BUY, SELL, OR TRADE
Room for rent. Good view with deck. Large bed and closet. $0 per day. Booked up 6/28 – 7/10. Contact Growling Grizzly Inn to save your room today!
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Small adjustable dog collar… blue. Free to a good home.
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Recently read books for trade… send me something good, and I’ll send you something good. Almost done with my 1,000 page book!
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WANT ADS
Cooked anything good lately? Recipes wanted! Vegans and vegetarians, need not reply.
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WANTED – A visitor. Free room and board. Room with a view. All you can eat salmon. All you can see scenery, bears, fish, eagles, and other wildlife. Can work around your schedule. Contact ME.
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Looking for 20-24 ft. Aluminum-hulled boat. Prefer hardtop, extended transom, 115-175hp newer 4-stroke outboard. Contact Adam.
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Hungry for waffles! In need of a waffle maker. Mom, can you send me mine?
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In need of a new stuffed Hedgehog… Loved my first, but chewed it up. Contact Tucker.
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WELL WISHES & SHOUT OUTS
Happy Belated 21st birthday bro! - Your sister
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Happy 4 month birthday, Tucker! (5/3/09) You look so cute with 3 baby teeth missing! Love Mom & Dad
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Hey Uncle Eddie, Adam has been down to a t-shirt for the past few days… without 70 degree weather! It's been in the 50s. – Your adoring niece :-D
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Dear Great Grandma Mo, thank you for the nice card. I loved hearing about all the things you are doing. I have had a great week… the sun has been shining everyday. Mom and Dad have taken me to the beach a few times and it’s fun! Love, Tucker
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Hey all,
Well, life is good in Alaska this week. The sun has been out everyday and that makes all the difference. I don’t know what the temperature has been, but according to the hatchery temp records, it’s been high 40s, low 50s. Sounds cold to you all probably but it’s comparable to your 80 degrees right now! Especially if you are sitting on the porch.
Just wanted to write a small thing to let you in on a little news… I have gotten a little upgrade here in the company. Sometime soon, I will officially become a “permanent seasonal.” Sounds like an oxymoron, I know. But with the “permanent” title comes big and better things. Health insurance, paid vacation, and a bit more responsibility. All of the details haven’t been figured out yet, and I’m not sure when my status will change. I think I will be on salary pay now, and that’s what the boss still had to figure out I think. I will be working 10 months still, but I think I can take those 2 months, broken up whenever I want, assuming it works out with the schedule and things.
Anyhow, I guess that’s all I know right now. I just wanted to let you know. :-)
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
CLASSIFIEDS
CLASSIFIEDS
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Pictures...
Hey, I don't have much to talk about this week, but I don't want you guys to get all antsy in your pantsy for a blog! So here are some pictures.
The weather has been pretty good (until the day we need to head BACK to Takatz, like last Friday... or today) but Adam decided to go fishing one day at Takatz, so I went out with him in the boat figuring I could read in the sun and we took the dog.
The view from the boat into the south arm of Takatz.
Tucker was fine while the boat was in motion... he likes to stick his nose high in the air and smell!
Even though the weather was nice at the floathouse, the water on the outside was a bit choppy. And we learned that dogs, too, can get a little seasick. Atleast that's what we think it was... he drooled alot and looked really sad. Make the picture a little bigger to really see the sad "I don't feel so good" eyes!
We also took the dog to the back of Takatz to run around on the beach. Adam really likes the rocks with the snow on it. The tide doesn't go up and over some rocks, leaving alot of snow. (Make the picture bigger, and the view looks better.)
Tucker finally settled down in "Seaweed Heaven" to have a bit of a snack. Oh how he loves Seaweed!
Afternoon sun + carpet = Tucker's second heaven! No other words really need to be said.
Heaven #3? This was last night... passed out while we watched a movie. I know, this is sort of bad behavior, but we are savoring the last moments that we can actually pick him up.
You are going to have to scroll down to the next picture to do a little comparison! This was today... the next picture was a month ago. He can't exactly get under the table like he used to! I though this was pretty funny... his butt hanging off.
See how little he used to be! This was at about 15 lbs. Now he's a little under 31 lbs. Doubled in size in a month!
Tucker says "Thanks for all the messages from last week!"
The weather has been pretty good (until the day we need to head BACK to Takatz, like last Friday... or today) but Adam decided to go fishing one day at Takatz, so I went out with him in the boat figuring I could read in the sun and we took the dog.
The view from the boat into the south arm of Takatz.
Tucker was fine while the boat was in motion... he likes to stick his nose high in the air and smell!
Even though the weather was nice at the floathouse, the water on the outside was a bit choppy. And we learned that dogs, too, can get a little seasick. Atleast that's what we think it was... he drooled alot and looked really sad. Make the picture a little bigger to really see the sad "I don't feel so good" eyes!
We also took the dog to the back of Takatz to run around on the beach. Adam really likes the rocks with the snow on it. The tide doesn't go up and over some rocks, leaving alot of snow. (Make the picture bigger, and the view looks better.)
Tucker finally settled down in "Seaweed Heaven" to have a bit of a snack. Oh how he loves Seaweed!
Afternoon sun + carpet = Tucker's second heaven! No other words really need to be said.
Heaven #3? This was last night... passed out while we watched a movie. I know, this is sort of bad behavior, but we are savoring the last moments that we can actually pick him up.
You are going to have to scroll down to the next picture to do a little comparison! This was today... the next picture was a month ago. He can't exactly get under the table like he used to! I though this was pretty funny... his butt hanging off.
See how little he used to be! This was at about 15 lbs. Now he's a little under 31 lbs. Doubled in size in a month!
Tucker says "Thanks for all the messages from last week!"
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Another perspective...
Hey guys! So my mom didn’t feel like writing this today so I did! Here’s what we’ve been doing…
So I finally get used to this place and they put me in this boat thing to this big huge green house. Takatz. I didn’t know what we were doing there until this boat came. That’s when I always got put inside but when I came back outside, fish were swimming around in the nets. One day, mom brought me outside when the boat came and I met the guy driving the boat and his giant black dog. The second day at Takatz, I fell in the water. It was a little scary but dad rescued me. It was cold. I learned to stop jumping backwards that day!
We stayed at this place for 10 days and I began to like it a lot. There are rugs on the floor so I have a lot of fun playing. At home, I slip and slide around a lot. I really like playing with my red rubber ball and my tennis ball, but mom and dad take that away from me a lot. I can’t help that I like to chew the yellow fuzz off! I like deer antlers too! Dad gave me that.
MMMMM... Dad loves this pictures because the antler is big.
So after 10 days, they got on their big scary survival suits and told me to get in the boat, but I didn’t want to go. I ran away from them but they caught me. We rode back and I was nervous, but then I saw people I knew on the dock and I was all excited! It felt good to run around on solid ground again!
This is me and my buddy, Muttley. He gets bothered that I always want to play with him but sometimes he'll play with me.
Mom took me into the bunkhouse and put me on this scale… apparently I weighed 24.5 lbs. The next day, the sun was out and mom and dad took me to the beach! It was so fun… there was so much seaweed for me to eat. Dad tried to get me to look at the deer on the beach but geez, I didn’t care. SEAWEED! It was fun running in the sand too. They kept trying to get me to go in the water but I still don’t know how I feel about that. I walked in the creek a little bit but it’s still sort of scary. Then we ran around more and went back home.
Then we went back to the giant green house again… this time for only 5 days. All of the days seemed the same though… here is what I did.
I would wake up at 6:30 but since I was in my box, I’d just play with my rope or my fish toy until dad heard me. He’d get up and take me outside and then feed me. I love the morning… I love being crazy and running around and biting, even though I get in trouble. After a while, I’d get annoyed that mom was still sleeping so I’d run into the room and put my head on the bed. Sometimes I’d jump up but that gets me in trouble too. Of course, she’d wake up but she wouldn’t get out of bed! Every morning! Finally she would and then we run around. Sometimes I do my crazy run, which she loves! She says it reminds her of her old dog, Maggie.
Eventually we would all head downstairs and they would carry bags of food out to feed the fish. I have discovered that fish food is DELICIOUS! I didn’t know what it was at first… looks like dirt but it’s good! One day, dad was pouring some food and I stuck my head under to eat some, but I got in trouble. Any food on the pens or the outsides of the buckets I eat though. Then we go upstairs again and mom does the dishes and makes the bed. She throws the blankets on the ground first and I always like to lay on them. They are nice.
We go up and down the stairs a few more times to feed fish before lunch. Sometimes I follow mom or dad around while they feed, or sometimes I sit and watch. Or I chew on my stick or any kind of wood I can find. Then it’s lunchtime and I get to eat! Then we go back downstairs again… they feed 4 times after lunch. One day I helped check the temperature of the water, but usually it gets a little boring for me.
Sometimes they take me in the boat over to the shore and we run around in the woods. There is lots of snow still, but I can run right over it. I think it’s funny to watch dad sink into it. Or sometimes dad will go out in the boat and come back with sea-things! One day, he brought me a box crab. I thought it was a rock but then the claws came out and I was so excited and a little scared of it! He also brings me shrimp and crab too. I love them all. They are really tasty… I even like licking dad’s hands! Some days the sun is out and it is really nice outside, but we come in anyhow and I love to sleep on the rug in the sun. It is so warm.
After the bags are all empty, the day is done. They bring them in and put them in a pile. They don’t know that I’ve been sticking my head in the empty bags and licking all the food out. Ok they caught me once actually, but I wasn’t embarrassed. Then we go upstairs. We play and they give me treats if I do what they say. I know how to sit down and lay down. They also get me to stay where I am… Sometimes I get confused though, but they say I’m doing good! I like treats.
I get to eat again at 6. Then mom and dad make food and watch a movie. That’s when I sleep. After a few hours, they say it’s time for bed and try to get me to go outside to go to the bathroom but I never feel like it, so I hide in my box. Then they pull me out and I say ok… I do my business and come back upstairs where it’s really time to go in my box, but I don’t feel like it now. So I go hid under the table! They usually laugh but always make me go in my box! Then it’s bedtime and mom and dad say good night. THEN WE DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!
Well, the 5 days were over but the weather was bad so we came back the next morning. Again I got all excited seeing the boys waiting on the dock. I was really happy all day and ran around like crazy! The sun was shining and it felt really warm. Lots of the snow was gone too and you could see dirt! I’ve only seen snow.
SEE! Real dirt!
Mom took me over to the bunkhouse and put me on that darn scale again… 28 lbs. now. I was almost 15 lbs. when I got here. What can I say… I’m a growing boy!
Mom loves this picture!
After a while, mom heard the plane come so we ran down to the dock. After they unloaded all the boxes, I heard mom and dad talking about not getting any groceries, then they were in a bad mood. Good thing I still had food! Earlier, mom asked Jacquie if she wanted to have dinner and mom was going to cook. But mom didn’t get some of the stuff she needed so there were problems, but we still went up to my friend’s house. As soon as the door opened, I saw my buddy, Rocky! They keep saying I’m as big as him now but he still picks on me. One day I will show him. I also saw my other buddy, Emma. She’s a baby, not a dog. She’s nice and has red hair like my mom. They cooked some food and Rocky and I played. Then we chewed on bones. Then we played and chewed some more. After a while, I was getting tired but they watched a movie. They kept saying it was me in the movie but my name isn’t Marley! What are they thinking? I did hear a lot of barking though.
Me and my buddy, Rocky! He's a Boston Terrier but he lives in Alaska... shouldn't he be an Alaskan Terrier? Mom thinks it's funny that we are the same size but my paws are so much bigger than his.
Today I got up early and dad took me outside. I was making a lot of racket at 4 in the morning too and mom took me out then, but I had to go back into my box. Mom finally woke up and petted me. But something weird happened later! Mom started some laundry and was on the couch with dad. The washing machine was almost done and did it’s final shaking. But after that, we heard a loud bang and a hissing sound. I didn’t know what it was but mom and dad ran to look and we saw lots of smoke in the kitchen! Dad realized it was the fire extinguisher that had fallen to the ground and gone off! Mom ran to get me but I got scared and she had to chase me, but we ran outside. There was a lot of fast talking and lots of smoke. We went over to tell the boss and dad got stuff to clean it up. Then I got chained up and I didn’t like the sounds of the vacuums. It was scary. I couldn’t even go back in the house for 5 hours. I got to stay over at the bunkhouse playing with Melissa, who wasn’t working today. Mom took this picture after dad had cleaned up some of the mess.
Click on this picture to make it bigger... then you can see the real mess!
Finally I came back to the house and it was back to normal, but it was a weird day! Don’t worry, no one was hurt by the dust, but they had to throw my Milkbones out because they were in the kitchen. Mom and dad wore masks when they cleaned so they didn't breathe or eat much dust.
Well I think that’s all! Write me lots of notes please! I hope you guys are having fun… I sure am!
BARK OUT OF THE WEEK - I want to say Happy Birthday to my Aunt Valerie! I'll meet you some day. Also Happy Easter! Does the Easter Bunny come to little puppies in Alaska?
So I finally get used to this place and they put me in this boat thing to this big huge green house. Takatz. I didn’t know what we were doing there until this boat came. That’s when I always got put inside but when I came back outside, fish were swimming around in the nets. One day, mom brought me outside when the boat came and I met the guy driving the boat and his giant black dog. The second day at Takatz, I fell in the water. It was a little scary but dad rescued me. It was cold. I learned to stop jumping backwards that day!
We stayed at this place for 10 days and I began to like it a lot. There are rugs on the floor so I have a lot of fun playing. At home, I slip and slide around a lot. I really like playing with my red rubber ball and my tennis ball, but mom and dad take that away from me a lot. I can’t help that I like to chew the yellow fuzz off! I like deer antlers too! Dad gave me that.
MMMMM... Dad loves this pictures because the antler is big.
So after 10 days, they got on their big scary survival suits and told me to get in the boat, but I didn’t want to go. I ran away from them but they caught me. We rode back and I was nervous, but then I saw people I knew on the dock and I was all excited! It felt good to run around on solid ground again!
This is me and my buddy, Muttley. He gets bothered that I always want to play with him but sometimes he'll play with me.
Mom took me into the bunkhouse and put me on this scale… apparently I weighed 24.5 lbs. The next day, the sun was out and mom and dad took me to the beach! It was so fun… there was so much seaweed for me to eat. Dad tried to get me to look at the deer on the beach but geez, I didn’t care. SEAWEED! It was fun running in the sand too. They kept trying to get me to go in the water but I still don’t know how I feel about that. I walked in the creek a little bit but it’s still sort of scary. Then we ran around more and went back home.
Then we went back to the giant green house again… this time for only 5 days. All of the days seemed the same though… here is what I did.
I would wake up at 6:30 but since I was in my box, I’d just play with my rope or my fish toy until dad heard me. He’d get up and take me outside and then feed me. I love the morning… I love being crazy and running around and biting, even though I get in trouble. After a while, I’d get annoyed that mom was still sleeping so I’d run into the room and put my head on the bed. Sometimes I’d jump up but that gets me in trouble too. Of course, she’d wake up but she wouldn’t get out of bed! Every morning! Finally she would and then we run around. Sometimes I do my crazy run, which she loves! She says it reminds her of her old dog, Maggie.
Eventually we would all head downstairs and they would carry bags of food out to feed the fish. I have discovered that fish food is DELICIOUS! I didn’t know what it was at first… looks like dirt but it’s good! One day, dad was pouring some food and I stuck my head under to eat some, but I got in trouble. Any food on the pens or the outsides of the buckets I eat though. Then we go upstairs again and mom does the dishes and makes the bed. She throws the blankets on the ground first and I always like to lay on them. They are nice.
We go up and down the stairs a few more times to feed fish before lunch. Sometimes I follow mom or dad around while they feed, or sometimes I sit and watch. Or I chew on my stick or any kind of wood I can find. Then it’s lunchtime and I get to eat! Then we go back downstairs again… they feed 4 times after lunch. One day I helped check the temperature of the water, but usually it gets a little boring for me.
Sometimes they take me in the boat over to the shore and we run around in the woods. There is lots of snow still, but I can run right over it. I think it’s funny to watch dad sink into it. Or sometimes dad will go out in the boat and come back with sea-things! One day, he brought me a box crab. I thought it was a rock but then the claws came out and I was so excited and a little scared of it! He also brings me shrimp and crab too. I love them all. They are really tasty… I even like licking dad’s hands! Some days the sun is out and it is really nice outside, but we come in anyhow and I love to sleep on the rug in the sun. It is so warm.
After the bags are all empty, the day is done. They bring them in and put them in a pile. They don’t know that I’ve been sticking my head in the empty bags and licking all the food out. Ok they caught me once actually, but I wasn’t embarrassed. Then we go upstairs. We play and they give me treats if I do what they say. I know how to sit down and lay down. They also get me to stay where I am… Sometimes I get confused though, but they say I’m doing good! I like treats.
I get to eat again at 6. Then mom and dad make food and watch a movie. That’s when I sleep. After a few hours, they say it’s time for bed and try to get me to go outside to go to the bathroom but I never feel like it, so I hide in my box. Then they pull me out and I say ok… I do my business and come back upstairs where it’s really time to go in my box, but I don’t feel like it now. So I go hid under the table! They usually laugh but always make me go in my box! Then it’s bedtime and mom and dad say good night. THEN WE DO IT ALL OVER AGAIN!
Well, the 5 days were over but the weather was bad so we came back the next morning. Again I got all excited seeing the boys waiting on the dock. I was really happy all day and ran around like crazy! The sun was shining and it felt really warm. Lots of the snow was gone too and you could see dirt! I’ve only seen snow.
SEE! Real dirt!
Mom took me over to the bunkhouse and put me on that darn scale again… 28 lbs. now. I was almost 15 lbs. when I got here. What can I say… I’m a growing boy!
Mom loves this picture!
After a while, mom heard the plane come so we ran down to the dock. After they unloaded all the boxes, I heard mom and dad talking about not getting any groceries, then they were in a bad mood. Good thing I still had food! Earlier, mom asked Jacquie if she wanted to have dinner and mom was going to cook. But mom didn’t get some of the stuff she needed so there were problems, but we still went up to my friend’s house. As soon as the door opened, I saw my buddy, Rocky! They keep saying I’m as big as him now but he still picks on me. One day I will show him. I also saw my other buddy, Emma. She’s a baby, not a dog. She’s nice and has red hair like my mom. They cooked some food and Rocky and I played. Then we chewed on bones. Then we played and chewed some more. After a while, I was getting tired but they watched a movie. They kept saying it was me in the movie but my name isn’t Marley! What are they thinking? I did hear a lot of barking though.
Me and my buddy, Rocky! He's a Boston Terrier but he lives in Alaska... shouldn't he be an Alaskan Terrier? Mom thinks it's funny that we are the same size but my paws are so much bigger than his.
Today I got up early and dad took me outside. I was making a lot of racket at 4 in the morning too and mom took me out then, but I had to go back into my box. Mom finally woke up and petted me. But something weird happened later! Mom started some laundry and was on the couch with dad. The washing machine was almost done and did it’s final shaking. But after that, we heard a loud bang and a hissing sound. I didn’t know what it was but mom and dad ran to look and we saw lots of smoke in the kitchen! Dad realized it was the fire extinguisher that had fallen to the ground and gone off! Mom ran to get me but I got scared and she had to chase me, but we ran outside. There was a lot of fast talking and lots of smoke. We went over to tell the boss and dad got stuff to clean it up. Then I got chained up and I didn’t like the sounds of the vacuums. It was scary. I couldn’t even go back in the house for 5 hours. I got to stay over at the bunkhouse playing with Melissa, who wasn’t working today. Mom took this picture after dad had cleaned up some of the mess.
Click on this picture to make it bigger... then you can see the real mess!
Finally I came back to the house and it was back to normal, but it was a weird day! Don’t worry, no one was hurt by the dust, but they had to throw my Milkbones out because they were in the kitchen. Mom and dad wore masks when they cleaned so they didn't breathe or eat much dust.
Well I think that’s all! Write me lots of notes please! I hope you guys are having fun… I sure am!
BARK OUT OF THE WEEK - I want to say Happy Birthday to my Aunt Valerie! I'll meet you some day. Also Happy Easter! Does the Easter Bunny come to little puppies in Alaska?
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Snow records...
HI… My name is Tucker. I’m 10 weeks old. I love my tennis ball and my rope and my deer antler and my red ball… all my toys. I like sleeping under the coffee table and on feet. I like to chew on zippers and hooded sweatshirt strings and fingers and baby ears! My mom and dad think I’m super cute… and of course I am!
Hey everyone!
Before I get into that guy and everything else, I wanted to start off with something a little funny. Remember my first year and the massive amount of snow we got… how could you forget, right!? Well……….. this year, we beat that snow record! I’m not joking! That year, I think there was something like 207 inches of snow (starting in October or November the year before). Well, as of Friday, we were about 3 or 4 inches away from catching that record. It’s been snowing most of Saturday and today so far. I definitely think we beat it. It really surprises me because it hasn’t seemed as bad. Maybe that was just because we haven’t had to do any roof shoveling!? The first few weeks I was here, we didn’t get anything and it was sunny everyday! This past week, though, we’ve gotten about a foot or so. Adam said most of the snow was probably from earlier, like around November and December, and there has been a bunch of melt off. Just crazy, I say!
Anyhow, last weekend, I sent out an email to most of you about the new arrival. Our cute adorable puppy, Tucker! He’s a yellow lab and he was 9 weeks old. Well now he’s a week older and a few pounds heavier (17 lbs now) and getting braver! Last Saturday when I arrived back at the hatchery, it was a bumpy turbulent flight and he didn’t like it one bit! That first night was pretty rough, for him and us. He went nuts when it was bedtime and whined, cried, SCREAMED for about 20 minutes before he calmed down. It was so sad to listen to. Then Adam took him out in the middle of night and we had to go through the whole 20 minute ordeal again. The next day, I researched ways to get your puppy to sleep better! Well we took him over to the bunkhouse and wore him out right before bed. We also threw a shirt in there that Adam had been wearing all day. Something about that helped because to our shock and happiness, he slept THE WHOLE NIGHT! And every night since! I can’t believe it really… doesn’t seem normal, but I can’t complain! One night, he did wake up at 4:30 am and I took him out and he took a few minutes to calm down and quite crying when I put him back in his box. There has definitely been some progress with his box… randomly, he’ll go lay down in there, which is exactly what I’m hoping for eventually! So he’s doing really great with that!
I do think he’s super smart already! Though he doesn’t really come when called sometimes, he seems to know how to sit already (maybe that just comes naturally to dogs though??). He does get a little distracted outside when Muttley is out. Well, as I said, Tucker’s getting braver. Getting into more things, biting more. His favorite spot to sleep is the bottom shelf of our coffee table, which is really sort of funny! He’s going to realize one day that he can’t fit under there anymore, though! He really likes our carpet in the room, but we don’t want him to get used to going in there, so we mostly keep that door closed. When he first got here, we let him explore though, and he really enjoyed climbing around under the bed. Makes for some cute pictures but he’ll try that one day again and get stuck! He’s only had two accidents in the house, which I consider pretty amazing for it being his first week!
Everyone on site loves him! How could you not!? Muttley, the giant dog on site, doesn’t seem to enjoy Tucker very much though. Muttley is a very low energy, low key, “I just wanna chill” dog. Tucker wants to play with him and crawl under his legs, but he just bothers the Mutt. He acts kind of like an grouchy old man around Tucker. It’s kind of funny! We took Tucker over to Ben and Jacquie’s on Thursday (we watch Grey’s Anatomy over there) and introduced him to their dog Rocky, the VERY HIGH ENERGY, crazy, completely opposite of Muttley! It was pretty interesting. Tucker was a little scared at first, then Rocky went nuts. They were running all over the place and Rocky was still too high energy for Tucker, knocking him over and such. They put Rocky in his room, then we ate over there. Their daughter, Emma, was enthralled with Tucker and wouldn’t even eat. So Jacquie put Emma on the ground to play with Tucker. She loved it, for a little bit, but Tucker would get a little too rough and start nipping. He loves her ears for some reason! There’s also Smokey, who is Ben Smith’s dog, the maintenance guy. Tucker gets a little scared of her for some reason… maybe because he doesn’t see her very often. She’s kind of big too.
Well, work related business. We’ve definitely been doing some shoveling, but mostly on docks and pens. We spent the last 5 days (all this past week) ponding the Hidden Falls chum. We only have 3 days left with that. It’s gone amazingly fast and easy, though we’re trying to go a bit “slower.” If you remember, in previous years, when we had to pond the boxes, we’d use a crane to hoist the box onto the ponding machine. Then someone would have to push down a level to lift up that box, and then use their brute strength to lift the heavy box up. Well this year, there is none of that, thankfully! They installed an air powered lifter (I don’t know what it’s really called!?) to do the heavy work for us. All the person has to do now is step on a foot petal, and up the box goes on its own. It makes ponding way easier. We are also rebuilding the stacks as we go also. So we pond a box, clean it, rebuild it back on a stand. I didn’t really like this idea at first but it’s actually gone really good! This means that come June, we won’t have to do this! It’s already done. We’ll have to go back and level all the stacks but that’s about it.
Besides shoveling and ponding, that’s about all we’ve been doing. This weekend, the American Patriot, a big boat, came to deliver our Takatz food, our Costco order, and to tow the house and pens to Takatz. Today, they are down there loading the food into the house. Adam was helping yesterday and today. So I’m a single mother of a pup-toddler for the weekend! It’s fun though.
That’s all I have got for now! Except more pictures...
He likes to sleep....
And he'll sleep anywhere!
For some more puppy pictures, you can go to this link...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2036593&id=53900044&l=04cb061d00
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Puppy Watch 09
Welcome back to Hidden Falls Seasonal Work 3.0!
Puppy watch is on! I will be getting my puppy either next weekend (the 7th or 8th) or the weekend after (the 14th or 15th). I’m excited! That is going to make 4 dogs on site now. While Angie and her dog left, we gained some new people and some new dogs! Ben Gilles took Angie’s job and came with his wife, Jacquie and daughter, Emma, who’s got awesome red hair! They also have a Boston Terrier, who is rambunctious and AWESOME! I really love him and have decided that if I ever wanted a smaller dog, I’d get a Boston Terrier. We also got a new maintenance guy, also named Ben, and his dog Smoky. He’s got a wife and a kid too, but they aren’t here yet.
There’s been some switch-er-roo-ing with houses too. Ben and Smoky moved into Dan and Deena’s house, Dan and Deena moved into Shannon’s house right next door, and Shannon moved into Angie’s old house. It’s nice having Dan and Deena right next door because I don’t have to walk up the hill as much, but I have been going up to Ben and Jacquie’s every week for “Smut Thursdays” as Ben calls it. Jacquie and I watch Grey’s Anatomy.
So far this season, the weather has been treating us GREAT, until now. Not including the random snow event last Sunday, we have had sun everyday. Today it has been snowing all day though. I worked some half days last week doing some random office stuff that Scott wanted done, but started full time on Monday. Two new seasonals came on last week and worked a few days though. Guess what they did? Shovel. I felt oddly happy seeing them doing that. I’m sure you all understand why. Anyhow, we started off the week working on the Chinook pens, enjoying the sun and switching out the shallow nets for deeper ones. In true “enjoying the first few days of sun” fashion and blinded by the sunny warmth, I did what I usually do and forgot that sun burns you. Not too bad, but it took two days to realize why my face was a bit red and hot. I do think that the coldness does it too, because my face is always red and hot lately after work, but I haven’t been in the sun for the past few days. All those nets that were pulled out got cleaned and we had to mend them up. It seems that otters will go to a lot of lengths to get some of our fish… like chewing 6 inch holes in the nets. We found three of those, which means who knows how many fish were lost. Oh well, early release! The chum are progressing slow and won’t be ready to pond for another few weeks, so nothing to tell about that yet.
Besides all that, there isn’t much else going on. We do have a lot of snow, but that isn’t surprising. I arrived to the hatchery a little sick, but recovered after a few days. In true “Adam” fashion though, he got it but much much worse! We didn’t really even have the same thing I don’t think, but he’s still getting over stuff. We contemplated laryngitis and pneumonia and bronchitis, but it was probably just a bad cold-like thing.
My happy achievement since I’ve been here is to make a Red Velvet Cake for Valentine’s Day… from scratch of course! No boxes of cake. It turned out really good too. It was a nice shade of red, and the frosting was cream cheese, powdered sugar and marshmallow with coconut too.
That’s been all really. Now I will offer you guys an option. There is a place on my blog where I can enter in email addresses, and it will email you when I write a blog. The only thing is it emails the whole blog entry and pictures, instead of a “You’ve got mail” kinda thing. Let me know if you want me to put your email on the thing. That being said, I still want people going to the ACTUAL blog instead of just reading the email. Also, like last year, in my Photobucket, I’ll add a “2009” page where all this year’s pictures will be. If you don’t go to my Photobucket, don’t worry about it though. I post all those pictures on the blog anyhow.
Well, that’s all folks.
Many of you have asked if Sitka is nice, and I've said that it's... sorta nice. I'm not sure if I've showed pictures of what the houses look like so here are some. There are nice places... and not so nice places.
Next door from the NSRAA apartment... not so nice.
Next door from the NSRAA apartment.
Across the street from the NSRAA apartment... trailors near the road, but notice the huge houses up on the hill.
Some of the nice places on the hill.
HUGE. That's how Sitka is...
Puppy watch is on! I will be getting my puppy either next weekend (the 7th or 8th) or the weekend after (the 14th or 15th). I’m excited! That is going to make 4 dogs on site now. While Angie and her dog left, we gained some new people and some new dogs! Ben Gilles took Angie’s job and came with his wife, Jacquie and daughter, Emma, who’s got awesome red hair! They also have a Boston Terrier, who is rambunctious and AWESOME! I really love him and have decided that if I ever wanted a smaller dog, I’d get a Boston Terrier. We also got a new maintenance guy, also named Ben, and his dog Smoky. He’s got a wife and a kid too, but they aren’t here yet.
There’s been some switch-er-roo-ing with houses too. Ben and Smoky moved into Dan and Deena’s house, Dan and Deena moved into Shannon’s house right next door, and Shannon moved into Angie’s old house. It’s nice having Dan and Deena right next door because I don’t have to walk up the hill as much, but I have been going up to Ben and Jacquie’s every week for “Smut Thursdays” as Ben calls it. Jacquie and I watch Grey’s Anatomy.
So far this season, the weather has been treating us GREAT, until now. Not including the random snow event last Sunday, we have had sun everyday. Today it has been snowing all day though. I worked some half days last week doing some random office stuff that Scott wanted done, but started full time on Monday. Two new seasonals came on last week and worked a few days though. Guess what they did? Shovel. I felt oddly happy seeing them doing that. I’m sure you all understand why. Anyhow, we started off the week working on the Chinook pens, enjoying the sun and switching out the shallow nets for deeper ones. In true “enjoying the first few days of sun” fashion and blinded by the sunny warmth, I did what I usually do and forgot that sun burns you. Not too bad, but it took two days to realize why my face was a bit red and hot. I do think that the coldness does it too, because my face is always red and hot lately after work, but I haven’t been in the sun for the past few days. All those nets that were pulled out got cleaned and we had to mend them up. It seems that otters will go to a lot of lengths to get some of our fish… like chewing 6 inch holes in the nets. We found three of those, which means who knows how many fish were lost. Oh well, early release! The chum are progressing slow and won’t be ready to pond for another few weeks, so nothing to tell about that yet.
Besides all that, there isn’t much else going on. We do have a lot of snow, but that isn’t surprising. I arrived to the hatchery a little sick, but recovered after a few days. In true “Adam” fashion though, he got it but much much worse! We didn’t really even have the same thing I don’t think, but he’s still getting over stuff. We contemplated laryngitis and pneumonia and bronchitis, but it was probably just a bad cold-like thing.
My happy achievement since I’ve been here is to make a Red Velvet Cake for Valentine’s Day… from scratch of course! No boxes of cake. It turned out really good too. It was a nice shade of red, and the frosting was cream cheese, powdered sugar and marshmallow with coconut too.
That’s been all really. Now I will offer you guys an option. There is a place on my blog where I can enter in email addresses, and it will email you when I write a blog. The only thing is it emails the whole blog entry and pictures, instead of a “You’ve got mail” kinda thing. Let me know if you want me to put your email on the thing. That being said, I still want people going to the ACTUAL blog instead of just reading the email. Also, like last year, in my Photobucket, I’ll add a “2009” page where all this year’s pictures will be. If you don’t go to my Photobucket, don’t worry about it though. I post all those pictures on the blog anyhow.
Well, that’s all folks.
Many of you have asked if Sitka is nice, and I've said that it's... sorta nice. I'm not sure if I've showed pictures of what the houses look like so here are some. There are nice places... and not so nice places.
Next door from the NSRAA apartment... not so nice.
Next door from the NSRAA apartment.
Across the street from the NSRAA apartment... trailors near the road, but notice the huge houses up on the hill.
Some of the nice places on the hill.
HUGE. That's how Sitka is...
Sunday, November 23, 2008
1 week and 5 days!
Today I woke up at 8:00 am, saw it wasn't noon yet so I went back to bed. Finally decided to get out of bed but I didn't know if I should make breakfast or lunch so I took a shower. I looked out the window to see it raining and a family of bears were looking back at me. It is know 3:00 pm ( I don't know here the time goes) and I still haven't eaten so I made fish spaghetti. After lunch I decided to take a nap, the dishes can wait! Woke up to the noise of carribou mating on the deck but the darn camera wasn't with reaching distance of the bed. Hey it's supper time what should I eat? I know, fish cassarole. After supper I knew that I had to do the dishes but there was a good movie on and I had to watch it. Before I knew it I found myself looking at the northern lights. It is great to watch tv and the northern lights from the bed. Boy am I tired, good night!
WHAT A NERD!
Alright ALRIGHT! So that's what Uncle Eddie thinks I do all day... minus the cool little pictures he added in! I know it's been a long time but I've been fairly unmotivated... and there hasn't even been anything good to report!
Halloween came and went... I tried to make homemade Peanut Butter cups, which turned out alright but a bit too big! The recipe said to make mini-cups but I thought I'd try to make them like the bigger Reese's cups because well... isn't that reason obvious!? I carved a cool pumpkin, that I was mighty proud of. Deena and Angie came around trick-or-treating in the rain. I guess Brandi didn't want to bring the boys out in the rain so I didn't even get to see any cute little boys in costumes. We had a Halloween "party" which just consisted of sitting around watching a movie and I made some Dirt cake, which was a hit.
What else... RAIN, RAIN... feed fish... more Rain. We seeded all of the Hidden Falls chum eggs into their incubators, then we seeded a row of Takatz eggs. Then we had nothing better to do than wait. Wait for what? Well, last year, all of the Takatz eggs were incubated in R48s. Those are the big blue barrel-like incubators. Last year we were going to switch them to the NoPad incubators (the metal stacks of 5 incubator boxes), but they didn't make them in time. So this year, that's what we were going to use. We got a delivery of half of the incubators we needed a little earlier so we were able to build them. Those are the ones we seeded into. However, we still were waiting on the rest of them. Finally the company was done with them and shipped them, but since it's cutting it close with the hatching time, we wanted to get it all done ASAP. So the boat arrived last Saturday around 11 am and we unloaded and started building.
Unfortunately, it's not really a quick process. You have to put the feet on the stands, put the PVC pieces in the boxes (5 boxes per stack), and we had to put foam on the screens. Plus before you put all the PVC pieces into the boxes, you have to chafe (sp?) them so they can be hammered in easier. That is what I did... I chaffed like 400 PVC elbows and about 100 straight PVC pieces. My hands were all cramped up afterward. Once they got all the boxes unloaded off of the boat, we had more people to help build. Adam and I built stacks in incubation, which includes leveling the stand, putting each box on, putting substrate into the box and putting a screen on top, then repeating that 4 more times until 5 boxes are done. Then repeating the WHOLE process until 18 stacks were built. Finally at around 10pm, we finished up and were able to go home. I was slightly ornery by then, my legs hurt from standing on concrete, and I was a little hungry.
Well, the whole point of building that day was to get the incubators turned on so we could make sure the water levels were good and then seed the eggs soon. Unfortunately, the company didn't send us the foam for the screens so we couldn't get that done. Actually it was probably better this way, otherwise we would have stayed working alot longer on Saturday! The hatchery in town, though, had a bunch of foam we could use so the plane flew it out to us and we were able to get that started on Monday. It took a while but we were able to start seeding on Tuesday and Wednesday. We still do have a week or two to spare on the Takatz eggs... they didn't start hatching on us. Everything went fairly smoothly, until we ran into an R48 incubator that had ALOT of bad eggs in it for some reason. Usually the eggs have about 5-7% bad eggs... this incubator had about 25-35% bad eggs. It was just plain weird... most of the bad eggs turn white when they die, but alot of these bad eggs looked like they started to develop but died shortly after. They were still orange but there was no fish in it. We don't know the cause but it was odd.
Anyhow, all of the Hidden Falls eggs have either hatched or atleast started to hatch. That means the Takatz eggs will start this week sometime, probably at the end of the week. So there has been alot of cleaning screens. When the eggs hatch, it causes alot of foam, from the proteins in the eggs I think. There's also alot of brown slime that builds up on the screens and little fish get sucked through the screens too. So the water level gets real high and overflows the screen so we have to go through a few times a day to clean them off. We don't really lose fish because of overflowing screens but we don't want to risk it.
Besides that, there hasn't been much else going on! I stopped working Friday because... I just felt like it. Don't you wish you could just do that!? "EHH I think I'm done..." :-) I might work some this week if they need me... to help feed fish or pond some baby chinook already. Other than that, I'm just hanging out now. Thanksgiving is this week so I don't think anyone is working Thursday or Friday (except to clean screens). OH, last Sunday we had bonfire of about 50 or so pallets. I know what you're gonna say... what a waste! But we always have so many!
The only bear story I have to report is something that has probably been heard already, because I've told a bunch of you. One night there was a bear ON the back porch, right under the bedroom window. It was a little to close for comfort when I heard the bear knock against the window or the wall. Who knows what it was looking for!? There was one that got up on the front porch (apparently) the other night. Adam had a new set of deer antlers on the porch table and I heard a bear roaming around in the middle of the night but didn't think it was ON the porch. You'd expect a 500lb. bear to make a bit more noise if it was walking around on a wooden porch. I think people make more noise when they walk on it! Adam found the antlers down the road a bit, wet and chewed on a bit, and broken. Dumb bears!
Hunting season has been going for a bit and Adam's out every weekend. He can get 6 deer but will probably only take 4 or 5. He's gotten 3 already though! I spent one day last weekend helping him cut up and package his first deer. That's an interesting experience... a meat market in your own kitchen! This weekend he made a deer call in the shop. It works really good but... maybe a bit TOO good because he's been driving me nuts blowing on it for the last day and a half! :-) Ever heard the sound of a baby deer in distress!? I have... ALOT!
Well, I guess that's it... I will be home in 1 week and 5 days! Now I'll probably have NOTHING to talk about since I posted it all here. HA just kidding! I'm really excited to get home and see everyone! I have a shout out in mind but I'm keeping it in my head today. For now, I'll just say To Uncle Eddie... Thanks for helping to write my blog this week! By the way, there are no Caribou on our island, we don't have a tv, I haven't seen the Northern Lights up here, I always do the dishes, and fish spaghetti and casserole sound gross! :-)
WHAT A NERD!
Alright ALRIGHT! So that's what Uncle Eddie thinks I do all day... minus the cool little pictures he added in! I know it's been a long time but I've been fairly unmotivated... and there hasn't even been anything good to report!
Halloween came and went... I tried to make homemade Peanut Butter cups, which turned out alright but a bit too big! The recipe said to make mini-cups but I thought I'd try to make them like the bigger Reese's cups because well... isn't that reason obvious!? I carved a cool pumpkin, that I was mighty proud of. Deena and Angie came around trick-or-treating in the rain. I guess Brandi didn't want to bring the boys out in the rain so I didn't even get to see any cute little boys in costumes. We had a Halloween "party" which just consisted of sitting around watching a movie and I made some Dirt cake, which was a hit.
What else... RAIN, RAIN... feed fish... more Rain. We seeded all of the Hidden Falls chum eggs into their incubators, then we seeded a row of Takatz eggs. Then we had nothing better to do than wait. Wait for what? Well, last year, all of the Takatz eggs were incubated in R48s. Those are the big blue barrel-like incubators. Last year we were going to switch them to the NoPad incubators (the metal stacks of 5 incubator boxes), but they didn't make them in time. So this year, that's what we were going to use. We got a delivery of half of the incubators we needed a little earlier so we were able to build them. Those are the ones we seeded into. However, we still were waiting on the rest of them. Finally the company was done with them and shipped them, but since it's cutting it close with the hatching time, we wanted to get it all done ASAP. So the boat arrived last Saturday around 11 am and we unloaded and started building.
Unfortunately, it's not really a quick process. You have to put the feet on the stands, put the PVC pieces in the boxes (5 boxes per stack), and we had to put foam on the screens. Plus before you put all the PVC pieces into the boxes, you have to chafe (sp?) them so they can be hammered in easier. That is what I did... I chaffed like 400 PVC elbows and about 100 straight PVC pieces. My hands were all cramped up afterward. Once they got all the boxes unloaded off of the boat, we had more people to help build. Adam and I built stacks in incubation, which includes leveling the stand, putting each box on, putting substrate into the box and putting a screen on top, then repeating that 4 more times until 5 boxes are done. Then repeating the WHOLE process until 18 stacks were built. Finally at around 10pm, we finished up and were able to go home. I was slightly ornery by then, my legs hurt from standing on concrete, and I was a little hungry.
Well, the whole point of building that day was to get the incubators turned on so we could make sure the water levels were good and then seed the eggs soon. Unfortunately, the company didn't send us the foam for the screens so we couldn't get that done. Actually it was probably better this way, otherwise we would have stayed working alot longer on Saturday! The hatchery in town, though, had a bunch of foam we could use so the plane flew it out to us and we were able to get that started on Monday. It took a while but we were able to start seeding on Tuesday and Wednesday. We still do have a week or two to spare on the Takatz eggs... they didn't start hatching on us. Everything went fairly smoothly, until we ran into an R48 incubator that had ALOT of bad eggs in it for some reason. Usually the eggs have about 5-7% bad eggs... this incubator had about 25-35% bad eggs. It was just plain weird... most of the bad eggs turn white when they die, but alot of these bad eggs looked like they started to develop but died shortly after. They were still orange but there was no fish in it. We don't know the cause but it was odd.
Anyhow, all of the Hidden Falls eggs have either hatched or atleast started to hatch. That means the Takatz eggs will start this week sometime, probably at the end of the week. So there has been alot of cleaning screens. When the eggs hatch, it causes alot of foam, from the proteins in the eggs I think. There's also alot of brown slime that builds up on the screens and little fish get sucked through the screens too. So the water level gets real high and overflows the screen so we have to go through a few times a day to clean them off. We don't really lose fish because of overflowing screens but we don't want to risk it.
Besides that, there hasn't been much else going on! I stopped working Friday because... I just felt like it. Don't you wish you could just do that!? "EHH I think I'm done..." :-) I might work some this week if they need me... to help feed fish or pond some baby chinook already. Other than that, I'm just hanging out now. Thanksgiving is this week so I don't think anyone is working Thursday or Friday (except to clean screens). OH, last Sunday we had bonfire of about 50 or so pallets. I know what you're gonna say... what a waste! But we always have so many!
The only bear story I have to report is something that has probably been heard already, because I've told a bunch of you. One night there was a bear ON the back porch, right under the bedroom window. It was a little to close for comfort when I heard the bear knock against the window or the wall. Who knows what it was looking for!? There was one that got up on the front porch (apparently) the other night. Adam had a new set of deer antlers on the porch table and I heard a bear roaming around in the middle of the night but didn't think it was ON the porch. You'd expect a 500lb. bear to make a bit more noise if it was walking around on a wooden porch. I think people make more noise when they walk on it! Adam found the antlers down the road a bit, wet and chewed on a bit, and broken. Dumb bears!
Hunting season has been going for a bit and Adam's out every weekend. He can get 6 deer but will probably only take 4 or 5. He's gotten 3 already though! I spent one day last weekend helping him cut up and package his first deer. That's an interesting experience... a meat market in your own kitchen! This weekend he made a deer call in the shop. It works really good but... maybe a bit TOO good because he's been driving me nuts blowing on it for the last day and a half! :-) Ever heard the sound of a baby deer in distress!? I have... ALOT!
Well, I guess that's it... I will be home in 1 week and 5 days! Now I'll probably have NOTHING to talk about since I posted it all here. HA just kidding! I'm really excited to get home and see everyone! I have a shout out in mind but I'm keeping it in my head today. For now, I'll just say To Uncle Eddie... Thanks for helping to write my blog this week! By the way, there are no Caribou on our island, we don't have a tv, I haven't seen the Northern Lights up here, I always do the dishes, and fish spaghetti and casserole sound gross! :-)
Saturday, October 25, 2008
A small serving of Frosty Flakes...
Well it’s official… winter has begun. The weather for the past few weeks has been horrible, but it got worse this week. And today…. It snowed. But mostly it’s been RAIN RAIN RAIN! That’s the word of the month. I’m not even sure if we’ve had a day WITHOUT rain actually. Last week, Scott said that it was time to start building the Ark!! This week, though, we had gale warnings and it’s been pretty nasty. Tuesday is when it really began. Adam and I had to go out to the Chinook pens to feed them and the water was pretty choppy and it was pretty windy. Not a real fabulous day to be on the water. That was at the end of the day so we went home after that. Well that must have caused us to miss the MEMO from our boss that we wouldn’t be coming in to work the next day… so we came on it! We sat there for a little while at the “morning meeting” wondering why the heck no one was coming in. Finally around 8:20am, the boss came in to change the water around for some fish eggs and told us. He figured it was going to be too nasty out to feed fish. It actually wasn’t that bad out for a while, but it did get worse. The next day, Thursday, started out to be WAY WORSE than the day we took off for “bad weather.” OH BOY! Thankfully Adam and I worked on stuff in Incubation, but I did feel bad for Angie, Lexie, and Deena who had to be outside splitting some fish. I’ll get into that in a bit. Scott did ask us to feed the Chinook again, which was looking horrible, until the weather oddly cleared up after lunch.
THEN TODAY… snow was in the forecast for the afternoon. At lunchtime, Adam noticed a few snowflakes among the raindrops that were falling. NOOOO! Then we went out to feed the Chinook again… still a few flakes. We took a break on feeding the fish to check on the chum pens and to bail out a boat. Suddenly the weather went from a few flakes to a BLOWING BLIZZARD within a matter of a few minutes! It was pretty crazy. It was just some odd blast of snow that subsided but it stayed pretty windy… it’s still snowing a bit though.
So, work-related business… Last week, we “split the coho.” The Chinook were in three rows of freshwater round ponds up until a week or two ago, but then they got moved out to saltwater. That left a bunch of empty ponds. The Coho are in all the rest of the round ponds, however they are basically outgrowing their ponds so they needed to be spread out. Depending on which pond the fish needed to be moved to, we had to either 1) pour fish into buckets and walk them over or 2) pour buckets of fish into a hopper, connected to a pump, which pumped them through large hoses to the pond. These fish are still fairly small, just a few inches long, so try not to imagine large adult fish here. However, it’s still a lot of fish per pond! We’re talking about moving around 55 – 20lb buckets of fish… one bucket at a time. It’s time consuming. Of course it was pouring the whole time! This is where I learned something about my internal body thermometer… IT’S BROKEN! One minute, I could be sitting there, writing down bucket weights and FREEZING MY WHOLE BODY OFF! But the next minute, I could be moving buckets to ponds and SWEATING MY WHOLE BODY OFF!! It’s pretty ridiculous! Lesson learned… keep moving and you can stay warm… even in Alaska! And I don’t mean just jumping up and down trying to stay warm… that doesn’t work!
This week we started to spawn the coho. It’s a short thing compared to the length of chum spawning…We only have one day left until we are done, which will make a total of three spawning days. The first day, we finished the eggs for Deer Lake. The next day we started on the eggs for us. It would have been a faster process if we could have shocked the fish. Unfortunately, since we only have a certain about of fish set aside, and some of those fish aren’t quite ready to be spawned, we don’t want to kill the green fish yet. So we used clove oil to basically knock out the fish, like when we sort the coho earlier on. Each fish needs to be checked for ripeness and the green fish get thrown back in the raceway. Next week we are going to go back through and spawn those fish, hoping they are ripe enough. We only need about 1.5 million eggs.
This brings us back to when the REALLY crappy weather started… That’s basically the whole theme of this blog I guess. Crappy weather… I guess one of the days this weekend (Sunday?) it was decent. Adam and Scott went out deer hunting and came back with one deer (Scott’s though). I’ve been, admittedly, pretty lazy! I attempted to make something new last weekend, Pomegranate Truffles, but that was a bust. I had the wrong chocolate, unsweetened instead of Bittersweet, and they were horrible! But we finally got our plane today, only two days late, and I’ll try again this week! I did get out last weekend for a little bit though. Adam wanted to go pick berries to make some muffins so we hiked up to the lake and managed to pick about 4 cups of blueberries and the red and blue kinds of huckleberries. The muffins turned out great tasting!
Besides all that, there isn’t much going on. We make it a point to creep over to the bunkhouse in the dark (they took down the lights for the round ponds… I’m not happy about it!) on Thursday nights to watch Adam’s hometown guy, Bob, on Survivor. He’s made it past week 6 so far, and we have a kick watching him! I’m really ready for my vacation now… I’m growing tired of the rain, as is everyone else, and I’m not looking forward to the snow to stick, which it probably won’t for a while. OK, according to Adam, who just came in, “It’s still snowing…….. and it’s sticking in the grass.” That was last night when I wrote this... the snow definately stuck but not much. It's barely in the trees, but it's on the grass. It'll be gone if it starts to rain, but right now it's pretty calm and doing nothing. I can actually see some blue in the sky amid the clouds.
I’ve already begun planning what I’ll do at home… I sent out a few emails but I’m trying to plan a little get-together probably on the 20th of December. It’ll be sort of a Melissa’s birthday/ Christmas/ Adam’s send-off Party. Nothing is set in stone yet but I’d like to know if that’s a bad time for anyone? I hope for the whole family to be there! I think I've gotten emails back from everyone I've sent them too, except Uncle Richard. I don't even know if I have the right email address for him so someone see if they can get ahold of him for me? THANKS!
Here are a few pictures...
WHAT IS THAT? I can hear you guys saying right now. That's a Sea Lion swimming upside down. There have been 2 sea lions swimming around all the time around the wier and one day I tried to get a picture. They are really big... a few thousand pounds. When the swim around, they've got these two side flippers that stick out and look like wings. Alot of time, they swim around on their backs so they can see into the water, looking for food I'm assuming. Make the picture bigger and it might look cooler. I think they look like giant dogs.
This guy is a seal. I think I've determined that we have Harbor Seals here. I thought we had two kinds since you see some lighter ones with alot of spots and some darker ones, but I think they're all the same. This is one of the lighter ones.
Harlequin ducks... two males and a female. How come the males get to look so pretty!? I guess this isn't a great picture but I wanted a picture of these ducks. They have the coolest markings... they are dark navy or black with those white and dark red markings. They are really cool and they are always around. They just happen to want to dive or stick their head in the water when you go to click the picture.
THEN TODAY… snow was in the forecast for the afternoon. At lunchtime, Adam noticed a few snowflakes among the raindrops that were falling. NOOOO! Then we went out to feed the Chinook again… still a few flakes. We took a break on feeding the fish to check on the chum pens and to bail out a boat. Suddenly the weather went from a few flakes to a BLOWING BLIZZARD within a matter of a few minutes! It was pretty crazy. It was just some odd blast of snow that subsided but it stayed pretty windy… it’s still snowing a bit though.
So, work-related business… Last week, we “split the coho.” The Chinook were in three rows of freshwater round ponds up until a week or two ago, but then they got moved out to saltwater. That left a bunch of empty ponds. The Coho are in all the rest of the round ponds, however they are basically outgrowing their ponds so they needed to be spread out. Depending on which pond the fish needed to be moved to, we had to either 1) pour fish into buckets and walk them over or 2) pour buckets of fish into a hopper, connected to a pump, which pumped them through large hoses to the pond. These fish are still fairly small, just a few inches long, so try not to imagine large adult fish here. However, it’s still a lot of fish per pond! We’re talking about moving around 55 – 20lb buckets of fish… one bucket at a time. It’s time consuming. Of course it was pouring the whole time! This is where I learned something about my internal body thermometer… IT’S BROKEN! One minute, I could be sitting there, writing down bucket weights and FREEZING MY WHOLE BODY OFF! But the next minute, I could be moving buckets to ponds and SWEATING MY WHOLE BODY OFF!! It’s pretty ridiculous! Lesson learned… keep moving and you can stay warm… even in Alaska! And I don’t mean just jumping up and down trying to stay warm… that doesn’t work!
This week we started to spawn the coho. It’s a short thing compared to the length of chum spawning…We only have one day left until we are done, which will make a total of three spawning days. The first day, we finished the eggs for Deer Lake. The next day we started on the eggs for us. It would have been a faster process if we could have shocked the fish. Unfortunately, since we only have a certain about of fish set aside, and some of those fish aren’t quite ready to be spawned, we don’t want to kill the green fish yet. So we used clove oil to basically knock out the fish, like when we sort the coho earlier on. Each fish needs to be checked for ripeness and the green fish get thrown back in the raceway. Next week we are going to go back through and spawn those fish, hoping they are ripe enough. We only need about 1.5 million eggs.
This brings us back to when the REALLY crappy weather started… That’s basically the whole theme of this blog I guess. Crappy weather… I guess one of the days this weekend (Sunday?) it was decent. Adam and Scott went out deer hunting and came back with one deer (Scott’s though). I’ve been, admittedly, pretty lazy! I attempted to make something new last weekend, Pomegranate Truffles, but that was a bust. I had the wrong chocolate, unsweetened instead of Bittersweet, and they were horrible! But we finally got our plane today, only two days late, and I’ll try again this week! I did get out last weekend for a little bit though. Adam wanted to go pick berries to make some muffins so we hiked up to the lake and managed to pick about 4 cups of blueberries and the red and blue kinds of huckleberries. The muffins turned out great tasting!
Besides all that, there isn’t much going on. We make it a point to creep over to the bunkhouse in the dark (they took down the lights for the round ponds… I’m not happy about it!) on Thursday nights to watch Adam’s hometown guy, Bob, on Survivor. He’s made it past week 6 so far, and we have a kick watching him! I’m really ready for my vacation now… I’m growing tired of the rain, as is everyone else, and I’m not looking forward to the snow to stick, which it probably won’t for a while. OK, according to Adam, who just came in, “It’s still snowing…….. and it’s sticking in the grass.” That was last night when I wrote this... the snow definately stuck but not much. It's barely in the trees, but it's on the grass. It'll be gone if it starts to rain, but right now it's pretty calm and doing nothing. I can actually see some blue in the sky amid the clouds.
I’ve already begun planning what I’ll do at home… I sent out a few emails but I’m trying to plan a little get-together probably on the 20th of December. It’ll be sort of a Melissa’s birthday/ Christmas/ Adam’s send-off Party. Nothing is set in stone yet but I’d like to know if that’s a bad time for anyone? I hope for the whole family to be there! I think I've gotten emails back from everyone I've sent them too, except Uncle Richard. I don't even know if I have the right email address for him so someone see if they can get ahold of him for me? THANKS!
Here are a few pictures...
WHAT IS THAT? I can hear you guys saying right now. That's a Sea Lion swimming upside down. There have been 2 sea lions swimming around all the time around the wier and one day I tried to get a picture. They are really big... a few thousand pounds. When the swim around, they've got these two side flippers that stick out and look like wings. Alot of time, they swim around on their backs so they can see into the water, looking for food I'm assuming. Make the picture bigger and it might look cooler. I think they look like giant dogs.
This guy is a seal. I think I've determined that we have Harbor Seals here. I thought we had two kinds since you see some lighter ones with alot of spots and some darker ones, but I think they're all the same. This is one of the lighter ones.
Harlequin ducks... two males and a female. How come the males get to look so pretty!? I guess this isn't a great picture but I wanted a picture of these ducks. They have the coolest markings... they are dark navy or black with those white and dark red markings. They are really cool and they are always around. They just happen to want to dive or stick their head in the water when you go to click the picture.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
I have a plan...
Hey folks!
Well back for the weekly... bi-weekly!... monthly!?... blog. I guess I don't write as frequently anymore but it's the slow time. Chum eggs are incubating... Chinook eggs are seeded in incubators and about to hatch... and Coho eggs are still tucked in safely with their mothers. We'll spawn them sometime... not even sure when. I previously said that we have our coho broodstock set aside for spawning, and there are SOOOO many more coho. So we've been taking them to the boat to get processed. We did that last Thursday and again on Monday. Scott said we went through 50,000 pounds of coho on Thursday!! Monday wasn't as many. Today Steve started to move his Chinook out to saltwater, and that will take another day or two.
It's really starting to cool down. This morning was probably the coldest morning we've had yet (not counting Jan and Feb and those winter months). The thermometer in the lab said it was 35 degrees... that might not have been completely right but well... now that I think about it, it probably was right. I'm not ready for cold temps like that yet! It didn't really get much warmer... I remember looking at it again and it said 41 degrees but I can't remember what time that was. It rained for some of the afternoon, but then stopped... and when the clouds cleared above the mountain tops around 4pm when we were feeding Coho, I saw the first glimpse of snow. The first light dusting of snow on the mountain... urggg... That doesn't mean it's going to snow on us soon, but that just signifies that it's getting to be that time. And it was just a light dusting...
Anyhow, I suppose the big news, though most of you know the basic plan, is that the vacation time has been set. ADAM AND I... yes, both of us!... will be leaving Sitka on the 5th of December, home on the morning of the 6th... home to Coloma! YAY! I'm excited! We'll be there until the 10th, where we'll fly to Cancun, and stay at a hotel in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico which is in the Riviera Maya (south of Cancun) for 8 nights. Then fly back home, where Adam will stay another few days and leave on the 21st of December back to Sitka. SO... GET EXCITED! :-)
I guess that's about all I have for now, except for some pictures. Some of these were taken a week or two ago... some were taken on Saturday when I was really bored and decided to go walk around and photograph things.
So one morning, there were tons of bears down by the water. I guess they all decided to leave at once because next thing we knew, there was a bear parade in front of the window. Really, there weren't tons but about 7 or 8... Ok that probably sounds like tons to you! It was the sow and 3 cubs, sow and 2 cubs and possibly a single bear. This is the mother of the 3 cubs. I took this from in the window so don't think I'm nutty! She sort of looks mad but really she just looked my way. Looks dramatic though right!?
Oh these guys! These are two of her crazy little teenagers! Playing with a piece of PVC pipe.
These guys again! Oh all the bears, I think the sow and 3 cubs are my favorite to watch. As much as I looooooove those 2 tiny baby cubs, these 3 cubs are hilarious! They are in the "teenager" stage of bearhood, so they play and fight together alot. This would be cooler if that stupid net wasn't in the way.
As teenage bears, their favorite thing to do (that I've observed) is to swim and fight each other in the water. I just love the look on that cub's face... make it bigger and it's better. I don't know if he's going to be the pouncer or the pouncee.
Silly mom! I swear, she isn't posing for the camera! She didn't just find out she was on Candid Camera either! P.S. If the picture is too small and you can't tell what is going on, she's sticking her tongue out.
This cub came jumping out of the water and played with mom a bit. Mouths are opened a bit...
I just thought this was a cool picture. That's the mom again... her cubs are below eating a fish and she was just walking around on the log. This picture just seems a bit National Geographic to me... I think it's neat.
I know I've talked about it before, either on here or to a few people, but we have a hot tub here. During my boredom walk, I decided to take a picture of you because I don't think I have before. Right now the cover is 2 pieces of wood because the bears ATE the other, real hot tub cover. They love foam. But the tub is sitting on a platform which basically sits on a rock that juts out into the water. It's a pretty nice place for a hot tub... cool scenery!
This was growing next to the hot tub and I thought it looked neat. I put my camera on the "foliage" setting and the colors (though it doesn't really look it on here) turned really vibrant.
Well that's about it.
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK - Though I am not finished yet, I have a good book to recommend. I was getting bored with the books I had sitting around so I decided to check out what Oprah named as the new bookclub book. Well it's called "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski. I'm about half way into it and it's pretty good and I'd (so far) highly recommend it. It might just be in hardcover right now, which is what I have, but I can bring it home if anyone would like to read it. It's about a mute boy, Edgar, who lives in Wisconsin and his family breeds and trains dogs to sell. His father's brother enters the story and breaks the peace up in the family. His father ends up dying (Don't worry, I didn't ruin anything, all of this is written on the book cover!) and Edgar tries to prove that his uncle had something to do with it. Apparently the plan backfires and yadda yadda. I haven't even gotten that far yet. Anyhow, it's good.
Well back for the weekly... bi-weekly!... monthly!?... blog. I guess I don't write as frequently anymore but it's the slow time. Chum eggs are incubating... Chinook eggs are seeded in incubators and about to hatch... and Coho eggs are still tucked in safely with their mothers. We'll spawn them sometime... not even sure when. I previously said that we have our coho broodstock set aside for spawning, and there are SOOOO many more coho. So we've been taking them to the boat to get processed. We did that last Thursday and again on Monday. Scott said we went through 50,000 pounds of coho on Thursday!! Monday wasn't as many. Today Steve started to move his Chinook out to saltwater, and that will take another day or two.
It's really starting to cool down. This morning was probably the coldest morning we've had yet (not counting Jan and Feb and those winter months). The thermometer in the lab said it was 35 degrees... that might not have been completely right but well... now that I think about it, it probably was right. I'm not ready for cold temps like that yet! It didn't really get much warmer... I remember looking at it again and it said 41 degrees but I can't remember what time that was. It rained for some of the afternoon, but then stopped... and when the clouds cleared above the mountain tops around 4pm when we were feeding Coho, I saw the first glimpse of snow. The first light dusting of snow on the mountain... urggg... That doesn't mean it's going to snow on us soon, but that just signifies that it's getting to be that time. And it was just a light dusting...
Anyhow, I suppose the big news, though most of you know the basic plan, is that the vacation time has been set. ADAM AND I... yes, both of us!... will be leaving Sitka on the 5th of December, home on the morning of the 6th... home to Coloma! YAY! I'm excited! We'll be there until the 10th, where we'll fly to Cancun, and stay at a hotel in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico which is in the Riviera Maya (south of Cancun) for 8 nights. Then fly back home, where Adam will stay another few days and leave on the 21st of December back to Sitka. SO... GET EXCITED! :-)
I guess that's about all I have for now, except for some pictures. Some of these were taken a week or two ago... some were taken on Saturday when I was really bored and decided to go walk around and photograph things.
So one morning, there were tons of bears down by the water. I guess they all decided to leave at once because next thing we knew, there was a bear parade in front of the window. Really, there weren't tons but about 7 or 8... Ok that probably sounds like tons to you! It was the sow and 3 cubs, sow and 2 cubs and possibly a single bear. This is the mother of the 3 cubs. I took this from in the window so don't think I'm nutty! She sort of looks mad but really she just looked my way. Looks dramatic though right!?
Oh these guys! These are two of her crazy little teenagers! Playing with a piece of PVC pipe.
These guys again! Oh all the bears, I think the sow and 3 cubs are my favorite to watch. As much as I looooooove those 2 tiny baby cubs, these 3 cubs are hilarious! They are in the "teenager" stage of bearhood, so they play and fight together alot. This would be cooler if that stupid net wasn't in the way.
As teenage bears, their favorite thing to do (that I've observed) is to swim and fight each other in the water. I just love the look on that cub's face... make it bigger and it's better. I don't know if he's going to be the pouncer or the pouncee.
Silly mom! I swear, she isn't posing for the camera! She didn't just find out she was on Candid Camera either! P.S. If the picture is too small and you can't tell what is going on, she's sticking her tongue out.
This cub came jumping out of the water and played with mom a bit. Mouths are opened a bit...
I just thought this was a cool picture. That's the mom again... her cubs are below eating a fish and she was just walking around on the log. This picture just seems a bit National Geographic to me... I think it's neat.
I know I've talked about it before, either on here or to a few people, but we have a hot tub here. During my boredom walk, I decided to take a picture of you because I don't think I have before. Right now the cover is 2 pieces of wood because the bears ATE the other, real hot tub cover. They love foam. But the tub is sitting on a platform which basically sits on a rock that juts out into the water. It's a pretty nice place for a hot tub... cool scenery!
This was growing next to the hot tub and I thought it looked neat. I put my camera on the "foliage" setting and the colors (though it doesn't really look it on here) turned really vibrant.
Well that's about it.
RECOMMENDATION OF THE WEEK - Though I am not finished yet, I have a good book to recommend. I was getting bored with the books I had sitting around so I decided to check out what Oprah named as the new bookclub book. Well it's called "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle" by David Wroblewski. I'm about half way into it and it's pretty good and I'd (so far) highly recommend it. It might just be in hardcover right now, which is what I have, but I can bring it home if anyone would like to read it. It's about a mute boy, Edgar, who lives in Wisconsin and his family breeds and trains dogs to sell. His father's brother enters the story and breaks the peace up in the family. His father ends up dying (Don't worry, I didn't ruin anything, all of this is written on the book cover!) and Edgar tries to prove that his uncle had something to do with it. Apparently the plan backfires and yadda yadda. I haven't even gotten that far yet. Anyhow, it's good.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Birthdays and Coho and bears, OH MY...
Hey! I want to start out by thanking all of you for the birthday wishes, birthday emails, birthday cards, and even birthday packages and presents!!
There hasn’t been a whole lot going on lately… so this isn’t going to be very exciting. They have been busy doing lots and lots of Cost Recovery on the Coho… that means seining up the fish swimming around and then they get processed. We turned on the fish ladder this past weekend for the Coho to go up into the raceways so for the past few days we have been sorting them. I’m sure I talked about this last year cause it’s no fun… but we do this by bringing live and lively Coho up in the shock box, unshocked, push them into a fish tote that has a Clove oil/alcohol solution mixed in. It puts them to sleep a bit, but after a few minute in plain water, they wake up. The first few days we just threw males and females into one of the raceways, and since we have a big run of Coho this year, we can be picky with them. There were a bunch of small males so we just put those into a DIFFERENT raceway and we won’t use those, or beat up or small females. So those bigger fish are going to be uses for Deer Lake. Then we started throwing fish into another raceway (once we had the Deer Lake fish) for us. We inject our fish with Gallimyacin, which is some kind of… stuff to prevent diseases. Sorry I can’t even think of the words to explain what the stuff is. All I can think of is Antibiotic but that’s not it. Anyhow, we only inject the females that we keep for our eggs. Actually this job hasn’t been that bad… You have to put your hands in the super cold water to get the fish… and it’s so cold! I think we might have done this alittle bit later last year, so maybe the water was colder. It still was cold this year, but maybe my hands just adjusted a little better. I was also wearing these arm things so the cold water wasn’t hitting my arms, but these plastic things.
Oh I forgot this too… last week I helped out with tagging small Coho. I spent like 4 full days. 8 hours a day, clipping adipose fins off of little Coho. It was a very tedious job and my back KILLED the whole time! We knock the fish out with that same clove oil solution, clip their adipose fins (purely for the purpose of knowing that that fish is a tagged fish), then the next person sticks the head of the fish into this little machine, which, through a needle, sticks a tiny coded wire tag into their head. During spawning, we get a lot of adult kings and coho with that missing adipose fin. We have to put those aside, measure and sex them, cut their heads off and send them into a lab, where they take out the tag. Each group of fish tagged have the same number so that will say what year they are from and where they were grown, etc. It’s just a way of knowing some information about the fish.
Anyhow, sorry about the “things” and the “stuffs” and the “likes”… I guess I can’t think of words to use today! Besides dealing with Coho, big and small, all we have been doing is feeding fish really… and gluing together 384 PVC incubator pieces, in hopes that our new incubators will come before we need to put eggs in them in November! Now that the fish ladder is back on, bears are starting to hang out there more. While walking to work, Adam saw a bear climb INTO the fish ladder and walk down it toward the water. Of course, it was our friend, the tagged bear. For a little while, they seemed to be spending less time around, and I guess it still seems like they are around less, but there’s usually a bear or two or four around. The sow and three GIANT cubs seem to be daily regulars, and it’s fun watching them. Those cubs are getting so big and sometimes, you can’t even tell which bear is the mom, and she’s not a small bear! Unfortunately, more bears are on site... besides the obvious reason why that’s not good, there is another bad reason… POOP! Lots of bear poop all over. And nothing solid. Alright, sorry if that’s vulgar!
Well, I didn’t get to town on my birthday like I wanted to. But we are going next weekend! So if you want to call me Friday night, Saturday or Sunday, feel free! Not THIS weekend… the 25, 26, and 27. I’m not sure when the flight is Friday or Monday though so if you don’t reach me, that’s probably why. Guess I have to charge up my phone cause I’m expecting A LOT of phone calls! :-) Just kidding. I’ll probably call people before they call me. My birthday was pretty low key… we hung around for a while, then went out in the boat for a bit and Adam fished, but it wasn’t that great cause the water was a little choppy. Hard to read in those conditions. I decided to forgo having a cake baked for me and celebrating with a lot of people. A bunch of people are out of town anyhow. So Adam and I bought all the fixings and decided to have an ice cream sundae extravaganza! It was good! We had a plane the Friday before my birthday and Adam flew in a bouquet of flowers for me, which was fabulous! They look great still, almost a week later and there are still a few flowers yet to bloom. They are white and bright pink/purple lilies that smell GREAT, some smaller purple lilies and a few purple snapdragons. They are really nice, and the first flowers I’ve ever gotten, which makes them so much better!
Umm… well I guess I can’t really think of much else to say. If you are looking for something interesting to watch on tv next week, the new Survivor starts. There is a guy on it who is the father of a kid Adam grew up with. It’s a little cool! Again, thanks everyone for the birthday wishes, cards, and gifts! I loved them all! You guys have fun! As for me, I’m eagerly awaiting next week, when a FABULOUS movie that I pre-ordered should arrive (The Sex and The City Movie), and then I get to head to town (where I’m sure it’ll be boring but atleast I can wander around!) That’s all for now!
Here are some pictures...
I love these guys... really! The picture doesn't show the effect of how cute it was when mom was standing over both of her cubs while they were eating. The other cub is in the back.
So last week, maintenence was working on the deck to the duplex. These are the stairs on our side... the day before, they replaced the stairs and stained them nicely. Well the bears had their fun that night, licked all the stain off of the lower stairs (Notice how they get darker as they go higher... the top stair is fine.) There are some strands of bear fur stuck there and that 2nd step down had some bear claw marks through the stain.
I just thought this was cool.
So I wrote all that last night, but the internet wouldn't work right to post it. Today, I have a weird bear story. This morning Adam noticed some bear by the weir net that was acting weird... kind of dragging it's butt. Well it wasn't moving for a while, even though there were two bears that were standing there waiting to get around it. After a little while it moved but we didn't see it. Well, it managed to move itself to the middle of the grassy area behind the lagoon. This time we noticed it was definately messed up. Using the binoculars, we saw that it was dragging itself. It couldn't use it's two back legs which were both just dragging behind it. We felt so bad for it! It was pulling all it's 500+ lb. weight on it's two front legs. We're not sure how it got that way or what happened to it, or even which bear it was. He would drag himself a few feet and then looked like it had to rest and was panting. It was so sad! Eventually we didn't see him anymore because he pulled himself out of sight but I have a feeling we won't see him again... probably won't make it. I wish I knew what happened to it.
There hasn’t been a whole lot going on lately… so this isn’t going to be very exciting. They have been busy doing lots and lots of Cost Recovery on the Coho… that means seining up the fish swimming around and then they get processed. We turned on the fish ladder this past weekend for the Coho to go up into the raceways so for the past few days we have been sorting them. I’m sure I talked about this last year cause it’s no fun… but we do this by bringing live and lively Coho up in the shock box, unshocked, push them into a fish tote that has a Clove oil/alcohol solution mixed in. It puts them to sleep a bit, but after a few minute in plain water, they wake up. The first few days we just threw males and females into one of the raceways, and since we have a big run of Coho this year, we can be picky with them. There were a bunch of small males so we just put those into a DIFFERENT raceway and we won’t use those, or beat up or small females. So those bigger fish are going to be uses for Deer Lake. Then we started throwing fish into another raceway (once we had the Deer Lake fish) for us. We inject our fish with Gallimyacin, which is some kind of… stuff to prevent diseases. Sorry I can’t even think of the words to explain what the stuff is. All I can think of is Antibiotic but that’s not it. Anyhow, we only inject the females that we keep for our eggs. Actually this job hasn’t been that bad… You have to put your hands in the super cold water to get the fish… and it’s so cold! I think we might have done this alittle bit later last year, so maybe the water was colder. It still was cold this year, but maybe my hands just adjusted a little better. I was also wearing these arm things so the cold water wasn’t hitting my arms, but these plastic things.
Oh I forgot this too… last week I helped out with tagging small Coho. I spent like 4 full days. 8 hours a day, clipping adipose fins off of little Coho. It was a very tedious job and my back KILLED the whole time! We knock the fish out with that same clove oil solution, clip their adipose fins (purely for the purpose of knowing that that fish is a tagged fish), then the next person sticks the head of the fish into this little machine, which, through a needle, sticks a tiny coded wire tag into their head. During spawning, we get a lot of adult kings and coho with that missing adipose fin. We have to put those aside, measure and sex them, cut their heads off and send them into a lab, where they take out the tag. Each group of fish tagged have the same number so that will say what year they are from and where they were grown, etc. It’s just a way of knowing some information about the fish.
Anyhow, sorry about the “things” and the “stuffs” and the “likes”… I guess I can’t think of words to use today! Besides dealing with Coho, big and small, all we have been doing is feeding fish really… and gluing together 384 PVC incubator pieces, in hopes that our new incubators will come before we need to put eggs in them in November! Now that the fish ladder is back on, bears are starting to hang out there more. While walking to work, Adam saw a bear climb INTO the fish ladder and walk down it toward the water. Of course, it was our friend, the tagged bear. For a little while, they seemed to be spending less time around, and I guess it still seems like they are around less, but there’s usually a bear or two or four around. The sow and three GIANT cubs seem to be daily regulars, and it’s fun watching them. Those cubs are getting so big and sometimes, you can’t even tell which bear is the mom, and she’s not a small bear! Unfortunately, more bears are on site... besides the obvious reason why that’s not good, there is another bad reason… POOP! Lots of bear poop all over. And nothing solid. Alright, sorry if that’s vulgar!
Well, I didn’t get to town on my birthday like I wanted to. But we are going next weekend! So if you want to call me Friday night, Saturday or Sunday, feel free! Not THIS weekend… the 25, 26, and 27. I’m not sure when the flight is Friday or Monday though so if you don’t reach me, that’s probably why. Guess I have to charge up my phone cause I’m expecting A LOT of phone calls! :-) Just kidding. I’ll probably call people before they call me. My birthday was pretty low key… we hung around for a while, then went out in the boat for a bit and Adam fished, but it wasn’t that great cause the water was a little choppy. Hard to read in those conditions. I decided to forgo having a cake baked for me and celebrating with a lot of people. A bunch of people are out of town anyhow. So Adam and I bought all the fixings and decided to have an ice cream sundae extravaganza! It was good! We had a plane the Friday before my birthday and Adam flew in a bouquet of flowers for me, which was fabulous! They look great still, almost a week later and there are still a few flowers yet to bloom. They are white and bright pink/purple lilies that smell GREAT, some smaller purple lilies and a few purple snapdragons. They are really nice, and the first flowers I’ve ever gotten, which makes them so much better!
Umm… well I guess I can’t really think of much else to say. If you are looking for something interesting to watch on tv next week, the new Survivor starts. There is a guy on it who is the father of a kid Adam grew up with. It’s a little cool! Again, thanks everyone for the birthday wishes, cards, and gifts! I loved them all! You guys have fun! As for me, I’m eagerly awaiting next week, when a FABULOUS movie that I pre-ordered should arrive (The Sex and The City Movie), and then I get to head to town (where I’m sure it’ll be boring but atleast I can wander around!) That’s all for now!
Here are some pictures...
I love these guys... really! The picture doesn't show the effect of how cute it was when mom was standing over both of her cubs while they were eating. The other cub is in the back.
So last week, maintenence was working on the deck to the duplex. These are the stairs on our side... the day before, they replaced the stairs and stained them nicely. Well the bears had their fun that night, licked all the stain off of the lower stairs (Notice how they get darker as they go higher... the top stair is fine.) There are some strands of bear fur stuck there and that 2nd step down had some bear claw marks through the stain.
I just thought this was cool.
So I wrote all that last night, but the internet wouldn't work right to post it. Today, I have a weird bear story. This morning Adam noticed some bear by the weir net that was acting weird... kind of dragging it's butt. Well it wasn't moving for a while, even though there were two bears that were standing there waiting to get around it. After a little while it moved but we didn't see it. Well, it managed to move itself to the middle of the grassy area behind the lagoon. This time we noticed it was definately messed up. Using the binoculars, we saw that it was dragging itself. It couldn't use it's two back legs which were both just dragging behind it. We felt so bad for it! It was pulling all it's 500+ lb. weight on it's two front legs. We're not sure how it got that way or what happened to it, or even which bear it was. He would drag himself a few feet and then looked like it had to rest and was panting. It was so sad! Eventually we didn't see him anymore because he pulled himself out of sight but I have a feeling we won't see him again... probably won't make it. I wish I knew what happened to it.
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