Another Alaskan Critter Caught by the Camera

 In the 22 years that we've lived in Alaska, and especially up here in the mountains, we've seen most Alaskan critters: brown and black bears, 

coyotes, moose, 

snowshoe hares, ptarmigan, you name it. But on Sunday, our new security cameras got a picture of one which I'd only seen the tracks, before.

I give you ... 

the lynx.

The Katmai Bear Cams are Back On-Line

The brown bear cams at Katmai National Park and Preserve have returned from hibernation.

Eight solar- and wind-powered cameras, operated by volunteers from Explore.org, began streaming live footage from Brooks Camp on the solstice and will continue through the last run of salmon this fall. The multi-camera feed will stream 24/7 from the park, about 290 air miles southwest of Anchorage.

Another Moose (or Two) In The Yard

My wife and I spent the morning picking up all the fallen branches and twigs from the two windstorms earlier this year, and bagging them along with the layer of leaves which was buried under the snow all winter.

After we were done, Older Daughter and I loaded the bags in her pickup for a run to the municipal dump. We were temporarily interrupted by a mama moose and calf which walked through the yard we had raked, and along the street in front of our house.

Mama was a BIG one: one of the strain of moose here that's 10 or 12 inches taller than the rest, well over six feet at the shoulders. She didn't like me one bit, either, and stopped for a second to gauge whether I was a threat, before strolling on.

The Bear That Wouldn't Leave

A bear walked into the Anchorage airport post office and wouldn’t leave. Police shot it.

The U.S. Post Office near the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport. Oct. 10, 2017. (Bill Roth / Alaska Dispatch News)

A black bear that entered the post office at the Anchorage airport was killed Sunday after police couldn't get the animal to go back outside, officials said.

The bear entered the Anchorage Processing and Distribution Center through a door trucks use to access the building, said Dawn Peppinger, spokeswoman for USPS.

"It's just one of the doors that we use when we move mail in and out the facility," Peppinger said.

Airport police were called around 11:30 p.m. Sunday, said Lt. Harry Crippen with the Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport Police and Fire.

Police found the bear but were unable to herd it back outside through an open garage door. They corralled it into a garbage compactor room, at which point the animal become aggressive and it was shot, Crippen said.

The sequence of events lasted maybe 10 minutes, Crippen said.

No people were injured, and nothing was damaged, Peppinger said.

The Anchorage processing facility is the largest post office in Alaska. About 75 employees were in the building at the time, Peppinger said.

The facility was briefly shut down during the incident. The bear was in an area separate from the public post office, which was already closed, Peppinger said.

USPS and police gave conflicting reports about how employees handled the situation. Peppinger said that employees followed evacuation procedures and left the area. Crippen said that officers were telling employees to leave, but that they continued to stand around and watch as police tried to move the animal out of the building.

The Alaska Department of Fish and Game learned about the incident after the fact, said area biologist Dave Battle. The bear, which had ear tags, had been part of a research project but its tracking collar had fallen off, he said.

The bear was an adult male, Battle said. Crippen said it weighed around 270 pounds. Its carcass was donated to the University of Alaska Anchorage, Battle said.

Peppinger said that in her 32 years of working with the United States Post Office in Alaska, she hadn't heard of a bear getting into a facility before.

Alaskan Critters

The Bear Is Back

Or maybe it's a she. Either way, the neighborhood bear knocked over the trash can again last night. Trash all over the ground ... sigh. Picking up soggy trash in the rain ... double sigh.

We didn't have this problem last year, but there are bears all over the place, this summer. So the can now resides in the garage.

But the bestest part? I think the bruin was somewhere near while I was picking up the garbage ... I could hear rustling and an occasional snort, from a distance.

So I picked up trash with one hand, and a revolver* in the other. I had to get to work, and that involves going outside. Mr. Bear should have known that. :)






* It wasn't the large caliber that I preferred, but it was the one I had with me.

Bear Crashes Through Bedroom Window

Even though the local bird-cage line-slash-fishwrapper spends most of its time bashing President Trump, they still report local stories.

"Mom, Dad, there's a bear in my bedroom"

Eleven-year-old Zach Landis will never forget the sound of a black bear bursting through the double-paned window of his bedroom late Monday.

"It's hard to explain, but it's almost like a cannon burst through and hit straight past my ear," Zach said.

 

He recounted what happened from his family's South Anchorage home two days later, unscathed from the bizarre encounter.

 

Zach said he shot upright when he woke to the crash. He saw a figure the size of a grown man in his room. In the darkness and clamor, he struggled to make out what was near the foot of his bed. He watched it scratch at the walls and climb back through the window from which it entered before he could let out a scream and figure out what he had just witnessed — a bear crashing in and out of his garden-level bedroom.

 

Eleven-year-old Zach Landis was in his bedroom on June 26 when a black bear smashed through the window. He was uninjured. He is standing in the room with his mother, Alisa Landis, two days later. (Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News)

 

Follow the link for the whole story.

 

Four-Footed Visitor

We have one of these:

It lives outside the garage man-door.

So, yesterday morning, this happened:

with the usual resultant mess. Strangely enough, the meat scraps* were missing ... and our neighbor's can was overturned, with more trash strewn (yes, strewn) about his yard, too.


* Well-wrapped, of course. It's not been a problem before, but there are an unusual number of bears in our neighborhood, this year. They're raiding trash, bird feeders, and whatever else they can find.

Two in two days: "Really odd"

‘Really odd’: 2 fatal maulings in 2 days by Alaska black bears

A sign alerts park users that the Bird Ridge trail is closed, Monday June 19, 2017. (Marc Lester / Alaska Dispatch News)

Patrick Cooper died Sunday as the 16-year-old came down Bird Ridge near Anchorage following a mountain race, the victim of an unusual fatal attack involving a black bear.

A day later, a Pogo Mine contract employee in the Interior was killed — also by a black bear.

Experts say fatal maulings by black bears in Alaska are rare.

Until the past few days, only six deaths had been linked to black bears in 130 years, according to a biologist compiling a report on Alaska bear attacks since 1880.

The sequence of events leading to Cooper's death is unknown beyond a text message he sent to a relative, saying he was being chased by a bear as he descended after finishing the 1.5-mile juniors division course of the Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb.

A state park ranger shot a black bear found near Cooper's body but the animal ran off.

Little information was available Monday about the attack on the Pogo contractor that left a second contract employee injured.

If black bears are found responsible for both deaths, it represents only the second time in recent history that black bears have killed someone in Alaska.

The last was Robert Weaver, a 64-year-old Fairbanks man who died following a black bear attack at his cabin near Delta Junction in 2013.

Black bears accounted for just 10 percent of bear attacks in Alaska dating back to 1880, according to reports compiled by two biologists working separately.

"The black bear — that's really odd," said Tom Smith, an associate professor at Brigham Young University who's studied bears since he worked as a biologist at Katmai National Park in 1992.

 

 

Click the link to read the whole article.

Black bear kills teen runner during trail race near Anchorage

A 16-year-old runner in a Bird Ridge mountain race was killed by a black bear he apparently encountered while descending the trail Sunday, Alaska State Troopers and the race director said.

A Chugach State Park ranger shot the bear in the face, but it ran away. Rangers and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game were still looking for the animal Sunday night on the slope during overlooking Turnagain Arm southeast of Anchorage.

 

The teenager, who has not been identified, was a participant in the juniors division of the Robert Spurr Memorial Hill Climb, said race director Brad Precosky. The close-knit Alaska mountain running community is in shock at the fatal mauling, he said.

"This is the worst thing that could happen," he said.

Bald Eagles

 

One More

What's for breakfast?

Strange Visitor

Anchorage Wants Our Help

According to a story at www.ktuu.com:

 

Bull Moose checks whether weather has delayed delivery! Kathleen Barth - Anchorage 11-16-16

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) -

State wildlife managers want to know how many moose roam the Anchorage bowl and need your help. 

Aerial counts don't always work because of bad weather conditions and some flight restrictions, which is why Fish and Game biologists are testing a new method of surveying moose on the ground, and that's where the public comes in. 

On February 26 and 27, citizens are invited to report moose sightings within the Anchorage bowl. 

Researchers will collect DNA samples from as many moose as they can. A small skin biopsy will be taken with darts designed to lightly strike a moose, collect a sample in the tip, and fall to the ground. 

Sightings may be reported by phoning 267-2253, texting 782-5051, or online at the department website. 

Reports should include moose location, time of the sighting, and number of moose seen at a given location.

 

 

The numbers usually provided, anecdotally, say the City of Anchorage is home to roughly 800 moose in the summer months. That number increases to some 1,200 in winter, due to scarcity of vegetation in the mountains. Moose then move into town seeking a greater food supply.

Remembering Buzzwinkle, the Drunken Moose

Erik Hill / Anchorage Daily News A bull moose sporting Town Square holiday lights settles in at Bernie's Bungalow Lounge Tuesday November 27, 2007 downtown.

 

Every autumn in recent years our boreal neighbors in Sweden and Norway have regaled the rest of the world with tales of drunken moose. In most of the stories, the moose have gotten smashed eating fermented apples, the active ingredient in applejack.

 

Recently, near Stockholm, a "mob of boozed-up moose" threatened a homeowner, daring him to step into his own garden. The online magazine Slate called the news brief issued by Radio Sweden "the best thing on the Internet today."

Sweden and Norway have lots of moose and loads of apple trees. Alaska has fewer moose and a paucity of fruit trees, but where the two entities overlap -- in Anchorage, for example -- reports of drunken moose also abound. Alaska's best-known public inebriate may have been Buzzwinkle.

 

Making a spectacle of himself

 

Buzzwinkle's name was coined by Anchorage Daily News columnist Julia O'Malley in November 2007 after a moose downed a few too many fermented crabapple cocktails in the courtyard of Bernie's Bungalow Lounge, across the street from the Nordstrom store in downtown Anchorage. When O'Malley and I arrived, the massive bull was standing rigid, knees locked, with his wide-set eyes fixed in an inscrutable expression. A long strand of small white lights tangled in his antlers attested to some careless twig noshing in Town Square earlier in the day. The most obvious sign of life was the cloud of vapor venting from his nostrils with every deep exhalation. He was blotto, and he knew it. Too large to fit in a taxi, we left him to sleep it off in the fenced courtyard. After he revived, Anchorage Daily News photographer Erik Hill captured Buzzwinkle's unapologetic, nonchalant departure -- party lights still firmly affixed. [Above - Ed.]

 

... In his prime Buzzwinkle sported a rack more than 60 inches wide and stood over six feet tall. Because Anchorage residents often enliven Alaska's dark nights by stringing lights on shrubs, and shrubs attract moose, bulls frequently wrap strands of the lights around their antlers. Buzzwinkle was no exception. In fact, his massive antlers accidently disassembled more than their share of holiday lights.

 

Read the whole article here.

Insert Witty Headline Here

I had big plans for this morning's post. Not the run-of-the-mill "finally Friday is here" or "what a long week it's been", but something significant.

 

Alas and alack, my muse has deserted me.

 

The only thing of significance, this morning, is that the moose going walkabout in yesterday afternoon's post has adopted the community mailbox as his own.

 

Seriously.

 

He hunkered down in the yard across the road from the mailboxes, and huffed, snorted, and harrumphed at anyone who might have thought about retrieving their mail.

 

1,200 pounds of bull moose with what looked to be third-year antlers has certainly been around long enough to know what he wants, and how to defend it.

 

So we exercised the better part of valor, and allowed as how the mail will still be there today when I get home from work.

 

Mr. Moose wins this round.

And Speaking of Moosey Thursday

... the neighbor was out for a walk, this afternoon.

Click to enlarge

A Moosey Kind of Thursday

Visitor Spoke With Forked ... Footprints

When I was leaving work this morning, I noticed some fresh prints which were made sometime after I'd gotten there.

Those are my tracks in, and back out again, and just to the right & bottom center ...

is the the evidence of the large, four-legged critter who crossed my path.

Didn't see Mr. or Ms. Moose, though.

For Threecollies' Readers

Marianne from Northview Diary referred her readers here for moose pictures. How could I not oblige?