The last time I saw Mrki was 2002. It was with a heavy heart that I left him and Sarajevo. For the first time in my life I was a "chicken," I didn't go and tell him good bye. I felt like a failure, someone who had turned down a friend.
We had become close, he and I. I could sit by the cage, scratch his ears, or he layed with his big head on his frontlegs but close to the bars, and me. Only one time did he become he angry! I had gone home to Sweden to work and returned one month later, but I didn't go and visit him right away. When I finally arrived he was quiet and when I was close to him his big paw reached out and tore my trousers. My translator and I were surprised! But a few minutes later he was snuggling with my hands (don't ever try this at home).
Six years later and with a knot in my stomach I returned, with the same translator, husband and children. He had gotten a new cage, a bunker was working as the house. A high fence, so no one could reach him, and he could return into privacy. Some small (but much bigger than anything he had before) area to stretch his legs, wrestle with a tree-trunk or even dip in some water, likewise fenced in so nobody could poke him as they did before.
Mrki and his "wife" in the new Brown Bear enclosure at the Sarajevo Zoo. Photo Copyright (c) 2008, Todd A. Mercer
I was so happy even if I wanted to touch his ears again. I looked inside through the bar window on the backside of his "home". When my eyes got used to the dark I could spot MRKI. I yelled out his name! He looked up, his nose started to sniff my scent, fast and intensive. Suddenly he stood up on his back legs and he started to dance...the same dance he had done every time I came and he heard my voice. I cried so hard of happiness and from missing him so badly that my husband put his hand on my back. He took the children and walked away so Mrki and I could have our moment together, by ourselves like old times.
This was the most painful Amore in my life. But MRKI got his own Amore now, his own wife.
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