Editing and figuring out gray whale piece; moose bunks with us; I go for a bike ride; two more moose stop by during Super Bowl

Just as I stated last night, I had too much editing and plotting facing me today, plus the Super Bowl, and so I am unable to put up Part 3 of my gray whale series just yet. As I also stated last night, I must go to Anchorage Monday morning to return Margie to her babysitting duties and it looks like I will linger there long enough to make it unlikely for me to get full Part 3 up tomorrow night, as well... but maybe. Yet, I have so much yet to do just to figure out what I have yet to do.

Anyway, just to assure interested readers that I am still hard at work on the rescue story, I am running this one innocuous photo. I chose it specifically because it is innocuous and so gives nothing away.

I got up fairly early this morning so that I could get the oatmeal cooking while Margie still slept. Caleb appeared right after, then went out to bring in some firewood. He also brought in the news that a moose had bunked down in our front yard.

Here is that moose. There was very little light when I took this picture. I pushed the ISO to 6400 and then underexposed it by two stops, which makes an effective ISO of 25,600. That's why it looks a little ratty, but I don't care - I was able to take it. Someday not too far in the future, I expect to have a camera that will shoot ISO 25,600 and the image quality will be so smooth and plastic that I will not be able to stand it.

After I took the picture, I finished cooking the oatmeal. Margie came out and we ate it. It was good. I had cooked apples into it, added walnuts and sprinkled it with cinnamon.

After we finished the oatmeal, I went on a bike ride and took a picture of Shadow Me disappearing into a shadow. Shadow Me was pretty damned upset by this, but I was fine with it. "I completely disappeared for awhile!" Shadow Me complained after he reappeared. "I didn't even exist for that while."

"No big deal," I said. "After I go to bed, you won't exist for awhile, either."

"Really?" he sad.

"Really."

"Please, please, please," Shadow Me pled, "Please don't go to bed tonight!"

I am going to go to bed anyway.

As it happened, it was only Margie and me here for the Super Bowl. Jacob, Lavina, Kalib, Jobe and Lynxton had all planned to come, but Jobe got sick today - upset tummy. So they stayed home. Even so, my mind had been set on pizza since yesterday, so I ordered a medium with Canadian Bacon, onions, mushrooms, pepper and olives from Fat Boys Fattery, which is back in business in a new location.

That medium was as big as large at many places, and better than most.

As we ate the pizza and watched the Super Bowl, this bull moose came by and joined in the feast.

A bit later, after the moose had left, this moose came strolling past the kitchen window, sometime during the third quarter. I thought maybe it was the moose that had eaten with us, so I stepped out onto the back porch to greet it.

It wasn't. It was a different moose, as anyone can clearly see. It was hungry, though.

It stayed awhile to have a meal of its own. As I have noted before, this has been a hard winter for our local moose. On Channel 2 News last night, they showed some folks in Anchorage butchering a road kill moose for charity - it was only one of several moose that had died by vehicle in Anchorage that day - that's a lot of food for charity, but a lot of suffering for moose.

And I'm sure moose died out here on our valley roads, too. And then there's the train. Moose love to get on the railroad tracks, just to get out of the deep snow. They don't understand about trains. So many die.

And if they stay out in the wilds, then so many starve to death or grow weak and get eaten by wolves. This has been a snowy winter, and cold. 

The moose have suffered.

I am glad that at least three found safety, sleep, and food in our yard today - our yard is really their yard, too. It was their yard before it was ours - even the part now occupied by our house. Sometimes, people move up here and then complain about the moose, say how something out to be done to thin them out, lower their numbers, drive them away from the populated places, because they are too much of a hazard.

In truth - we are the hazard. Yet, we are also a boon - a boon and a hazard. We create these places where they can move about and feed more easily and then they get killed by cars and trains.

Comments

[twain12]

I feel like this about our wild life too...i plunked my house in their territory , so i try my best to coexistent

[debby]

I'll bet that these moose would have enjoyed a warm bowl of oatmeal with apples and cinnamon and walnuts. If you'd have invited them in, they would have been on their best manners, I'm sure. They would have stifled their after meal belches, and wiped their mouths daintily on the curtains.

[Lynne]

In Juneau we have people who move up from down south, leave their garbage cans outside, and then whine when the bears get into it, and want Fish and Game to come out and kill them.