APPLE VALLEY, Minn. — The time is 7:30 a.m. at the Minnesota Zoo, and it opens at 9. 

Zookeeper Maggie Estby is knocking out a number of tasks, like preparing breakfast for a family of endangered tigers. And forget Frosted Flakes! These guys eat horse meat with added vitamins and nutrients.

Toronto Zoo researchers developed the diet, and it allows snacks.

“I’m just gonna put some gloves on first,” Estby said. “This is chunk muscle meat. We use this as kind of like treat meat … This is something the cats usually really enjoy.”

Now Estby leads the way to a behind-the-scenes den, where everyone must mask up to help protect the tigers from COVID, she says.

“So if you guys wanna just make sure the bar door is closed behind you,” she said.

And there they all are, including two special cubs. Brother and sister Andre and Amalia were born at the Zoo back in May as part of an international species survival plan.

“We’re getting to the point where we do have to separate the cubs when we’re feeding them,” Estby said.

But filial piety: Estby feeds their parents and older siblings first.

“This is dad, Luca, down here,” she said. “Hi buddy. Good morning.”

Whether wild or zoo, tiger fathers don’t have anything to do with their cubs after breeding is over. So, the twins stay close to their mom, Dari. After all, they’re still nursing. Plus, Dari’s a pro. This is her third and likely last liter.

Dari’s backstory stands on its own, but in short: Dari’s mother neglected her and the Minnesota Zoo intervened to keep the lineage alive. Curator Diana Weinhardt has known Dari since she was born.

 “Well, it took a little bit of work, but she’s got a great team,” Weinhardt said. “We all went to garage sales and just got a bunch of toys for her when she was a cub, and now her cubs are – we have sturdier equipment now, but these cubs are, they’re tough!”

“They’re getting very, very, vocal,” Estby said between roars.

But no one’s upset. The cubs are just finding their voice, she said.

“She’s chuffing at me when I do that, which is a friendly greeting,” said Dr. Annie Revis while joining Estby on the other side of the den at around 8 a.m. for a mock medical check.

Revis is the Minnesota Zoo’s director of animal health.

“This has been my dream job,” Revis said. “I’ve wanted to be a vet and really a zoo vet since I was 3 years old.”

In the mock medical check, the cubs take turns lining up and laying down between two wooden boards.

“Lay down,” Revis said. “There you go, good.”

They’re rewarded with treats, just like a house pet. By the way, Andre weighs about the size of a large dog, 50 pounds. Amalia, 45 — and growing.

“Especially going into winter here, we want them to kind of keep that cub chub on,” Estby said. “It’s easy to tell them apart from a distance by their tails.”

Dr. Reevis is now lightly pinching their furry butts – and not just cuz they’re cute. It’s so they can get used to human touch and the feel of an injection.

“All of our tigers get very similar vaccines that your domestic cat would get, so rabies vaccines, the feline viral diseases and the kind of unique one is they also get vaccinated for canine distemper, which is, you know, thought of as a dog problem but our big cats are also susceptible to it,” Revis said.

The cubs were vaccinated shortly after birth and are caught up on shots now. They’re not taking any meds either.

“So, unless there’s a problem, we don’t check on them,” Revis explained.

But for this demo, Dr. Reevis shines a flashlight to check their golden-brown eyes.

Now it’s 8:30 a.m. and Estby must prepare the public tiger den. She carries outside what looks like three silicone bunt cake pans and places them spaciously apart on the ground.

“This is a bloodsicle,” Estby said. “This is the blood leftover from where we get their meat … Mix it with a little bit of water, freeze it, and it becomes an awesome treat for these guys.”

Next, she sprays perfume on a large pumpkin and other enrichment items on the ground like antlers and tree logs.

“It’s just perfume,” Estby said with a chuckle. “Yep, this is actual body spray for humans and they love it.”

Now, she’s checking the entire perimeter for any openings in the fence. This is a very important step.

“I mean, we’re putting tigers out there, which is very dangerous, and overnight you never know what happened,” Estby said. “You know, trees fall. Storms happen. It gets windy.”

She also checks around for new scratch marks. Zookeepers want to protect the trees from big cat claws, so sometimes they wrap them to discourage the tigers from climbing up too far.

Guess what also travels far: tiger pee! So Estby wipes down the windows every morning to ensure visitors have a clear view of the glass.

And already, she can see some guests. That’s because people with Minnesota Zoo Memberships are allowed onto the grounds early.

In fact, the Minnesota Zoo reports every day since September, when the striped siblings made their public debut, zoo members have been showing up in time to catch the moment Dari and her cubs enter the den for the day.

“They’re so very cute,” one zoogoer said. 

“I just want to cuddle ’em,” another responded.

The cubs always stay out until only Dari decides it’s time to go back to the private sleeping quarters, which on this day turns out to be 1:45 p.m. Tigers are mostly nocturnal, you know.

The Minnesota Zoo is currently open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily, including weekends.

MINNEAPOLIS — A missing Wisconsin man authorities thought had drowned might be alive in Europe.

Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said Ryan Borgwardt went kayaking on Aug. 11 on Green Lake and never returned home. His deputies found his kayak overturned. They believe it capsized, so he started to swim without a life jacket. A fisherman found his fishing rod two days later, while someone else found his tackle box.

Podoll called Keith Cormican with Bruce’s Legacy, a volunteer search and recovery group for drowned victims, to help find Borgwardt. Cormican started the nonprofit in honor of his brother, Bruce, a Black River Falls firefighter who drowned searching for a missing father.

Cormican helped Podall with searches at Green Lake in the past, and felt confident they would find Borgwardt because of all the cellphone data.

“I was thinking a day or two I would have this wrapped up,” Cormican said.

But it turned into 23 days.

“We had covered that lake like I had never covered any other lake. We just scoured that thing just assuming he was there and based on that cellphone information,” he said.

Cormican said his team worked tirelessly to find him using sonar equipment and a remote operated vehicle — basically an underwater drone with lights — cameras and its sonar to check target areas. So, when they couldn’t find him, he knew something was off.

“It was the multiple days of just scouring this area kept building to the question of whether he’s there or not,” Cormican said. “He should have shown up on the sonar information.”

He said he noticed a few flags early on, but they continued to search based on the initial investigation and wanting to get closure for the family.

“One of the driving forces to keeping us searching on the lake is always the support from the family and the local department,” he said.

Cormican eventually had a conversation with Podoll about continuing the search at the lake. He said he started to think something else happened and they needed to check other places.

Podoll said they renewed their investigative efforts based on what Cormican said because he’s an expert at what he does and Cormican was confident there wasn’t a body in the lake.

Shortly after they learned Borgwardt’s name had been checked by Canadian law enforcement on August 13 with help from the Mid-States Organized Crime Information Center. Then he learned Borgwardt reported his passport was missing and got another on May 22. His family found his original passport.

Podoll said they were able to analyze a family laptop and discovered the hard drive was replaced, search browser had been cleared the day he disappeared, passport photos, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks, he was talking with a woman from Uzbekistan, and he took out a $375,000 life insurance policy in January.

“Just the information that we gleaned from the computer lead us to believe, he’s not in the lake, he’s out of the state of Wisconsin, and he’s in some other country. Do we know that he’s alive? No, we don’t know that yet,” Podoll said.

Investigators believe he faked his own death and ran away to Europe.

Podoll said they searched for Borgwardt for 54 days. They’ve since ended all search efforts at the lake.

The sheriff said this has been a difficult time for the family.

“They’re doing OK. It’s a whole switch now from having their loved one drowned and to now knowing he’s out of the country some place,” he said.

“I’m very surprised that somebody could actually do this. First time it’s ever happened to me. I’ve been doing this for 34 years,” Cormican said.

Cormican said he was shocked to hear he might still be alive.

“Multiple feelings. I mean right of way it was kind of a relief knowing that he is alive for one thing, and that I didn’t miss him because he’s not there. I was really questioning my abilities having done this for so many years,” he said.

What makes this news difficult to hear now is that he got called to help with other searches while looking for Borgwardt.

“That’s the sad part about it. I was getting requests to go out to Green Bay to search for a young man out on the lake so that kind of put a damper in that search. I split my time up between the two of them,” he said. “Then later into that search I got asked to out to Wyoming for an individual that was originally from Wisconsin, parents are from Wisconsin, and he is from Minneapolis, so I had to delay that because I was bound and determined to get this guy found first.”

He said he’ll be able to move past this, but he knows it won’t be as easy for the family.

Podoll said he’s never seen anything like this, and his office won’t stop searching for him.

“His entire family is here for him. They miss him, and we just want him back. We can deal with the situations and what he got himself into, that we can deal with, it’s just get back home to his children,” Podoll said.

In the meantime, Podoll said they are trying to see what crimes were committed and figuring out how much this search and recovery cost taxpayers.

“We don’t have an exact figure. We’re putting that together. Our plan is to get some kind of restitution request,” he said.

Podoll is encouraging people who have any information or may have knowingly or unknowingly helped Borgwardt to contact the sheriff’s office or the Green Lake County Crime Stoppers.

You can text “GETTHEM” to 847411 or call 1-800-GET THEM.  

MOORHEAD, Minn. — A 34-year-old man who was shot in the head by a stray bullet hunting while hunting near Moorhead on Saturday isn’t expected to survive, according to officials.

In an update on Tuesday, the Clay County Sheriff’s Office said the injuries are considered “life-threatening” and “non-survivable.” Officials identified the hunter as Jace Srur, of Dilworth.

Authorities were called to the area of 4600 90th Avenue North just before 8 a.m. Saturday on a report of a shooting. When deputies arrived, they found Srur with a gunshot wound to his head. Crews on scene gave him first aid until ambulance crews arrived and transported him to a hospital by Airmed. The incident remains under investigation.

A second, unrelated hunting incident was reported hours later in Lee Township. Officials with the Norman County Sheriff’s Office said a 37-year-old man sustained “non-life-threatening” injuries after being shot once while out hunting.