Bearly believable
posted in Alaska |I take two routes to summer camp. There’s the short route–which I’m doing more these days, due to gas prices–and the long route, which is prettier. The long route winds through our neighborhood, then debouches onto Suburb-Tiny Town Road, which I take down to where the camp is.
The long route also passes many post office box assemblages.
Yesterday, on my way to pick up the dotter, passing one of the POBAs, I saw an orange sign that said "WARNING!" and had a clip-art illustration. I had a suspicion as to what the clip-art was, but was in a hurry to pick the child up, so made a mental note to check the sign again today.
So on the way to pick her up this afternoon, I stopped the car by the POBA and peered at the sign.
"WARNING! Black bear sighted on Precious Stone Street Wednesday a.m."
Precious Stone Street is two blocks away.
Ooookay.
So we have moose; the Moose-Away seems to be keeping our neighborhood moose away from our nascent veggie garden with its tender tiny vegetative morsels.
But I think Moose-Away, made of aromatic bovine blood, may not be Bear-Away.
It might, in fact, be Bear-Come-Hither.
Welcome to Alaska. I have now encountered in one form or another all of the wildlife that the state is famous for. We have the bald eagles that roost near Home Debit. We have the hordes of seagulls that came back as soon as it was warm enough and float around the grocery store and fast-food emporium parking lots. We have the (bloody damned) mosquitoes. And now we have bear sighting.
In other beary news, our state gummint is fighting very hard to not have polar bears listed as an endangered species. Our lovely lady guv claims that the state fish and game scientists pooh-pooh the federal studies that are suggesting that polar bears aren’t doing too well in areas where the polar ice cap is receding. A local newspaper filed a FOIA request for info from the state scientists…the guv’s office released one (one!) email from one (one!) scientist which said…that they thought the science behind the feds sounded pretty solid. The guv’s office says, "Oh, that’s preliminary, and those preliminary discussions shouldn’t be part of the record."
