No, this is not about Paddington and Winnie the Pooh. Two other bears escaped from their enclosure in a zoo in the English district of East Devon on Monday. Their goal? The pantry with honey and toys.
The two young bears, Mish and Lucy, walked out of their enclosure on Monday afternoon and went straight to the food storage area, where only staff are normally allowed. They ate the week’s supply of honey, snacked on other snacks, and played with the toys that were stored there.
When an employee discovered that the two European brown bears had escaped, the zoo immediately raised the alarm. Visitors were asked to go to a safe area. But in the end, it turned out that the bears posed no real threat.
Mish returned to the enclosure on her own after 55 minutes, and Lucy was lured there with her favorite food and a bell. “After doing their ‘shopping’, they fell asleep contentedly,” the zoo wrote on Facebook.
The zoo is currently investigating how the bears escaped from their enclosure. According to the park, this is the first time something like this has happened.
Bears need park, cannot survive independently
Mish and Lucy were rescued in 2019 after a snowstorm in the Albanian mountains and were subsequently brought to the British zoo, writes BBC News. “Despite several attempts to release these bear cubs back into the wild, it was clear that they could no longer survive independently and needed a home.”
The bears weigh about 180 kilos, the weight of a motorcycle. European brown bears can grow up to 1.9 meters long and weigh up to 680 kilos. An estimated 110,000 still live worldwide. They like to eat fruits, vegetables, fish and meat, but like bears in cartoons, they also like honey.