ou don’t mess around with a gigantic brown bear like Caesar when she’s due a routine health check. I remember only too well her rescue some four years ago when she bounced violently in her rusting cage on the bear farm in Tianjin and I thought she would crash through. Wearing a grotesque, painful full-metal jacket (see bottom photo), which secured a metal box and crude latex catheter that snaked itself into her gall bladder, Caesar was understandably a very unhappy bear. 

Back safely with us and loving her enclosure and pool, Caesar’s scars have all but disappeared and today she is an astonishingly beautiful (and formidable) bear. The examination is essential owing to the high incidence of liver cancer we’re finding in previously “tapped” bears on the farms, and Caesar, like all the other bears on site, gets a quick once-over every two or three years. Weighing in at a humongous 271kgs, Caesar is all muscle and all woman! 

Finally, a quick team picture and a group sigh of relief that all went well. Within a few hours Caesar was resting comfortably back in her den after removal of one tiny rotten incisor, a full ultrasound and routine procedures. And she’s in robustly good health. Job well done vet and bear team!