March 25
The cubs now weigh in at 160 to 170 pounds—quite a bit more than their birth weight of two pounds less than a year ago. They recently had their first physical and are doing great.
Besar had broken one of his deciduous (baby) canines and had to be anesthatized so one of the vets could remove the remains of the tooth. The procedure went without a hitch, and his adult canine is coming in fast.
People often ask what happens to the baby teeth. We have never found any of them here, and we theorize that they either swallow them and they are lost—I am NOT going through their poop looking for teeth!—or they drop them in the yard, and the squirrels and chipmunks take them for the minerals.
Now that their older brother Berani is gone—he left yesterday to be bred with a tiger at the San Antonio Zoo—the cubs should be getting more yard time, though we may temporarily shut down each of the tiger yards in turn to give the plants time to recover and get some grass growing in them. The cubs are very hard on grass and bamboo. We are lookng forward to warmer weather to see if any of them are water babies. Jalan seems to have an affinity for water, like his grandma Kerinci had. If he looks like he is having a good time swimming, I'm sure the others will follow.
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