Nikolay, a village fish farmer from Belarus, found an unexpected and unusual guest wandering the village. The farmer did not believe his eyes at first, but when he looked closer, he recognized that the guest was a brown bear cub. This malnourished bear cub was hungry, searching for food, but very sweet.
Seeing the weak and starving bear cub, Nikolay decided to save it and bring it home to take good care of it. This bear cub seemed too young to survive in the wild alone and Nikolay did not want the bear cub to be sent to a zoo where it will spend its life in a cage.
Nikolay called many wildlife authorities in the area to get some guidance on this unusual situation. Most of the answers were the same, to put the bear to sleep or release it into the wild, which means the demise of the bear cub. Nikolay didn’t want to do that at all, and he decided to keep the bear as a pet.
Before taking the bear cub as a pet, Nikolay and his hunting pals search the forests nearby with the hope of finding any signs of the cub’s mother for two days but they had no luck.
Eventually, the village committee gave this bear cub a kind of passport to legally live in their village and named the bear cub Vasilisa. Nikolay planned to build this little bear a large shelter with more space to live and grow up.
Thanks to Nikolay, the kind-hearted man, the bear cub is saved!