Since their arrival in Utah last month, both bears have been getting acquainted with their new keepers and pens at Hogle Zoo, then getting to know each other a bit. They’ve advanced enough that on Tuesday they were introduced to the public.
For Hope and Nora’s debut, zookeepers decorated their pen with a red ‘O’ for Ohio and a green ‘O’ for Oregon, college-sports ornamentation the young bears took little time demolishing. But that’s fine. That’s what bears do. And the zookeepers want nothing more than for these bears, particularly Nora, to act like bears.
“We were concerned that Nora wouldn’t know how to react to another bear,” she added.