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TUCSON, Arizona (KGUN) — Two young brothers are getting used to a new home at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. They’re mountain lions, and just months ago, they were alone in the wild with no mother to care for them.
Moonbead and Pretzel were found near the Washington-Idaho border earlier this year after wildlife officials noticed something was wrong.
“Washington Game and Fish noticed that mom wasn’t coming around, and so they set trail cams out and saw that she hadn’t been there for three days,” said Shawnee Riplog-Peterson, the museum’s curator of mammalogy and ornithology. “That sets off an alarm for them that something happened to her.”
Riplog-Peterson said state wildlife officials set up a bear trap and were able to capture both cubs. From there, a network of agencies that respond to orphaned wildlife got involved.
“We have a network that we all work with. If there’s orphaned animals out there from different local agencies, and Arizona didn’t have any, and California didn’t have any, but came across these two,” Riplog-Peterson said.
After a health check, the cubs were flown to Phoenix.
“Then put them on a plane…and they came to Phoenix, and we went and picked them up and brought them here,” Riplog-Peterson said.
The brothers spent about two months behind the scenes before ever going on public exhibit, acclimating to their new surroundings and bonding with keepers.
“That’s where all the fabulous things happen. They get all their treats, all their enrichment back there, and so that’s their go-to place. So their recall is phenomenal,” Riplog-Peterson said. “We call them in, they come right in.”
The cubs are not the first mountain lions to call the museum home. Last year, both museum staff and visitors were saddened by the loss of Cruz, a mountain lion who lived at the museum for 13 years.
“We had the loss of Cruz, which was devastating to all of us and visitors alike. But then we got these two in,” Riplog-Peterson said.
Cruz spent much of his time near the exhibit’s viewing window, a favorite spot with guests.
“This glass is really great because it gives people an up close, very, very personal experience with them,” Riplog-Peterson said.
Moonbead and Pretzel have claimed a different favorite spot of their own — a rock ledge no previous mountain lion at the museum had ever explored.
“They’re number six and number seven of lions who called this home,” Riplog-Peterson said. “No one has ever been up there before, except for these two. And you saw how easily they traversed. I don’t think you want to climb a tree if you see a puma.”
The cubs arrived thin, but in otherwise good health, according to Riplog-Peterson. They had parasites that have since been treated, and they’ve taken well to their new exhibit, which includes a moat.
“They’re big time swimmers,” Riplog-Peterson said. “So if you come out on a Saturday summer evening or a cool summer night, you may want to look down and look in the moat. You’ll see them down there.”
Riplog-Peterson said the brothers’ personalities have started to shine through in recent months.
“They’re very curious. One’s more curious than the other, and it’s fun to see,” she said. “If something comes into their enclosure, like a bird flies in, they’d be off of that cliff so fast.”
Keepers use enrichment activities to mimic behaviors the cubs would display in the wild, hiding food and scents around the exhibit to keep them mentally stimulated.
“That could mimic, oh, I don’t know, a squirrel moving around. So they’ll chase these sorts of things,” Riplog-Peterson said. “They have to find their food in different places. So they have to work a little bit. That’s okay, further acclimation, but also mental stimulation.”
There’s another part of this story that makes the cubs even more special: their names. Moonbead and Pretzel came from kids at Tucson’s Beads of Courage, a nonprofit that supports children living with serious illness.
“It’s really great to be able to partnership with another local nonprofit that does really great work,” Riplog-Peterson said. “So these are chronically ill children.”
Riplog-Peterson said a donor at the museum’s annual gala purchased the naming rights and passed the honor along to the kids.
“They came up with a bunch of different names. We looked them over, and we said these are all very appropriate. You guys can pick, and that’s how they came up with Moonbead and Pretzel,” she said.
Pretzel is the cub with the pink nose, and Moonbead has the black nose, though Riplog-Peterson said their markings could still change as they grow.
The Beads of Courage name ties back to the nonprofit’s signature program, which gives children facing illness colorful beads to represent their medical journey with some containing real meteorite.
“What’s neat about this nonprofit is they make like mood rings, but mood beads, but they actually have real meteorite in them, so this is another way that they give back,” Riplog-Peterson said.
For museum staff, watching visitors discover the cubs has become part of the daily routine.
“Everybody just comes unglued every morning. We have people that come every single day to see them,” Riplog-Peterson said.
Moonbead and Pretzel are now on exhibit daily at the Desert Museum’s Mountain Woodland habitat. Riplog-Peterson said the pair have access to their behind-the-scenes area throughout the day and choose when to come out.
“It’s all about choice and control,” she said. “They could have not come out today, and we would have been like, ‘Okay, we’ll do the interview, but they won’t be present.’ But they love it out here.”
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