Wounded Wawa bear cub recovering at Bear With Us sanctuary

Morning North8:23Update on rescued bear cub

Chris the bear cub was picked up in Wawa, starving and barely able to stand. He was brought to Sudbury for care but is now in Sprucedale at the Bear With Us Sanctuary and Rehabilitation Centre for Bears. We checked up on him to see how he's doing.

The ailing black bear cub found wandering on a road in the Wawa area last week has a long road to recovery, a wildlife expert says.

Mike McIntosh, the founder of Bear With Us Sanctuary in in Sprucedale, said there is still a lot of recovery ahead for the nearly one-year-old cub named Kris. 

• Sickly bear cub from Wawa wouldn't have survived winter: rescuer

“He's in a very small area right now, we're trying to keep him off his feet and keep him from moving around too much,” he said.

“So basically we are hoping that he will eat, drink and sleep.  You need a strong body to help fight the infection.  Drugs on their own won't necessarily do the job.”

Right now, the cub is walking on his elbows because his paws are so sore. His paws were worn to the bone from digging for food.

"He's keeping the weight off them, and he's eating well. And he's definitely a much stronger littler bear than a few days ago. He's got a little bit of an attitude," McIntosh said.

"Right now he's getting a little bit of fresh fruit and canned cat food. He's hungry enough to eat anything."

Workers are hopeful the cub will put on enough weight on to hibernate.

"That will be a good opportunity for its paws to heal," McIntosh said.

But the cub has a lot of weight to gain. When he was found, he weighed about a third of what he should weigh for a cub his age.

"When I tried to give him a needle yesterday to try and give him a bit of a sedative to slow him down so we could handle him, you can't find any muscle, there's nothing left. It's just a skeleton underneath the fur," McIntosh said.

“The cub has been starved, so you can't just start feeding him full tilt right away — that would kill him. So you've got to bring him back slowly and get his metabolism to speed again.”

If the cub keeps gaining weight and heals up nicely, then they will find a spot for him to hibernate for the winter. After that, he would be released next summer, back to where he was found near Wawa, McIntosh said.

At that time there will be an abundance of natural food sources, such as berries, he added.

The cub was given the name “Kris Kringle,” as he was found so close to the Christmas season.