Bears Get Around: California

Did you watch the 84^th annual Academy Awards on Sunday night?

They were held at the Hollywood and Highland Center theatre in Los Angeles, California, and watched on TV by millions of people.

Every year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives awards to deserving folks in the film industry. The Academy actually hands out ten different kinds of prizes, yet the best-known is surely the Academy Award of Merit – even better known as the Oscar.

Now, have you seen the movie Rango yet? It was great fun, and deserved to win this year’s Oscar for Animated Feature Film … though of course, all we teddy bears were rooting for Kung Fu Panda 2 instead!

This fine bear is named Oso. “Oso” means “bear” in Spanish. Oso is a black bear, although his fur is more of a cinnamon-brown. Cinnamon-brown fur is very common among California’s roughly 35,000 black bears.

Sadly, there are no grizzly bears in the state of California these days. The California golden bear (Ursus arctos californicus) became extinct in 1922.

It is still remembered with respect, though. The California golden bear is the official state mammal, and is celebrated on the California state flag.

At the University of California’s Berkeley campus, the sports teams are named the California Golden Bears. Their team mascot is a bear named Oski. Hey, Oski likes to travel, too.

 

At the Los Angeles campus, sports teams are called the UCLA Bruins (“bruin” is another word for bear). Their team mascots are Joe and Josephine Bruin. These college teams sure look like a lot of fun!

 

The Riverside campus has a mascot named Scotty the Bear. Here is a rather serious video about the natural history of the Riverside mascot:

  Oso thinks that Scotty deserves an Oscar for his performance in Mascot Mayhem!

 

Story and still photo © S. Clouthier

California State Flag courtesy Wikipedia

Oski in New York courtesy DC4Cal

UCLA’s Joe Bruin Highlight Film courtesy UCLASpiritSquad

Scotty Intro Video 2010 courtesy Mike Vaona

Mascot Mayhem Presentation courtesy wowitsjerome

Oso would also like to thank

the Academy, his mom, and

travelling teddy bears everywhere.