(October 5)
Bear Sightings: 2
Take another look up there at the top. That’s right, two
bears! We were driving down the road and saw what looked like a big fluffy
black cat in the middle of our lane. As soon as it started to move you could
tell it wasn’t a cat, though. The cub loped across the road and up the bank and
we saw the momma standing up there. It was pretty awesome!
BEAR FACT: If a bear
attacks, you have two choices: play dead or fight back. The best choice depends
on whether the bear is acting defensively or seeking food.
This week saw some changes in staff at the Science Center.
My immediate boss is taking a position with emergency dispatch; my coworker
took a second part time job at one of the schools, so she won’t be able to help
me out in the classroom anymore. On Monday I’ll be the only full time member of
the Education Department. So what does this mean? I’m not really sure what will
change about my day to day duties, but I do know that my job is safe, so that’s
a plus. I also found out that the
government shutdown doesn’t have any effect on my pay, my position was
essentially paid for before I started.
Here is an adorable baby otter to help you change gears:
Here is an adorable baby otter to help you change gears:
In more interesting news, I’m spending time this weekend
working on Salmon Blitz. Salmon Blitz is an effort to document which streams in
the Copper River Watershed contain which types of salmon (we have five types in
the area). Everyone knows that salmon return to the same stream they hatched in
to lay their eggs, but what I didn’t know was that they spend as much as five
years living in that stream and going through various stages of their
development. Part of my job at the Science Center will be to help create some
training materials for the volunteers, but we won’t get to that until the
survey is done for the season, probably in December.
 |
| A couple of giant tweety birds. |
We set 10 minnow traps with bait today, and tomorrow we go
out to check them. Ideally we’ll have something in all our traps, indicating the
presence of one or more types of salmon. If our downstream traps have salmon,
but our upstream traps don’t, then that means there is some sort of barrier
preventing them from moving further upstream. If all of the traps have salmon,
then the stream is a candidate for further study, someone will come back
another weekend and explore further upstream.
NON-BEAR FACT: Bald
eagles do not make sounds that are awesome or intimidating. The call of a bald
eagle sounds like tennis shoes on a gym floor.
