24th October, 2006

Hi everyone...... not sure where to start with this but, today, as always in these rescues, another series of highs, lows and broken hearts. Twelve bears joined our family this morning rather than the promised 16 - all in impossibly small cages, all skeletal, wounded in various ways, and terrified of what will happen in this next stage of their lives. Two are blind, some missing limbs, most free drip with some leaking bile and pus, shattered teeth, worn and scarred heads and bodies from bar rubbing, and out of their minds with fear.

Emergency health checks start tomorrow but, already, there are three bears we are seriously worried about and honestly doubt will survive. Will start to log them properly from the morning and come back to you all with a proper update but, for now, I want to thank Toby for bringing those bears home, Howard and his amazing team of workers who offloaded the bears so professionally and in record time, Gail and our fabulous vet team and volunteers, Christie, Rainbow and all in PR, the Security team, kitchen staff who cooked up a storm of food for the team out of hours, and of course Tom who so patiently organised the various departments to back us all up throughout today.

Outside of the fact that the bears came home, another positive today was the unexpected visit from a Government official - genuinely shocked with what she saw and offering advice in both a practical way - and from the heart - of how she can help. More later as we start to work through health checks and surgeries over the next few days, Jillx

Dear everyone,.. what a day. Our hearts were in mouths when Gail and team anaesthetised the first skinny little girl at 9am, knowing that we were looking at an animal with all the odds stacked against her. With the bear laid out on the surgery table our girl rapidly turned into a boy in front of our eyes and the room was silent as we looked at his skeletal, battered body. Just 61kgs in weight, with his back leg missing from a snare or leghold trap, another snare wound running right around his neck, ribs and hips jutting out, withered limbs, paw pads that looked strangely flattened from lack of fat or fluid and a body so badly dehydrated that the skin stubbornly refused to lay flat when pinched by Gail. This bear was a mess.

However, Hayley, one of our vet nurses, had a dream that he would beat the odds and still be alive one hour into the health check - and so it was.... and he was too. The ultrasound examination of S206 revealed an array of gallstones but nothing else of major concern, except that this badly malnourished and dehydrated bear could still "crash" at any time from a variety of related problems. We guess that, as often happens, because his free drip wound had healed, he had proved useless on the farm and the farmer had simply stopped feeding him, leaving him to starve to death.

Little Twiglet (just an affectionate nickname for now until we're sure he'll pull through) woke up, lying on straw in a roomy cage, with Bev hand feeding him and catering to his every whim. He still isn't out of the woods by a long way, clearly has some sort of infection raging inside, but despite our initial fears is fighting the odds and is a lot happier than he was yesterday.

A quick but thorough scrub of the surgery and this afternoon it was bear number S207's turn. A bear with the hugest most distended abdomen we had ever seen, and a foul, foul smell leading some of us to think that he had that most dreaded and incurable of disease -peritonitis. Weighing in at a healthy 167.5 kgs but looking and smelling distinctly unhealthy Boss, as he was nicknamed, was laid out on to the surgery table with bloated abdomen proudly pointed to the ceiling. Again, an ultrasound examination showed nothing conclusive but fluid was drawn from his abdomen into a syringe and the decision was made to go in. Several hours later, with all organs apparently healthy and looking ok, Boss and his big belly was also tenderly settled into a recovery cage and being prepared for some heavy pampering over the next few days.

This is not the outcome we'd expected at all and it's honestly a relief not to end this day with red eyes and puffy faces as we'd thought would be the case. We still have another bear with a free drip hole leaking bile and oozing stomach contents - and a major surgery planned for the morning. But she, and the other bears remaining have good appetites and are filling their bony bodies with food as fast as Bev and the volunteer nurses can feed them.

Please feel free to send out this update and we'll be doing a proper release etc some time next week once all bears have been cut out of cages and once we know or can guess better who will survive. Naming will also start next week again once we can be reasonably sure that sponsors will have their bears hopefully for the long term.

The saddest PS.................. I was just about to hit "send" when Bev came over the walkie talkie saying that she thought Twiglet was dying. Gail and I went over to hear Bev saying that he had become agitated a few moments before and had begun rattling his food bowl as if calling for help. When she went in he was gasping for breath and clearly in pain. Gail gave him some Torbagesic pain relief and Bev and I elected to stay with him for a while. A few minutes later, Twiglet's breathing became shallower and, with Bev holding his paw and me stroking his head, Twiglet died.

I can't ever explain how we feel at this moment - the farmer who brought Twiglet to his knees will be counting his money thinking how clever he is, how handsome a profit he's made from these stupid people who buy his dud bears. He won't ever understand that we would have paid ten times as much to bring Twiglet home, to stupid people who loved and respected him for 36 hours, to friends who told him they loved him when he died.
RIP Twiglet. Jillx

Dear all, another awful day.....sorry. It was bear number S208 this morning - a skinny little girl, named "Message" by Hayley, who had eaten for China yesterday; enjoying a plate heaving with fruit and bear food but had a free-drip hole which oozed her body tissue and leaked bile.

Given the first dart of anaesthetic at 9am, alarm bells began to ring when she turned a worrying colour of white/grey and went down. Gail, Bev and the boys pulled her free from the cage and she was on a gas mask within seconds before being finally intubated and stabilised. As soon as she was turned over and abdomen shaved, Gail noticed the swelling we never wanted to see - the right liver lobe clearly with a tumour attached. Just like Andrew, Rhapsody and all the cancer bears before we had that sinking feeling once again that this was the last time we would see Message alive.

Thirty minutes later, after a short exploratory which exposed a growth several kgs in weight, Gail was euthanising her on the surgery table - and everyone filed in to say goodbye.

The only consolation is that the stream of Chinese journalists who turned up today saw bear farming in the raw. They were visibly shocked - and we decided to go for broke. They were told that we are sick to death of our staff mopping up the problems which are created on the farms and then breaking their hearts at the end of the day when they fail those bears that they are just too late to save. The camera panned around the room with nurses crying, Howard and the boys grimly, sadly holding the bear's paw, and then on to Gail as she spoke about the tumours, how they kill the bears and how the related pus infected bile could well be harming those who consume it too.

The crew then filmed the remaining bears in cages - the beautiful, gentle blind female who looked expectantly, trustingly for food, and another female who rolled over and showed her abdomen and a mass of obscene scarring around a patent free-drip, so-called humane, hole.

Professor Song Wei from Anhui University was also here, speaking to the media and giving Animals Asia a voice of credibility as he trashed the bear farming industry in interview after disgusted interview.

Two full Post Mortems are being performed simultaneously as I write - Gail has just asked for scented candles in the rooms for obvious reasons and the funerals will take place this afternoon and tomorrow morning. This is the legacy of bear farming. Jillx

The funerals were so, so sad....... but in a way too they helped the team in grief. Yesterday afternoon Howard read the "Spirit of Hope" poem in Chinese and Gareth in English and the workers placed toys and fruit for little Twiglet in his grave. This morning saw the same for Message - a quiet, respectful goodbye - and desolate sadness for two bears who never made it onto grass.

Something else happened early this morning which saw several of the team making the same comment. Tapping away as usual on emails first thing, I noticed that large and lazy Rupert had ignored the recall into his den the previous night and had slept blissfully under the stars. I watched for a while as he hauled his beautiful, but rather sluglike, body to his feet and pottered around looking for a tasty morsel he might have overlooked the night before. Several minutes later, hearing a knock on the glass in the hall, I walked over and saw his goofy face at the window with front paws pressed against the glass. The next few minutes saw us tracing hands and paws and the thought crossed my mind (and those I spoke with later) that he had never, ever stood up like this on his hind legs in all the 6 years we'd known him - and was there a message somewhere telling us that things were going to be ok.

We'll never know - but the truth is, that today, things began to go right. Big Boss with the big belly has begun taking medication and slurped his yogurt with eyes closed as if he'd never tasted anything so good before in his life. Our vet team then surged forward on four emergency health checks, with thin and battered bears laid out on the tarpaulin, sleeping through every test known to humankind, and waking up with the tick boxes on their notes confirming that everyone is optimistic, hopeful at least, that they'll all pull through. All of the other bears still left to health check are eating ravenously and, with Day 5 looming ahead, we can cautiously start giving names for sponsors to call the bears theirs.

Already their gorgeous, individual, personalities are beginning to shine through. Favourites not allowed but I know that, if asked, everyone would have theirs. For now the number one priority is giving these bears exactly what they need most; tender loving care in the shape of kindness and good food - and the reassurance, the promise, that they're home.

More health checks tomorrow, with the last cut free on Monday. Today was a good day. Jillx

30th October 2006

The last of our twelve - Bear Number S217 - Bluebelle - has just this afternoon been cut from her rusting home of a crush cage for her first proper health check. For a young, wild-caught bear missing her front left limb at the elbow, and with sightless eyes of cloudy blue cataracts, she is astonishingly sweet and gentle.

How she could have even thought of licking apricot jam earlier from fingers of a species who have virtually tried to kill her is astonishing. Evidence of bar biting during her years of desolation and frustration on the farm have led to worn and broken tips of her canines and incisors. An abdominal hole leaking bile and nestled inside a hernia shows the extent of the damage by so-called surgeons employed to perform this butchery on the farms.

Now waking up in a roomy recovery cage, lying on straw and looking forward to finishing her jam, Bluebelle, like the rest of the bears this week, is finally on her way to a peaceful and long overdue recovery.

Our vet staff and bear workers have been euphoric for most of the afternoon as the last two bears have slept their way obliviously through the health checks. Everybody so needed the final two to be good news bears and they didn't let us down.

This past week has seen such heartache for bears we weren't able to save - but, like Andrew and all those before, they have left behind a legacy of vital information which will bring this industry down.

Our evidence sees young bears with legs severed in leghold traps who are clearly much less than 17 years old; - the cut-off point from when trapping bears in the wild was made illegal in China in 1989. We've wept for bears like Twiglet who died from a combination of heart and renal failure, and our old enemy - septicemia - which would have been agonising in the last lonely weeks of his life. His bodyweight too made us sick to our stomachs, after Bev calculated that he was at least 59% less than he should weigh as a healthy male. It would be like looking at a fully grown Labrador dog of less than 10kgs in weight.

Phill's postmortem of Message, who died from an inoperable liver tumour earlier in the week, revealed pus in her bile which is now leaning even more strongly towards the hypothesis of a tumour factor, that is not only killing bears, but possibly consumers too.

But, as ever, out of the dark comes light. Big Boss - now officially given the wonderfully strong and very fitting name; Agathon - is being spoiled rotten by Vet Cath who claims to have no favourites, but seems remarkably close to this bear. Presenting his tummy to her for abdomen checks without even being asked, Agathon is distinctly Rupert like bless his slow and plodding heart and already charming everyone with his innocence and appreciation of anything related to kindness or food.

Ria transformed Vet nurse Candice tonight into what I can only describe as a proud and gushing mother as she described her waking up for the first time in her Recovery cage, tossing straw into great piles, and then leaping into the mound with glee.

Thanks especially to everyone for your messages of strength and support - the emails sharing grief for Twiglet and Message were printed and placed into the graves as the flames flickered skywards and the words from our poem "Spirit of Hope" said simply:

"Please look upon the others and give them promise of hope soon, and tell them to be patient and proudly wear the moon." Jillx