A large grizzly bear named Boo was captured on camera emerging from his winter hibernation, shaking snow from his wool and looking around groggily.
Nicole Gangnon, manager of the Grizzly Bear Refuge in the Canadian Rockies, filmed the long-awaited moment using her mobile phone. She says that the video, which has gone viral on Twitter, racking up more 100,000 views, was “something everybody needed” in the time of the coronavirus pandemic isolation.
“Mama’s so proud of you! You are such a good sight,” exclaims Gangnon in the video filmed on 17 March. The woman said that she heard movement from Boo’s den, which is buried under two meters of snow, and waited quietly as Boo dug himself out. The den is a log cabin designed to allow researchers to study bear hibernation.
Spring is in the air 🐻
— Kelly Canuck🍁 (@KellyCanuckTO) March 24, 2020
Grizzly Bear Boo emerged from his winter den at Grizzly Bear refuge
Kicking Horse, BC 🇨🇦
📹 grizzlygirl84 #soundon pic.twitter.com/NKmM2W5FvW
“We’ve always set up trail cameras and our surveillance cameras,” the manager said, cited by the Guardian. “And it just seems like every time he decides to dig out, our technology fails us and we can never capture that moment”.
Boo was born in the wild and was reportedly brought to the refuge with his brother Cari (the pair were named after the Cariboo Mountains where they were found) after their mother was killed by poachers nearly in 2002.
Cari died during his first winter in the refuge, a 20-acre enclosure on the property of the Kicking Horse ski resort near the town of Golden.
“It’s just beautiful to see him face-to-face rather than on a camera. He’s so happy and that just makes your heart sing,” she said. “Once he gets up, you can see he’s got a grin on his face. He’s like: ‘Hello, world, here I am again’”.
“I was moved to tears that day. With the world so uncertain, it was something I needed. I think it was something everybody needed, to be honest,” said Gangnon. “It’s brought a lot of happiness into people’s world’s right now, when people are isolated. It’s really just helped people to see that the world will still go on”.
