Bears and Trash

We received a letter from the Alaska Waste Department yesterday letting us know: “Your neighborhood has been identified as an area with high probability of bear/trash encounters.” Oh good. Now that the ravens have gone back to where ravens spend the summer and they won’t be bothering the trash, we have to watch for bears. We can’t put our trash out the night before pick up. It must be the morning of. The city may ticket/fine something like $300 if a bear is caught rooting around in your trash. I wish someone would explain to the bears they can be expensive and if they are going to root in trash and cost residents, they need to provide a floor show to an audience.

This last weekend we were pretty busy. We spent Friday and Saturday in Seward. Friday we went on a whale watching tour and saw harbor seals, stellar sea lions, eagles, sea otters but someone forgot to notify the whales we were in town. Didn’t see a single one of the 22,000 migrating gray whales. Maybe we will see some on one of the other whale tours we are going on later in the summer. Then Saturday on the way home, we stopped off at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and checked out the animals. Since it was so pretty, we also headed to the Portage Glacier area. I am pretty sure I caught a glimpse of a moose baby but by the time we got turned around it was gone.

Sunday was ‘test the bear gun’ day. A group of us took several pistols, rifles and shotguns to a local range and had a blast (har har har). It was beautiful, sunny weather – a perfect day to be outside shooting targets. Btw – the bear gun has quite a kick to it – however not as much as a .50 caliber pistol.

Monday was the official start of Anchorage City Wide Clean Up (getting ready for tourist season). All week long, there will be people by the highways and streets picking up literally tons of trash tossed out over the winter. There are thousands of orange bags filled with trash on the roadsides now. I was amazed at what we found in approximately ¾ of a mile yesterday on one side of one of the main roads. There were the typical fast food wrappers, newspapers, soda cups and 5 gabillion cigarette butts but we also found a ring (assume costume jewelry due to the greenish tint on the silver), CDs, game boy cartridges and a passport. Others found wallets complete with $$, credit cards and driver’s licenses. Of course, one compatriot said at the end of the day she was really glad she didn’t find a body under the really tall grass she was walking in. Of course next year this will be the only thing I think about the entire time I’m out there. The team was a grimy mess but our 2 miles or so looked very nice when finished.