Cordova, Alaska Part IV

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Where to start… hmm… the dead chum salmon biting my finger, the orphaned black bear cub or the baited bear live trap in our parking area. I think that I will have to start at the beginning so I don’t confuse myself completely. My last couple of weeks at Miles Lake were memorable starting with my drive back on Wild Wildlife Wednesday (I made this title up… I hope that I haven’t set the bar too high and something really exciting happens on Thursday at 12:01 am). Anyway, I was driving back to Miles Lake and I slowed down to see why the car in front of me had stopped. A young brown bear, first summer away from mama, was in the middle of the road. After I stopped, he even approached my car. This is not normal behavior - someone had probably fed him. Unfortunately a fed bear is a dead bear. If he had approached a little closer I would have maced him with bear spray to teach him to stay away from humans, but he didn’t and this little encounter just made me very late for work. The Coast Guard helicopter has been buzzing over the glacier recently… a rescue mission to save the glaciers of the world from global warming, one iceberg at a time. Or maybe it is because it has been raining so much (6 inches of rain in half a week) that they are trying fly to better weather. Speaking of the weather, I knew that Fish and Game had accounts at many different businesses, but I didn’t know one of these accounts controlled the weather. Fish and Game is low on money and they must have had to cancel their subscription causing the weather to return to its default settings… rain, rain, rain. I believe that there is an explanation for everything in life. When it is not raining it is very dusty, all the silt from the glacier blows through the air in great sheets, waving to me like an old friend. The mosquitoes and black flies have been so thick that my bug zapper was overwhelmed. The bugs started to smoke after being zapped… after the season is over and I have to buy my own food the dinner menu will include roasted bugs. I can only tolerate the insects for so long before I snap, jumping up and down and yelling in frustration (it seems to really entertain other people). In other wildlife news (on a Tuesday, not Wednesday no doubt), I encountered a small black bear cub one night as I was coming out of the cabin. The bear was about twenty feet away at the edge of the porch. I didn’t dare leave the porch until I determined the mother’s location. After ten minutes, the cub left and I never saw or heard the mother. I think that the bear was orphaned. Unfortunately I was able to go back to work, but I was scared to go home at the end of my shift (midnight) because the cub and mother could have been lurking in the dark. I didn’t see him again, but he hung around the camp area for another couple of days. Roger left to go town overnight and I told Don that we should leave the cub in Roger’s room until we have a long term plan. We could’ve fed him Don’s Spam. The next day, Wednesday, was a Wild Wednesday but for a different reason. Don was on the phone with Fish and Game about the bear cub and I was cutting a potato with a bait knife. Suddenly, without warning, part of my thumb was loped off. I am clutching my thumb, wrapped in a paper towel, yelling and waving frantically to Don who ignores me!! Finally he got off the phone, helped me with my finger, and cooked the rest of my steak… I even suggested that he feed me too as a joke. It is hard to get around with only one fully functioning hand. I must have been under the influence of Motrin because the second the Roger left I decided to throw a party and invite the elderly campground hosts. Haha… this party is off to a great start… just the type of parties that I envision myself attending. Actually I wanted to see them again before we pack up and leave for the season. I am happy that we left, the berries are just starting to ripen and the bear scat is everywhere. If we stayed out there any longer I would more close encounters with bears. Hiking the trail through the woods to the North Bank shed is scary when there are so many bears around… this is on a level even higher than the boogieman. Finally the end of the season came along, 700,000 + sockeye later but first we had to break down and pack everything up. Don had me carry out everything while he took inventory, how nice of him. I had to carry 16 car batteries out of there (we were using them to power our operations) and they are HEAVY! Roger was so meticulous about the inventory that I told me as I was eating some jelly beans, “Roger, please record on the inventory sheet 267 jellybeans… 90 grape, 60 coconut…wait! I just ate 4 grape jellybeans.” This is the end of the season and I saw him laugh for the first time all season. The end of the season went out with a bang with the campground hosts stopping by to say their goodbyes. They were driving their US Forest Service issued golf cart and while they were talking to us, it rolled forward and crashed right into Don’s truck! Time to get out of here before any more disasters happen. The next Fish and Game job didn’t start for another week so I had time to go home to Anchorage and total my dad’s truck… my first accident. Actually, I was driving through an intersection and an idiot to say the least changed lanes except I was there (perhaps I was in her blind spot) and I crashed right into her in the middle of the intersection. I jumped out of the truck and ran over to the other car to see if they were ok. Immediately I recognized the car to be a rental car and was surprised when the passenger lit up a cigarette as I was talking to her. I am pretty sure that you’re not allowed to smoke in rental cars. Thankfully it was not my fault and I still have a clean driving record. Now is the frustrating process of getting her insurance company to cooperate. After this little incident, I decided vacation was getting me into trouble and I had better to return to work in Cordova. My new job is probably my most favorite so far. Most of my time is spent with the Straying Crew. Fish and Game is doing a three year study on streams around Prince William Sound, determining if any hatchery salmon are spawning in streams where only wild stocks are supposed to be spawning. The hatcheries thermally mark the otoliths (little ear bones inside the brain used for balance) so we can distinguish the hatchery and wild stocks. My job is to fly to these places and collect chum and pink salmon carcasses, lay them out according to male and female and cut their heads open revealing the brain cavity. Using tweezers, we dig through the rotting mushy brain to find these otoliths. The smell isn’t too bad.One day I was carrying a male chum carcass and it slipped out of my fingers. As it was sliding out of my hand, the huge lower teeth caught my glove, ripping through it and into my hand. The dead fish bit me! I suppose that since the fish is dead, I merely cut my finger, but I am not going to get into technicalities. Regardless it hurt and I am worried about an infection since we are digging through the brains of rotting fish. Another person in the office got a cut from a salmon and his hand turned black and swelled. EWW! This happened on a Monday, as did my car accident so I have renamed Monday, Manic Monday. Since we are visiting all these steams with spawning salmon we see lots of bears, black bears. One day we saw 8 bears. One girl from the office has nicknamed bears, “hairy, beary and scary.” True enough. It is such amazing experience to fly around and get paid all the while seeing glaciers, scenery and different animals. One day, Terry, one of the pilots, was distracted and nearly hit a tree so we have nicknamed him “Tree hugger Terri.”Finally one of the neighbors owns a rooster that is very loud every morning. Overnight, a black bear came by and killed it. Since bears do have jobs I think that this bear snapped and killed the rooster because the bear wanted to sleep in. Anyway, they are trying to capture the bear using a baited live trap. The bait is the remainder of the rooster and the trap is a barrel with a door on one end that will close once the bear enters. I thought that since the rooster is gone I will sleep well, except that if that bear enters the trap, he will be a very angry bear and will create more noise than that rooster ever would. I will leave the ending to your imagination.

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