May 21, 2007

• Running True to Form

  As usual, I’m absent minded and forgetful.  Doug and I went to the spring for water today, and I forgot to take the camera.  It is greener down there, a wetter, wider-open space than here in the woods.  This was the first water run this year on which I didn’t need to wear gloves.  I haven’t worn long johns for a month or so.   Filling the jugs and buckets goes faster and easier when I don’t have to use care to avoid splashing water on myself.  Water runs are always sweet:  the sound of the water, the negative ions, etc., but so much sweeter when it is not life-threateningly cold.  It is sunny and very warm today, mid fifties Fahrenheit.

  The last few days I have been forgetting to take my nutritional supplements and eat on schedule.  That throws my blood sugar and neurochemistry off, and further memory lapses snowball, along with sensorimotor deficits.  I had been doing well for about five weeks, and am still more able than I was all winter, but I feel a need to stay motivated and pay attention to my nutrition.  There are payoffs when I do, and penalties when I don’t.  There!  I said it.  Now… to do it.

  Did you read my entry yesterday about unintended consequences and my mixed feelings?  I was sorta going somewhere with that idea when I sat down here and started on it, but I forgot my point before I’d gotten to it.  I had been thinking about my frog farm, affectionately known as Tadpole Ranch.  I didn’t think it through before I rescued a bucket of frogspawn from the dessicating muskeg.  I just thought about those eggs drying up and the tadpoles never hatching.  That’s what would have happened if I had left the eggs there.  It is what has happened to all the frogspawn I left behind.  The bog is now dry enough I can walk across it.  There is virtually no fresh green swampgrass, just a wide expanse of last year’s dry grass.

  

  As I started to think about how to adjust to the overpopulation of my little frog farm, I experienced some of those mixed emotions I was writing about yesterday.  Then, I started wondering about the long-term consequences to the frogs, from my rescue operation.  The full impact of my actions, I may never find out.  If I’m going to see any of those tadpoles on through the growing of their legs, losing their tails, and hopping away to find a place to burrow in for next winter, right now I have to deal with a gazillion freshly hatched tadpoles.

  

  As Doug and I stood out there in the garden this morning looking at my tiny artificial ecosystem in a kitty litter pan, I said that what I need is a plastic wading pool.  Doug looked thoughtful and reminded me that we used to have a small inflatable boat somewhere.  I think that was over at the old place across the highway, and I don’t know where that boat might be now or whether it will hold water.  For now, maybe dividing the tadpole colony into two litter pans will relieve some of the population pressure.

  I am raising algae in a number of open water buckets in the yard, to feed my tadpoles.  There are water beetles in the pan with them, but they are newly hatched and will have to eat a lot of mosquito larvae (also there in abundance) before they are big enough to take on a tadpole.  By then, though, the tadpoles will probably have grown out of their league.  I could try to find out what, besides the beetles, is their natural predator in the muskeg, and import one or two, but I know how tricky it is to try and balance an ecosystem.  I KNOW that… so what was I thinking when I rescued those eggs?

  Oh, well, anyhow, I’ll keep providing updates on my efforts and the observable effects.  Some of you might even be interested.  I have had comments recently expressing envy for my beautiful natural surroundings and “idyllic lifestyle.”  I consider my yard to be beautiful, much prefer its wildness and the edible weeds out there, to any urban landscape with lawns and such.  Literally, I love the swamp across the street, “my” muskeg, and the wild things that live there.  But lifestyle… that’s something else. 

  The Xangan who referred to my idyllic lifestyle has not been reading my blog for very long.  He might not know that our roof leaks, the front door doesn’t even latch, much less lock, and the cats can push it open.  Before I mentioned today’s water run, he might not have been aware that we don’t have running water or an indoor toilet.  That’s a relatively primitive or even squalid lifestyle, and makes me appreciate the idyllic surroundings all the more.

  About the plan to tranquilize, shampoo and dye bears along the Russian River:

  

  Several comments revealed that you Xangans (at least those who commented) have a grasp of the absurdity of the situation, the illogic of dyeing bears different colors to facilitate identification of “problem” bears so that Alaska Fish and Game officers don’t end up killing the wrong bears.  I agree with you that the bears were there first and it is unjust for them to be killed because people choose to intrude on their territory.  I suspect that some of those guys working for Fish and Game would rather shoot the problem tourists or let the bears eat the fishermen than kill the bears, but it’s not that simple.

  I think the absurdity of the ursine dye jobs is an indication of the desperate nature of the situation.  If state officials do not act to eradicate the more aggressive bears, citizens and visitors will continue to indiscriminately kill any bear they see.  This plan might not work to save the bears from the people, but some plan is probably better than no plan, and nobody has come up with a better plan. 

  People who live in the area, and especially the Fish and Game officers, come to know individual bears.  We give them names, become familiar with their habits, know at least approximately where their dens are, and pass along gossip at the general store about a certain boar with an injured leg, or a sow with triplet cubs, just as we talk about each other’s family crises and celebrations.  Then salmon season comes around, and our bears are out there at the river, competing for their food against anglers from all over the world who hope to hook a trophy fish.

  Alaska has very little industry as most people understand that concept, in terms of factories, mills, farms, etc.  Our commercial fishery is in deep trouble due to overfishing and climate change.  Mining and logging operators want to exploit the state’s resources without restraint, and environmentalists want to restrain them.  Citizens want to earn a living, and politicians want to keep everyone happy so they’ll be reelected.  Tourism is so vital to the state’s economy that tourism issues affect virtually everyone here.  Ironically for the bears, the visitors who most endanger their existence are the people who are out there because they hope to see a bear up close.

  In my neighborhood and the rest of the Railbelt from Seward to Fairbanks, most of the employment is seasonal, limited to the summer tourist season.  Roads that during winter carry only sparse local traffic and an occasional long-distance trucker are congested with RVs and tour buses all summer.  Most of us, even some who don’t welcome tourists, will attempt to fake it and be nice to a visitor who asks a silly question or reacts in shock to the absence of some expected civilized amenity such as a bathroom or telephone service. 

  The only way Alaska could support all of us Alaskans without that annual flow of tourists’ money would be for more of us to hunt, trap, fish, exploit the mineral resources, destroy the wilderness and end up living in a cold barren hell that nobody would even want to visit.  Enlightened self-interest and respect for the natural environment demand that we find some accomodation with the sightseeing tourists from the U.S. Midwest, the European trophy hunters, and the sport fishermen from everywhere who stand along the salmon streams elbow-to-elbow with our local subsistence fishers and watch nervously for bears while they try to avoid tangling their lines.

  I must admit that the prospect of pink and purple bears standing in the rushing water and slapping salmon up onto the bank lacks some of the charm of the mental image of the same bears in their natural earth tones.  But if it can keep some scared or trigger-happy tourist from blowing away that innocent sow and orphaning her triplet cubs, or help us keep track of where the wounded and angry boar is until Fish and Game arrives, then I’m for it.  I think it could have the additional effect of increasing the general level of awareness among our visitors that not all bears are alike.  It is the garbage-eating bears, the ones that want to scavenge the heads and guts left behind by careless fishers, that pose the most danger to humans.  I’d paint them all with polka-dots, if that could save the shy brown sow and her babies… but, still, I wonder how the smell of the shampoo and the sight of the dye is going to affect their social life and mating practices.  We’ll find out.
   

  

  • 8:04 pm
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