For more than a week, a wildlife organization in California has been trying to solve a confounding — albeit adorable — mystery of a baby bear that was left in a kennel on their driveway, and on Friday, they finally got their answer.
A man placed an anonymous call to The BEAR League in Lake Tahoe explaining that he found the cub “crying and hugging her deceased mother,” the BEAR League said in a statement.
The statement said that the man must have been the person who dropped off the bear, who they have named “Tahoe,” on April 16 because he knew the color of the blanket and kennel she was left in.
Although the man told the BEAR League that authorities told him to leave the bear alone, “his conscience would not allow him to walk away and leave her to die ... thankfully,” the statement said.
BEAR League employees brought Tahoe to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care, Inc., where she was examined by a vet and deemed to be healthy at 5.4 pounds and about 10 weeks old, according to the organization.
Over the past week, the BEAR League’s Facebook page has been dedicated to updating Tahoe’s fans with her developments. “Soon she will learn how to lap her formula out of a bowl, but there will be lots of messes made in the process,” read one post.
Many posts also begged for the person who dropped Tahoe off to come forward, because without her origin, Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care would have trouble determining where she “will be released next winter or spring when she is big enough and ready to conquer the world,” Ann Bryant, the Executive Director of Bear League told NBC News.
The caller told the Bear League he found the baby bear near the Humboldt Redwoods State Park, which is nearly 400 miles away from the facility, Bryant said, but her name will remain Tahoe because that’s where her new caretakers found her.
