Friday the 13th

You know that old canard about mailmen and dogs?  Well, there's not a dog on the mail route that I have to worry about when I sub for Erin.  They all greet me with wagging tails, bright eyes, and goofy grins.

Why?  Erin has spoiled them with doggie salmon treats.

The only thing I have to watch out for is this turkey.

Really?  Wow.

 I was in Seward this afternoon.    Almost had a heart attack.  As Redd Foxx would say, "I'm coming, Elizabeth!"

  

 

Gullible's Definitions:  QUIETUDE--That wonderful result of having the studded winter tires taken off your vehicle. 

 Think I'll have to start mowing lawns soon.?

Who Needs Opposable Thumbs When You're a Clever Parrot?

Pablo and I were sitting in the loft this afternoon when lunch time arrived.  I went downstairs and got what I needed, which got Pablo's attention.

I put some blueberry yogurt on a plastic container lid and set it on top of his seed cup.  Pablo decided he couldn't reach the yogurt, so he picked up the lid.  Notice the 9 o'clock position of the yogurt.

Holding the lid in his beak and using his tongue, he turned the lid until it was easier for him to reach the yogurt.  Note the yogurt is now at 11 o'clock.

He even "does" the dishes.  This lid once held some soup veggies.

Apparently opposable thumbs are vastly overrated.

Quarter to Ten

 Bright sunshine, temperatures around 40 degrees, and a bad case of cabin fever got me out of the house around noon for a walk.  No point in walking if I didn't have a large yellow litter bag and my grab stick, so duly accessorized, I walked down to the pullout at Tern Lake.

There are still huge snowbanks on either side of the highway, but the maintenance guys pushed the snow away from the shoulders a month ago, so the sides are clear.   The pullout is always good for a bunch of trash and I left two bags almost full there before I started the return walk.

Some chirping caught my attention half way home and at first I thought the yellow legged sandpipers were back.  Boy, I thought, they're going to be surprised.  The lake is still a block of ice.

Instead, as the noise came closer, I looked up from the ditch and saw two bald eagles land in trees about a hundred feet from me.   Then I looked higher.

Two huge golden eagles were circling a hundred feet off the ground.  I pulled the camera out of the safety vest pocket and tried my best to get a shot of those two birds rising hundreds of feet on air currents, never flapping their wings.  The bald eagles sat in their trees and watched, too.  I have a hunch the bald eagles might have approached too near the golden eagles' nesting area and been chased away.

I tried several shots of the golden eagles, but between the bright sunshine that made seeing the LCD screen impossible and constant movement, I never did capture an image.  I aimed the camera right at them and never got one.  Maybe they were ghost eagles.

The bald eagle closest to the road sat and watched.  It didn't even care that I was standing right across the road from it, and obliged me with a few poses.

Now it's a quarter to ten at night and I'm heading to bed to continue reading a book that kept me up until 3 AM. 

A quarter to ten at night, and it's still light outside.  Alaska.  Ya gotta love it.

Let's See What's in the Camera

ARE YOU KIDDING ME FILES:

Feathered friends:

 Hello, Edda,  my fine feathered friend.  Wanna propagate the species with me?

Oh, lovely, Edgar.  Your place or mine?

Are you kidding me?  You expect me to lay eggs in that snow bank?

Is it still winter or is it spring?

This young birch still has more than 3 feet of snow around its trunk.

Buds???!!!   No way!

Impending Doom:

 One of the mountains behind my house.

The cornice at its top.  I'd guess three score or more high.  It'll break off someday and avalanche down, coming quite near my property.

Life with Pablo:

Ah, chopped salad for dinner. Never heard of them until I read about New York chopped salads at The Pioneer Woman.

Pablo's share.

You just licked off all the dressing?

Fun and Games:

 First day of Litter picking.  Aren't you rushing things?

 Shuffleboard, Alaskan style.

An hour later....

What on earth?

Peppered cinnamon roll?

 Nope.

No explanation necessary:

Living in Igloos

In the years following World War II, employment was difficult to find in the Detroit area.  My father, home from serving with the Army Air Corps in the Philippines, could not find a year ‘round job, and instead suffered periodic layoffs at factories where he worked.

The decision to move to Alaska was made after receiving word from my mother’s sister Agnes that the Alaska Railroad was hiring.  Agnes and her husband Ross had moved to Anchorage the previous year when he was transferred by the CAA (predecessor of the FAA) to that Southcentral Alaskan town.

We arrived on June 5, 1948.  I was six years old; my brother was 11 months old.

Before we left Detroit, the neighbor kids heard about the move to that foreign land way up north and told me I would be living in an igloo.  I didn’t know what an igloo was.

One of the few remaining WWII era Quonset huts on Amchitka Island, used by military personnel when they repelled the Japanese invasion of US owner Aleutian Islands. 

Well, I never did live in an igloo.  The closest I came was a Quonset hut, a half-tubular, portable building used by the military for temporary housing, warehousing, and whatever.  They came in many sizes, the most common being 12 feet across by 36 feet long, and my memory tells me that is the size we lived in for a couple years while my folks built a log cabin down the road.

Most Quonsets didn't come with this nice row of windows.  My brother and I in the Quonset at Christmas.

Mt brother in front of the Quonset.  The nice sunny enclosed entrance had yet to be added.

Thanksgiving dinner in the Quonset hut.  Note the small front window open to the glass-in porch.

My aunt and her flowers when she and Ross lived in the Quonset hut.  Notice the nice glassed-in entrance porch.

The Quonset hut frequently was adapted to civilian use.  I went to the fourth grade class in a Quonset hut, and another Quonset held my high school journalism class.

Journalism class in a Quonset behind Anchorage High School, May 1959.  My co-editor and I are leading a class meeting about the school newspaper.  Notice the small front window, just like the previous photo.

With this winter’s unusually high snowfall, I suspect a lot of folks around here feel like they live in igloos.  To wit:

There's a large log home under all that snow.

This is the gable end.  I feared for the roof with all that snow on it.

Believe it or not, there's a front door under there.  The occupant worked out of town.

I took this photo today.  The front door is starting to appear.  The occupant was using a door on the gable end.

My friend kathy had the right idea.  She spent most of the winter in sunny Mazatlan, Mexico.  Note the snow up to the eaves.

Unlike Kathy, Sandy stuck it out.  There's a narrow path to her front door.

 

This is an unoccupied summer rental.

Most of the homes with metal roofs are now relieved of their snow burdens, thanks to a couple weeks of above freezing temperatures. Snow on non-metal roofs is slowly melting.  

However, most places have left-overs.  To wit, my yard:

This was the top of a six foot chain link fence a couple weeks ago.

Now there's about 18 inches showing.

This is the biggest snow pile on the property.

And that is my mid-sized Dodge Dakota for size comparision.

And the mini-van in the driveway that goes back to my house.  This photo was taken today, April 5.  We have a lot of thawing and melting to go.

I would invite the neighbor kids to come over and slide on my wonderful snow mountains, except they all have their own.

Your Federal Tax Dollars (NOT) at Work

Last summer a crew traveled the major highways of Alaska, financed with Federal tax dollars.  Their mission was to plant fluorescent orange "safety" poles on some of the more challenging curves along those highways.

Because I thought the poles ugly, I carefully avoided them while taking photos along the highway last summer.  I tried to find something nice to think about those poles and finally came up with, "Well, they'll help in the winter when it's dark so much of the time."

This recent photo was taken near Cooper Landing in an area that didn't get as much snow.  Notice the flat top on the snowbank, inside the poles?  That's created by a wing blade on the road grader  trying to move the snow away from the road.  It would be much wider if those poles weren't there.

The thing is, I didn't see any of them all winter because they were covered with snow.  This was an unusually high snowfall winter, to be sure, but because the poles were placed so close to the asphalt, they'd be covered with snow in average snowfall winters anyway.

Front end loader pushing snow away from road.

The crews that maintain the roads began using front end loaders to push the snow away from the asphalt a couple months ago.  This serves many purposes, such as making room for new snow to go when the sand trucks with their belly blades plow.

There's another reason, too.  Now that the snow is slowly melting, the melt water doesn't run across the asphalt and cause all kinds of dangers and problems during these continual freeze/thaw cycles.

Your Federal tax money not at work.

Pushing that snow away from the road also reveals those orange poles for the first time since last November.

Lots of good they did.  I didn't like them when they went in, and I certainly don't like them all bent and pushed over.

One reason I didn't like them to begin with:  on a recent trip to Anchorage, a distance of approximately 90 miles to the outskirts of that city, I counted more than 250 signs that drivers had to be aware of.  I'm sure I missed some that were buried by the high banks of snow.

This was taken in Turnagain Pass.  The highway is divided here, and the highway crews have to use a snow blower to clear this area.

That didn't include the culvert and guardrail flags, business signs, etc.  Just the signs that drivers needed to note.  And by the way, Alaska doesn't allow billboards.

 
It's no wonder drivers miss the important signs, like dangerous curves and speed limits.  We're suffering from sign overload. 

We're also suffering from something else:  Just because it works somewhere else, doesn't mean it will work in Alaska.

There's an old Alaskan saying, "We don't care how they do it Outside."  (The "Outside" refers to anywhere outside of Alaska, but generally refers to the other states.)  It might sound flip and obstinate, but there's much wisdom behind that saying, wisdom gained from many years of living and surviving in a harsh and unforgiving land.

And without fluorescent orange poles.