Polar bears on the mend in Tacoma zoo

TACOMA — Boris and Kenny, two polar bears that were rescued from a Mexican circus in Puerto Rico, have had their lives turned around at the Point Defiance Zoo &Aquarium.

After nearly a year of treats laced with cod-liver oil, high-protein fare of meat and fish, medical care and a couple of root canals, their fur is plush, full and snowy.

Their eyes have lost a filmy glaze and they’ve both packed on more than 100 pounds.

And after splashing around the edges, Boris, 18, and Kenny, 16, have finally taken the plunge into the zoo’s 90,000-gallon natural seawater pool.

"That’s when they turned into real polar bears," said Traci Belting, the zoo’s marine mammal manager. "We’ve had visitors ask, ‘When can we see the old bears?’ and they’re out and they can’t tell the difference."

Therapy in the zoo’s pool was crucial to their recovery from their days in tropical heat with the Mexican circus, Belting said.

Swimming gives them a range of motion and muscle development they never experienced in the Suarez Brothers Circus.

Animal activists, who encouraged U.S. Fish and Wildlife agents to rescue the bears from the animal show, said Boris and Kenny were kept in filthy, tight quarters most of their lives.

Where they once were shy of water, just dipping one paw in at a time, now they swim in a dog paddle, with their hind paws managing the steering, Belting said.

"These guys were just splaying all over the place. Within a few days of swimming they were doing really good," she said.

They’re steadier now than they were in their early days at the zoo, although still not as quick as the zoo’s two younger polar bears, Blizzard and Glacier.

When Boris and Kenny arrived in Tacoma in February, their fur coats were full of bald patches and they had parasitic and fungal infections under their skin and abscesses on their paws.

They were accustomed to a high-carbohydrate diet of grapes, lettuce and dog food, and weighed just 800 pounds each.

It took two months before they were acclimated to the carnivorous diet they would eat in the wild, Belting said. Now Kenny weighs 920 pounds and Boris 1,010 pounds.

A sweet tooth lingers for Kenny, who still craves grapes, a zoo biologists said.