Back in March we told you about a polar bear who had been orphaned in Alaska when its mother was shot by a hunter. We invited (well, ordered) you to watch it play which, even two months later, remains an experience of acute adorableness. Now we have some good news about this polar bear, little Kali: He has found a permanent home. That home will be at the Buffalo Zoo, where he’ll share digs with another polar bear named Luna.
Kali and Luna, who was born in November, will be introduced to each other slowly. Here’s the process, from AP reporter Carolyn Thompson:
A few hours after Kali’s arrival, the cubs were in adjacent dens, able to smell and hear each other but prevented by a solid barrier from visual and physical contact. The next step will be to replace the barrier with mesh.
“Then they can have some limited physical contact, visual contact,” zoo president Donna Fernandes said. “If that goes well and they’re spending lots of time near each other by the mesh barrier and showing interest, then we can gradually open it up a little bit, give them room for a paw to go through.
“If they’re not swiping at each other and it looks good, we’ll open the door a little bit more, a little bit more, until they get a full physical introduction,” Fernandes said at a press conference as Luna, behind a glass partition, dove over and over into a pond, pounced on a toy ark and ball, and wrestled with shrubbery.
Yeah, you can’t just like, toss two polar bears into a cage and expect them to start playing nice. But surely the people at the Buffalo Zoo know what they’re doing. And how wonderful it will be to see more photos of these soon-to-be polar besties as they bond.
