Northland News
June 2002
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
There's a unicorn in the garden, and it's eating the roses. Um -- make that past tense (as in about 2 a.m. last Wednesday) . . . and make that a moose . . . eating the tulips (apologies to James Thurber). I didn't actually watch it eat the tulips, but later in the day I noted that three-quarters of the tulips, which had been about four inches high, had been cropped off at ground level.
Last Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, I could not fall asleep, being too keyed up from the Alaska Press Women awards presentation and annual meeting that I emceed Tuesday evening. Thus, at about 2 a.m., I was reading in bed when I heard very loud clomping beneath my bedroom and went to see what was about in the wee hours of the morning.
It was a cow moose (maybe one of the "regulars"?), who stopped about 12 feet away and dropped "a load," reached up with her left hind hoof and scratched her neck, and then ambled clompily across the rest of the yard and into the bushes.
How could I see her at 2 a.m. in the dark, you ask? Ah, but this is June in Alaska. The summer solstice arrived yesterday (Friday) at 2:54 a.m. The few days leading up to and following solstice have roughly the same amount of daylight (within seven or eight seconds): 19 hours, 22 minutes, and 28 seconds on Friday morning. Sunrise is at about 4:20 a.m., and sunset is at about 11:45 p.m. -- and it never really gets dark between when the sun goes down and when it comes back up. It's sort of a long twilight period, so I could see the moose and pretty much all she was doing.
Moose Marbles
The next morning, however, when I went to check on the load she had dropped, I discovered it wasn't the usual moose marbles at all. No, the plop in the grass looked more like bear scat than moose poop. Having already discovered the cropped tulips, I figured it served her righ to have a belly ache and diarrhea if she was going to eat my flowers. But I still was curious, so I e-mailed my friendly Alaska Department of Fish & Game area biologist Rick Sinnott and asked if I might have a sick moose in the neighborhood.
Well, even Alaska sourdoughs can learn something new; I certainly did. Here is Rick's reply:
Moose stool is generally soft and clumpy this time of year. Lots of water in the chow. The famous nuggets (marbles) are the result of their woody winter diet. Lots of people don't see it come out and really do think they have stumbled onto the spoor of a large bear in their front yard. I tell them to stir it with a stick and report back to me. Because moose chew their cud, there isn't anything recognizable in the pile. Bear poop will generally contain long root or grass fibers, berries, bones, hair, bird seed, plastic, or aluminum foil (i.e., something at least vaguely recognizable).
Okay, so maybe this report about animal poop is a little on the edge, but my readers tell me they enjoy hearing about wildlife in Alaska, and that's the latest wildlife tale I have to tell.
Wolves/Coyotes and Raptors
A few weeks ago, however, I learned something else about wildlife in the area. While driving to Anchorage one morning, I briefly saw what looked like a wolf or coyote darting back into the brush along the Glenn Highway. Not having seen either critter in this area for many years (like about 25), I wasn't sure it wasn't simply a grey dog. So I called ADF&G, this time to speak to Bruce Bartley, information officer for the Division of Wildlife Conservation and a resident of Chugiak, which is near Eagle River -- meaning Bruce drives the same stretch of the Glenn Highway into town that I do. Bruce asked if I'd seen the animal near the Army National Guard Armory. "Yep," says I. "It's a coyote," he told me, one of a small group that has lived in that area for a long time, but which is rarely seen. Chalk up a new Anchorage wildlife sighting for me.
Rounding out the wildlife tales for the last couple of weeks, while working as a temporary technical editor at Jacobs Engineering Group in Anchorage, I knocked and entered the supervisor's office to discover why the door had been closed. Sitting on a perch in front of her desk was a red-tailed hawk. Seems Gloria has a permit to keep raptors (she has a merlin and a golden eagle, too, she told me), and she works at the Bird Treatment and Learning Center, which cares for injured wild birds and then releases them back to the wild. She had the hawk with her at the office because she was leaving for a birding conference on the Kenai Peninsula right after work.
Winter into Spring -- the Twins Hang Out
Earlier in this missive, I questioned if the tulip-munching moose might be one of the "regulars." Those of you who have been reading Northland News for the past two-plus years probably remember the twin moose calves that appeared with their mama in my backyard about a month after I returned to Alaska in 2000.
Early in March this year, I was rinsing some dishes in the sink in the kitchen and thinking about moose marbles (long story why), looked out the window, and lo and behold, there's a cow moose in the back yard, about 30 feet from the back deck. So I got my camera and went upstairs to take her picture from the balcony in the family room. While I was doing so, she decided to settle down in the snow for a spell.
I think this was the same moose I've seen come through here twice before this year and probably the one that had left tracks on several occasions, including the night a moose bedded down in the side yard, leaving an indentation in the snow. I was hoping this meant she'll stick around and maybe come back this spring with her calves.
A few moments later, I looked out my office window (which also faces south onto the back yard), and there was a second moose! About ten feet further back than the first one, behind a few trees. Also a cow. And also just lying down in the snow. I suspected these are the grown-up calves that came through here periodically with their mother the first year I was in this house . Wouldn't surprise me. Neither had a rack, and if they were not yearlings (and I don't think they were), then they had to be cows. I wondered if either was pregnant. Probably not, if they were still traveling together. Also, moose usually don't calve until their third year (more on the natural history of moose further on in this message).
On March 30, the moose twins returned to my yard for a longer stay. When I wake up, I usually go sit in the family room and watch the birds (mostly black-capped chickadees and redpolls) at the feeder on the balcony; my two silly cats, Purrna and Kapika, tails and meows aquiver, also watch them. But that morning, there were no birds, which surprised me. Then I saw Kapika sitting still as a statue watching something a bit further out from the balcony. It was one of the moose cows, lying down and chewing her cud back beyond my lot line.
Later, when I got up to go about my business and stepped closer to the balcony's sliding glass door to look again at the moose, I saw that her sister was lying about two feet off to the side of the back deck down below. I took a couple of pictures of her; here's one of her munching on the alder bush.
When she heard the film wind in my camera, she looked up at me, but with a very obvious "oh, it's-just-a-puny-human" look. One or both of them had been chomping on my willow bush/tree, which had recently sprouted catkins in the above-freezing weather we'd been having since the big dump of snow a couple of weeks earlier.
Record Snowfall
Anchorage was buried under a record snowfall March 17, with Eagle River getting a few inches more than Anchorage. The dumping broke the known record for a 24-hour snowfall. About 26 inches of snow had fallen between 7 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. The old 24-hour record was 15.6 inches, set December 29, 1955. I remember that one well.
When we (my parents and my brothers and I) lived on Elmendorf Air Force Base (adjacent to Anchorage) in 1954-56, my father was Base Executive Officer. One of his duties was to ensure that base residents obeyed rules about keeping their lawns and yards, etc., looking nice. Came the day when some Air Force dignitaries were due to tour the base, and things looked a tad "messy." Semi-breakup weather. Dirty snow, puddles, etc. My dad's boss told him to "do something about it." Shortly thereafter it began to snow . . . and snow and snow (that was the referenced "old 24-hour record"). My dad's boss chided him for taking his duties a little too seriously, even though the base did look great (but it was difficult to drive from one end to the other for the inspection tour!).
During the first week of April, we got another big dump of snow -- about 16 inches in Eagle River. Tracks made by moose wandering through my yard then included a trail down the middle where the moose's belly dragged in the snow. (Keep in mind that a full-grown cow moose weighs anywhere from 800 to 1300 pounds and stands about six feet at the shoulder. Think Percheron or Clydesdale, then think taller.)
More About Moose
Okay, given that this particular saga seems to be mostly about moose, here's a little natural history lesson. Moose (Alces alces) are the world's largest members of the deer family. The Alaska race (Alces alces gigas) is the largest of all the moose. In Europe, the animals are called "elk." A moose is long-legged and heavy-bodied with a drooping nose, a "bell" or dewlap under the chin, and a small tail. Color ranges from golden brown to almost black depending on the season and age of the animal. The hair of newborn calves is generally red-brown, fading to lighter rust color within a few weeks. Newborn calves weigh 28 to 35 pounds, and within five months they grow to more than 300 pounds. Only the bulls have antlers ("racks"), which are lost each winter and a new set grown the following year in time for the fall rut. (Unlike antlers, horns are not shed and continue to grow throughout the lifespan of the animal.)
Cow moose generally breed at 28 months. Calves are born any time from mid-May to early June after a gestation period of about 230 days. I learned a few months ago that the moose twins that have been visiting my yard were born in the back yard of a women (whose daughter works for ADF&G Sport Fish Division) who lives about four or five blocks north of me, up against the base of the mountains on that side of the Eagle River valley.
Moose calves all arrive during the same period of time in a given region; one can almost hear the sound of many calves "dropping" in mid- to late-May in this vicinity. Nature planned this mass birthing to help protect moose from predators. When all the calves are born over a short period of time, bears (the primary predators) can only take so many, leaving the rest to grow up to the point where they can defend themselves better (mother moose are very protective, too; moose have very sharp and very fast hooves; they can slice and dice a dog, wolf, or human in a matter of minutes; bears don't usually stick around for the coup de grace).
Calves begin taking solid food a few days after birth. They are weaned in the fall at the time the mother is breeding again. The maternal bond is generally maintained until calves are 12 months old, at which time the mother aggressively chases her offspring from the immediate area just before she gives birth (talk about kicking the young ones out of the nest, cow moose can be very nasty . . . and the yearlings very confused!). Moose breed in the fall, with the peak of the rut activities coming in late September and early October. Adult males joust during the rut by bringing their antlers together and pushing. Serious battles are rare; bulls may receive a few punctures or other damage and occasionally die from their wounds. The winner usually mates with the female.
Trip Outside
A few days before I left here to fly to California, I had been corresponding with folks who were talking about daffodils and crocuses. But on April 13, when I departed Anchorage for Oakland, it was 23 degrees (F), and I had about 23 inches of snow still in my yard. When I arrived in Oakland that night, the temperature was almost 60 degrees hotter. Fortunately, the clouds moved in, and I found I could survive the drastic temperature shift without too much discomfort.
My all-too-brief visit to the Bay Area allowed me to meet with members of the Presbyterian Church in Chinatown (to which I belong) during several activities on Sunday and Monday, and to join Norm Proctor and Dave Miller (who had been my guests here in Alaska last August) at their home for dinner with my dear friends Jeannette Wei and Jim Caldwell. While there, in addition to meeting my CPA to sign my tax return and send it off, I also got in one night of "gaming" (for those of you who aren't aware, I became an avid board gamer while living in Oakland, mostly playing with son Mark's gaming friends) . . . and won both games (Settlers of Catan and Monopoly). When playing with Mark and his friends, for me to be anything other than the congenial goldfish during a game is a bit of a novelty.
On Wednesday the 17th, Mark and I drove to Crescent City, on the Pacific coast of Northern California, stopping on the way to play among the redwoods. That night we watched a Seattle Mariners (my team) versus Oakland Athletics (his team) baseball game on Super 8's television. The next day, we drove north, then east through the Smith River Valley (more beautiful redwood groves, in which I heard and then saw a winter wren for the first time, and a lovely river) into Oregon, where we connected back with I-5 headed for Seattle. A very enjoyable trip, in which we discussed myriad subjects, from baseball to parts of speech!
Although Mark drove back to the Bay Area the next day, I spent four days in Seattle visiting with daughter, Danika, her husband, Nick, and my granddaughter, Clarice (who will be one year old on July 2). To my pleasure, Clarice did not scream and refuse to be in my presence. Actually, we hit it off pretty well and even started a little game of "bonking" (gently touching foreheads), which she continues now with her parents.
"Spring" in Alaska
I returned to Alaska to discover that the weather had warmed considerably in my absence, and most of the snow on my roof had slid down and plopped in a pile in front of the garage and along the front sidewalk. Of course, by the time I got back the night of April 23, it had all frozen solid right where it fell. Kinda made for difficult entry and exit for a few weeks.
When "spring" (or break-up, as it is sometimes referred to here, referencing the breaking up of rivers into ice chunks as thawing begins) finally arrived in Alaska, it came with a rush. About a week of above-freezing weather during the day, and the streets of Anchorage resembled those of Venice, Italy. Nobody bothers to get a car washed for the month of break-up; one's vehicle is constantly being splashed and sprayed and otherwise coated with muddy snow melt; we simply make sure the windshield and headlights are free of the liberal coating of mud.
Finally there came a time, in May, when there was more brown than white in my yard. Suddenly the birch and aspen were leafing out (seems like they went green overnight), the robins were singing at some ungodly hour of dawn, and we could really believe winter was over for a few months (last year, our final 12 inches of snow arrived on May 3).
Employment and Involvement with Alaska Press Women
Shortly after my return to Alaska in late April, I learned that a four-month editing and page-layout job I had been told would start May 1 had disappeared. To cover myself financially, I agreed to do temporary technical editing for Jacobs Engineering, which has numerous environmental remediation projects throughout the state, primarily on decommissioned military sites (most from World War II). The work reminds me very much of that I did while editing reports on hazardous waste management at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
I had not been unbusy, however. I had taken on the task, last January, of coordinating the Alaska Press Women's 2002 communications contest, a project that had spurts of activity as entries arrived, were sent to judges, were returned and first-place entries sent on to national competition with the National Federation of Press Women, etc. The whole shebang was to culminate with an awards presentation (and annual meeting) event on June 18. In addition to making all the logistical arrangements and handling publicity, reservations, and the like, I put together a printed program for both the awards presentation and the annual meeting and also produced a major PowerPoint presentation to announce the winning entries. I was successful in getting six Alaska Press Women authors and two other professional communicators (thank you, Amy Einsoln and Bill Walsh) to donate books as door prizes for the occasion; the APW authors also had a book-signing and selling table, which was quite well-received.
Albeit not without a hitch (at least in my perfectionist mind), the event went off pretty well. Now I am cleaning up the details (media releases, accounting report, thank-you notes to judges, etc.) and preparing to think about next year's contest. Yes, I agreed to do it again in 2003 (at least I no longer am also editor of the organization's monthly newsletter; I gave that up last November).
Summertime
We had a gorgeous month of May, with a week of 70-degree weather (50 at night), that made for a lovely summer. We tend to enjoy the good weather when it's here and not think about what it will be like the next week or month. Who knows how long summer will last? In 2001, June was lovely, then it rained for practically all of July.
Now, in the third week of June 2002, it is again beautiful, sunny, and warm. Today I planted the two red raspberry bushes and the shooting star (a native wildflower) I picked up a couple of weeks ago at a local nursery. Only the raspberry bush I planted last year is still visible at the very back of my yard, where I hope to eventually have a nice berry patch; I fear the two from the preceding summer didn't make it. My lilac bush planted last last year (from the TREEmendous Anchorage giveaway sponsored in part by BP Alaska) got "pruned" by visiting moose during the winter. It looks fine, however, and is just about to bloom. I adopted another lilac bush this year and planted it a few feet from the first, right under my office window (for a week or so, I get to sniff lilacs while working).
This may be the year I do my version of "render under Caesar/God . . . ." I kinda enjoyed walking through the shin-high grass and clover (and a few dandelions) in my backyard this morning. Maybe I'll just let the grass grow. The previous owners of the house, who had a well-manicured lawn fit for any English home, would probably gasp in dismay. But I figure Nature does a pretty good job of landscaping, too. Little by little, I've been cutting back on the cutting back of the grass in the back yard. If it hadn't been for Mark's help last July and then Norm's and Dave's efforts last August, I would not have had a "lawn" at all in 2001. Suddenly, this summer, the grass is a bit beyond my hand-push "greenie" lawn mower, and I really can't afford to hire someone to come mow it . . . so maybe now's the time to turn it all back over to God.
Besides, when the grass is long like this, I can see the indentations where a moose has spent the night. I like that.
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