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In the past few months, Dr. Alex Padron has had some interesting patients on his operating table.

Padron, a resident at the Virginia Veterinary Surgical Associates specializing in small animal surgery, has operated on two black bear cubs with fractures in their legs and forelimbs in the past two months.

On Thursday, Padron, who normally operates on dogs and cats, fixed fractures in a 5- to 6-month-old cub’s femur and elbow.

“For a bear that needs to run around, climb trees, scavenge, they need to have good use of their forelimbs,” Padron said. “So in the wild, it probably wouldn’t fare well.”

The cub was found on the side of the road in Rockingham County after being hit by a car on Sunday. The cub Padron operated on five weeks ago was hit by a car on July 27 near Crozet. That crash fractured the cub’s elbow and killed her mother.

Both bears are being rehabilitated at The Wildlife Center of Virginia in Waynesboro, where staff hope they’ll be released back into the wild.

“I was excited about it,” Padron said of operating on the bears.