Noah can't quite believe his new pool. He  looks  up as if  to say  ' thank  you '

ARC has worked for an unbelievable 13 years to find a way to end the suffering of the caged animals in Limassol Municipal Gardens. This is an old-style menagerie with animals in cages with concrete floors. It is not a modern zoo.

Now Midas wants to try out this strange new substance - water.

Hearts were touched worldwide when we finally got the Municipality’s blessing to take the bears from their cage. Noah and Midas were two baby brothers brought from Israel, They must have been babies when ARC came into existence. It broke our hearts to see the two boys slide round and round the wet floor of their cage on their own urine. This went on years after year. They were allowed no leaves or branches. Just concrete.

The bear brothers were seriously disturbed, suffering badly from stereotypy. One had been castrated, leaving Midas, the other bear no other activity than to harass his brother. WSPA stepped in and sponsored the bears’ flight to their Hungarian sanctuary.

Everyone was in tears when the two bears emerged from their travel crate from their long, stressful journey. But although they’d never known water before, they splashed into their new pool immediately. The quiet Noah just calmly waded around, pushing his nose through the water ecstatically happy, while the more energetic Midas tore around like a bull, jumping through the water and investigating (and challenging) other rescued bears who came to the quarantine fence to investigate.