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SALT LAKE CITY — Nora, one of Hogle Zoo’s two polar bears, is scheduled to undergo surgery Monday after zoo officials say she broke her humerus bone last week.
Nora has been off display since the break was found, and officials believe she will remain out of her exhibit for several months while she recovers.
Zookeepers began to suspect something was wrong on Jan. 24 after the 3-year-old bear was unwilling to move in her enclosure, Hogle Zoo spokeswoman Erica Hansen said. X-rays taken on Sunday showed a break in her bone that runs from her shoulder to elbow.
Hansen said the break likely happened on Jan. 23. Lead keeper, Kaleigh Jablonski, said she believes the break came from roughhousing.
"She's a very rambunctious bear," Jablonski said, in a statement. "It's not unusual to watch her head-dive into the snow without any hesitation. She just plays rough."
Hogle Zoo officials consulted with various zoos across the country, as well as veterinary surgeons, radiologists and human orthopedic specialists and hired a team from Texas A&M, North Carolina State University and from the University of Utah to perform surgery to fix the broken humerus.
The team will use plates, screws and pins to fix the break, zoo officials said. Nora will be assessed after the surgery, and could face more surgeries if the fixation breaks.
Nora came to Hogle Zoo from the Oregon Zoo in Portland, Oregon in 2016. Prior to that, a video of her as a cub went viral in 2016 after she was born at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio. Another video of her playing in ice at Oregon Zoo also went viral later that year year.
Nora also had a bone disease as a cub, which keepers told KSL in 2018 may have been triggered by an unusual diet as a cub.
"She probably wasn't absorbing the right calcium and vitamin D," Erika Crook, a veterinarian at Hogle Zoo, said at the time. "That's when her bones weren't getting mineralized at a time when she was growing and she needed all those vitamins and minerals."
Contributing: Todd Curtis, Deseret News
