OH RIGHT... I DO live in a rainforest!

Can you all believe it’s October already!? That’s crazy… well it sure FEELS like October here. It’s begun to cool off ALOT… BOO! The temperatures are in the low 50s… and OH YEAH, that’s right, I DO live in a temperate rainforest. I was starting to wonder why it has been raining so darn much! We get rain almost every day… except last Thursday when it was really nice on my day off. This morning, as I was feeding fish, I was wishing that I put on my hat because it felt pretty cool. Oh well… comes with the territory I guess.

Well, let me really start out with a bear story. Last night I was making dinner when Adam looked out the window and said there was a bear right out there... like RIGHT under his porch. It was a higher tide too so it was up higher on the rocks. Usually we see them across the lagoon, but this guy just seemed a lot closer. Well we thought it was this bear that had been lurking around during the day so we went out on the porch to look closer. It had moved over to the side and was partially covered by branches so we stood there until it moved back over. It ended up being the momma bear with 3 cubs. Usually she is very skiddish and runs off as soon as she sees anyone no matter the distance. Initially, she must not have seen us as she started to walk closer because she didn’t run… but then she saw us and she started to run off a little... Something in her must have suddenly felt threatened because right as I was running off (I just felt like she was going to run up the hill and eat us!) I heard her growl. Adam said she sorta false charged and stood up on the pipe that is right down there. She was probably 10 feet away, but below us. It was kinda crazy... a little cool... a little freaky! :-D I was shaking a bit afterward... but not so much because of fear. Just because the whole thing was crazy. WE GOT GROWLED AT BY A BEAR! :-D

Anyhow, I told mom that story in an email right after it happened and she wrote me back with some questions about bears, so I’ll answer them here. Ok actually, after looking back at the questions, I’m not even sure the answers, so I’ll talk about the bears that I see here. Maybe that will answer the questions for you Mom.

As I said in the last blog probably, there are more bears coming on site. Not just across the lagoon… but ON SITE. Usually it is just at night and we don’t run into any. On Sunday, I think, I went to the back to feed the fish in the green round ponds. Well right next to the ponds is the raceway that we put all of the adult Coho in for spawning, which I talked about last blog, but there is a fence keeping the fish from jumping out. Unfortunately, it doesn’t keep the bears from going IN! The fence was constructed in piece so it can be taken out easily, but when it got put in, the panels weren’t connected. So when I get there in the morning, one of the panels was swung out into the raceway… another panel was completely in the water (it was a long panel too!), and the crowder (it’s a fence in the water to crowd fish toward the front) is all off kilter. It was interesting! Now they have installed an electric wire around that whole area hoping to keep the bears away. According to Adam, the fence works… on humans atleast! :-)

That same day, Adam and I were out doing the last feeding and I saw a bear across the lagoon, but right at the weir. A few minutes later, I saw Adam walking in that direction laughing. It was a higher tide and I guess the bear walked across the weir, which was under water, and was real close to the round ponds (the round ponds I was feeding, by the way!) Well, we have these things called “Bird Bangers” which are used to scare birds away. It’s kinda like a firework shooting out of it. Well Adam’s aim was great because it exploded about 2 inches from the bear’s butt, because it had turned to run at the first little bang! It was really funny!

The next day, I was walking to the back round ponds and I saw a bear on the little road that goes to the boneyard (he area behind the round ponds… basically where I saw that bear that first time when I was feeding in the back, when I almost had a heart attack!). Made me stop and watch but he was just walking around… about the same size as the other one but I don’t know if it was the same. A few minutes later, I walked into the spawning shed and said to Deena there was a bear back there, when I saw it’s head pop up again back there. You could tell it was thinking about walking up to the round ponds. Adam went to get a bird banger and shot at it. The bear freaked out and had to jump over some big PVC to get up into the trees, but after it jumped over, it didn’t even run away. That was probably the same bear that got into the raceway… and will probably be the bear to cause the problems. We’ll see…….

The time has come to start dealing with some of the eggs. Last week Adam was setting up all the egg pickers. EGG PICKERS? Yes… some of the eggs will get sorted by these egg picking machines. I’ll get into which eggs get sorted at a later date. Yesterday and today we worked with what we call the Zero-Check Chinook eggs. “Zero-check” has something to do when they are released as fish… don’t really know. Anyhow, yesterday we “shocked” them. Not really “shocked” with electricity… We siphoned the eggs out of the incubator and bounced them off this little wall. The impact should cause the bad eggs to turn a creamy color. Today, we “picked” them. Once you get the machine dialed in right, the machines pick almost perfect. You just have to stand there and watch… fill the hopper with more eggs… pick out random bad eggs. The machine we used today has a wheel with holes. Water pushes an egg into each hole. As it goes around, a laser reads if it’s a bad egg (cream colored). If it is, a puff of air pushes it out and into the bad basket. If it’s good, it continues around and gets pushed out by air into the good basket. It’s kinda cool.

The first time I saw the eggs up close (which was last week) I was almost… mesmerized! That sounds weird… you are probably thinking “Ok. I don’t get mesmerized when I see chicken eggs!?” Well, you see these eggs in the incubator… they look just like they did when you put them in. But when you get them out and look at them up close… THERE’S A LITTLE FISH IN THERE! You see black dots inside which are the eyes. You can see a vein… I couldn’t stop looking at them. And they are super tough! You would think you have to be real gentle with them… but I squeezed one of the bad eggs between my fingers with all my might and it didn’t pop! It did on the second try, but they are tough little buggers! When we were cleaning up today, there were some eggs on the table so I was playing with them. This is going to sound morbid, but I cut one opened and literally… a little fish! It kinda just looks like a little worm with big black eyes, but it moves and everything! I was kind of amazed… didn’t realized it would be like that.

**NOTE** I wrote all that last night… now it’s Wednesday…

So the eggs were all “picked.” Then we had to “seed” them. That just means to put them into the incubators. We had like 4 full baskets of eggs and I just took a colander (yeah… I really mean a kitchen strainer… like for noodles!), scooped out some eggs and put them into a different metal basket which was on a scale. We weighted out a certain amount and then they go into the incubators. Remember, a while back I talked about Bio-rings? The fake substrate… well the eggs are poured into the tray and there are bio-rings in it too. So when the fish hatch, they can basically feel like they are in their natural environment.

Well……. I think that’s about it? I wrote most of this last night but didn’t finish it. So when I said “last night” or “yesterday” I really mean Monday… “today” means Tuesday. It probably doesn’t matter that much really… sorry if it’s all confusing! It’s lunchtime here so I’ll go do that. Sorry, I don’t really have any pictures for you.

SHOUT OUT OF THE DAY – I have a few for a change!

** To Mom, Congratulations on being named the Ambassador of the Year for the Miss Southwest Program! That’s great!

** To Dad and Lee, Happy Anniversary!!

** To Tommy, I hear the band is doing great this year! Keep it up!