not many pictures today. walked with lena over at rovers run. we got stopped by a moose, seen below, and were turned back. these two are from a patch of mud, very common on rovers run. the mud mud had frozen over and was cracking up...probably from walkers and dogs such as us....and the temperatures warming a bit through the day. i think we were in the 20's over night. probably just warmed into upper 30's. for sure it's felt colder these past few days.
see trail, see moose, see hikers turn and walk the other direction. she had no intention of letting us pass by her. sometimes it's best to just say have a nice day to the moose and move in another direction. unless you are biking in kincaid and decide to instead let your dogs off leash at site of said moose and then pull out your hand gun and shoot said moose repeatedly when it charges at you. this seems to be the story that is emerging from the last moose shooting in kincaid this past week. nice...
fish and game had to go mercifully kill the moose and no doubt the two babies will not make it through the winter. the guy apparently hasn't filled out his paperwork about the incident being in defense of self yet. i guess you have like 15 days to do that post incident.
after we got back to the parking lot i decided to extend my walk and cruise the creek.
more frost shots. always fun to snap frost and icicles.
love when the front page of the newspaper has good news. the stellar sea lions on the eastern side of the state have been taken off the threatened list. the numbers are looking good. the western stellars numbers have remained lower and will stay on the endangered list.
on another positive note....the island previously known as Rat Island is rat free and many bird species have been noted to be returning. the island was rid of rats 5 years ago and is now considered clean. the rats got there probably due to a boat grounding and the rats on board escaping. they decimated the bird population on the island. the island has been renamed Hawadax Island, an old native name for the island. the original ship wreck happened in the late 1700's and the island had over 10,000 rats on it by the time it was decided to kill them all. you have to get them all as they breed super fast and would have re-populated the place in no time. rats do not naturally exist in alaska so any that are here were brought here, usually by boat.
shishmaref island will remain alcohol free. in other news the trusty tustemena ferry is back in service! hope it's not making any runs out to the aleutians this week as i hear the weather is gonna be pretty awful...cyclone like. the trusty tusty is as old as me and is sometimes referred to as the rusty tusty...not by me though..i'm kind to my kindred ship.
here is todays moose sighting. below are all icicles forming on the shores of the creek. thought they looked cool. something new and fun to photograph. of course, i love that about alaska. everything changes so rapidly there is always something new to take pictures of. you make your rounds of the trails and you will be getting new stuff every time. it's pretty awesome!
the greek roma girl story is pretty confusing. i guess the kid taken by authorities in ireland was returned as the dna proved the parents to be the real parents. the greek child is still unclear. last i read a roma woman in bulgaria says it may be her kid and that she had transferred the kid to this couple when it was a baby as she had little money to care for it. who knows what will happen.
in the states one would never assume and take a kid away from any family because it doesn't look like the parents. they'd be taking a lot of kids away if that were the case. children often don't look like their parents here. so as the days go on it does seem an odd story really.
having worked with alaska natives it seems that in that culture, babies are routinely given over to other relatives to be raised. perhaps this is also a more common thing to have happen in roma families. it's always seemed an odd thing to me, but different cultures go about things differently. it probably dates back many generations ago and as a community of people this just assured that all children born were taken care of. the alaska natives were nomadic such as the roma's at one point.
will have to hunt for more icicles to take pictures of. it's a fun time of year.
we were discussing on our walk all this news about dog treats made in china killing dogs and making them ill. china seems to be getting a worse and worse reputation for poor quality in their manufacturing. lead in kids toys, bad baby formula, dog deaths. i have been looking at labels more and more and not buying any dog product made in china. of course, the smog in some places has been reported to be so horrible that it's now impossible to see the sky at all. they often seem to prove they care little for their own citizens let alone dogs across the globe.
i'm officially pals certified again. went to the in class part to finish up today. that meant i had tonight off. works for me. back to work tomorrow night though. will try and look for some cool ice again tomorrow on my walks.
every so often i get a yen for some of my mama's meatloaf. so tonight i made meatloaf. it's fun to make...you can get messy.
well, i guess i shall retire to bed. i'm in the hot/cold state of affairs. our bodies are so strange. i do not mind saying farewell to some female bodily functions. i have memories of hiding in my closet as a kid with the old pamphlets i'd been given at school. the pamphlets tired to paint some cheery picture of how wonderful it was going to be to get my period and become a woman. i was no fool though, it sounded pretty awful to me. i was less than impressed with the happy, positive message the leaflet was trying to pass on.
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