Make no mistake. The decision by Erie Zoo officials to spend the money to save an injured polar bear was not only the right call, but the only call an institution of its kind could make.
Granted, it was something of a long shot. Alcor, one of two seven-year-old polar bear brothers currently at the zoo, had badly broken a leg just above the right front paw, probably in rough play with his equally massive brother Mizar.
At 750 pounds, Alcor could not exist on three legs like a common house cat, so zoo officials had to decide between expensive surgery with only a moderate chance of success or putting the animal down.
Because Dr. Dean Richardson of the University of Pennsylvania had just done similar surgery on Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro and was willing to give Alcor a try, the decision was made to try to heal the bear first and worry about the financial ramifications later.
As you may have heard, Alcor died after six hours of surgery and just five minutes into his return trip from Philadelphia in a refrigerated truck.
Biological investigators are still trying to figure out why.
Zoo visitors loved watching the two brothers play, lounge and swim in their small pool.
The kids would “ooh” and “aah” as the brothers fought over fish-head and apple filled balls of ice.
They were always together, and always so cute that they quickly became part of the fabric of the zoo family, despite the fact that in the wild polar bears are solitary hunters and dangerous killers.
Cute or not, cuddle at your own risk.
Still, the brothers were among the most popular animals in the zoo, and given the organization’s mission to wildlife the decision to risk the surgery was a no-brainer.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t to be, and now the zoo, which already is wrestling with budget issues, is stuck with the bill but no bear.
That shouldn’t diminish the efforts of a world class team of surgeons doing extraordinary and groundbreaking work on wild animals, nor should it tarnish the courage of the vets willing to jump into a crate in the back of a truck to try to revive a deadly predator.
In the end, the mission was a failure.
The effort wasn’t.