about 3 or 4 times during my hour with her.

So at this point we are getting close to the one hour mark and this is when I try to get over to Agee. Agee has never been on display at the zoo. Aggie will never be on display at the zoo. Agee is a 26 year old female who lived a majority of her life with a private owner in British Columbia. Her previous owners got Agee as a cub and of course she imprinted on him. Moving to the zoo and never having had contact with other polar bears, Agee will live out her life at the other end of the Cub Care Centre. She is not fond of attention and humans and was off limits to us. I will share with you a story they told us about Agee. A while back the bears were each given a pineapple. Agee was so pleased with hers that she made herself a bed and slept with it. If you want to see Agee, she has stared in movies such as Alaska (1996), The Journey Home (2014) and Operation Alaska (2014).

The trainers start to wrap things up and we are now given our time to pose with Star. The whole time that Star is behind me, she is really sniffing me. Little unnerving cause she’s not being discreet about it at all. Big, snotty inhales. I can only imagine what I smell like to her. Cats, dog, ferret. Like a buffet. Not to mention does days before, one of the seals soaked my shoes with water from their tank.

I highly suggest you check out these Behind the Scenes programs at the zoo. For $100.00 you get to spend an hour in close contact with the animals at the zoo and learn more about them. The money raised for these events is said to go back into their care. The trainers are very friendly and very knowledgeable. I will say, when they open up in the Spring, book right away because they fill up fast. The polar bear BTS only takes 4 people per session.

After I was done I met with Colton again. I told him we didn’t get to see Agee. He told me he did see her. So he took me over to the other side of the exhibit and through the fence we could see her pacing back and forth. I’m not going to give my opinion on this matter.

I am in my glory because the next day, I’m leaving for BC to whale watch.

Next thing to check off my bucket list, Churchill.

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BEHIND THE SCENES – SEALS

In case you didn’t know, the Assiniboine Park Zoo offers a Behind the Scenes program during the summer months. Off the top of my head, you can see seals, polar bears, snow leopards and tigers.

For around $100.00 (this includes an hour BTS and your zoo admission) you can choose to learn more about some of the animals at the zoo. On July 15th, Colton took me to see the seals, which is one of his favorite animals.

We entered into the usually unauthorized door at the Journey to Churchill Building and went upstairs to the area where the zoo employees train, feed and treat the seals. Inside this building, two male seals were waiting for us. This is Emil. His co-performer who we didn’t get a photo with is Gabbers. He is what they consider a dwarf seal because he didn’t develop properly. His flippers are smaller than they should be AND he didn’t develop a mouth full of teeth.

During our hour we asked the seals to perform some tasks for us which included touching his nose to the target, rolling over and splashing us. All with hand signals. We even got to feed them.

When it came to my turn to have Emil roll over, he wouldn’t. After a handful of tries, he finally did and then I got to feed him a fish for his efforts.

During our time inside, the seals did come out of the water and came right up to our feet. We were advised before the event began that if a seal did approach us, we were not permitted to touch it although they may touch us. That didn’t happen.

We were permitted to take photos but only when the trainers okayed it. We didn’t really need to though because one of the zoo employees was taking photos the entire time and then emailed them to us for free. She did a great job and was sure to make sure she got a shot of everyone.

We then moved outside to the top of the Journey to Churchill seal exhibit. This is where you see them swimming around before you go out the sliding doors and just outside the doors. Up there we got to meet Neptune who is considered to be the leader of the 7 male seals at the zoo. I will add that all of these seals are there because they were either injured (Neptune only has one eye) or were unable to care for themselves in the wild and would have otherwise died. 5 of the zoos seals are from British Columbia and two are from Germany.

I have to add that when we got outside, one of the bears was very curious about us being up there. This bear was identified as Willow.

At this point I could have turned my attention to the bears but I knew that I was going to be back here in a few days for the polar bear BTS. So we talked some more about the seal program, whether the zoo would take in anymore seals, which the ladies said they didn’t want to as they felt that the 7 was a good number. It is their opinion that at this time every seal was getting what they needed and there is currently harmony in the tank.

Willow was not giving up though. She kept getting closer and close to us to see what we were doing.

This is a great program. We were told a lot about the zoo, its seal program and we were able to ask a lot of questions. There wasn’t a question that they weren’t able to answer. I highly recommend it and, all of the proceeds go back to the animal program you attend.

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Crow’s General Store

My mother-in-law has been asking me about this place for years. I had never heard of it. So while my Mom was here and we were spending the day in Brandon, we drove over to check it out.

You are immediately greeted by the old store whose wrap around porch is full of antiques. We walked through twice and I’m sure we still missed a lot of stuff.

A lot of people were there for ice cream and then they headed out to the trails. We didn’t have proper footwear so we didn’t try it.

Behind the shop was this old gas pump and truck.

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SWINGING DOOR

When I first saw this house posted online by another bando hunter, I immediately put it on my list to see. Back in May, a fellow bando hunter and I went there. One thing I did notice was the two lightning rods that were once attached to the house are now gone and the swinging door has one again closed itself, or maybe it had help.

Mr., born in England, immigrated to the United States and then ended up here in 1894. Upon his arrival he purchased this section of land. He met his wife when he got to Manitoba and they married in Brandon. From this union 3 girls were born. In 1902 he sold the farm to his brother-in-law and moved to town and purchased shares within the local flour mill and worked for many years in the community.

The history of the brother-in-law’s family is far more in depth but doesn’t really confirm anything about this house. Their earliest recorded history is 1196. In 1756 the family changed the spelling of their name, which really wasn’t that uncommon back then. The family are said to be the equivalent of English Feudal Lords and were the Lords of Duersen and Lissel in the Province of Brabant which is in the Netherlands. The earliest record of an ancestor coming to America was 1630. The earliest record on one coming to Canada was 1756 when they immigrated to Ontario. It is said that one of the children, at a young age, was lost in the woods and never found.

Now this is where it gets tricky. This family farmed on the NW corner of this section which would explain how this family is connected and how the original landowner met and married his wife. When they moved from the land to town to operate the flour mill, he sold the land to his brother-in-law. It is recorded that a farm on this land burnt down in 1916 when the family was away in Ontario. They lost everything in that fire.

I cannot confirm if this is a rebuild of the original home or if the house that burnt down was on another quarter of this section. Regardless this is quite the house. Unfortunately, it was not easy to photograph from the front given the tree line. And honestly, I didn’t even look at it from the back.

This is a neat old house which I thought would have been quite fancy for its time with its porch and upstairs deck. It certainly wasn’t your typical style home. The floors were caving in so we just peeked through the windows but inside there was plenty of old things to see.

It definitely goes up there on one of the neatest houses I’ve been to.

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CROFTHEAD FARMS – 1881

This sign is one of the coolest things I’ve seen given that it actually states when the homestead came to be. I have removed some of the information from this sign which gives away its location. I love that this sign confirms when this homestead came to be.

John & Mary, both born in Scotland in 1847 and 1845 immigrated to Ayr, Ontario in 1868 where they lived for 9 years. In 1877 they made their way to Manitoba by Red River cart and arrived in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba where they remained for 4 years.

In 1880 Mr. filed for this homestead and was one of the homesteaders in this district. That summer he built a soddy and the following year he moved his family here. Mr. & Mrs. raised 9 children on this land. For several years that soddy was a stop-over or half-way house for other farmers moving grained from Deloraine to Brandon. It was here that they would replenish their supplies and rest.

This house was built in 1885 and was last recorded to be owned by Mr. & Mrs. grandson, W. Jack.

Mr. & Mrs. retired to Victoria, B.C. in 1912.

All 9 of their children attended Millerway School which was built in 1884.

The couple had a happy life together and celebrated their golden wedding anniversary in 1919 (50 years) and their diamond wedding anniversary in 1929 (60 years).

Mr. passed away in March of 1931.

Mrs. passed away in August, 1935.

The best thing about a bando house hunt is when I find old cars there.