by Channel 2 News staff
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- At the Alaska Zoo, there's one sign that the season is changing: The bears are out of bed.
Two of the Alaska Zoo's brown bears, Jake and Oreo, are out of hibernation.
Jake is one of the zoo's oldest bears, at 28 years old.
The zoo's executive director, Patrick Lampi, says the bears have been moving around for a couple of weeks now.
"We've seen them pretty steadily for the past couple of weeks. Jake, the male, was up earlier -- probably about a good three weeks ago we saw him. And then we hadn't seen Oreo, but she has been up for a good week or so and they're up every day now and I don't expect them to go back in. I hope winter is over," Lampi said.
The bears spent the winter in dens they dug but zoo keepers also created dens with straw for extra insulation.
