DAY 25: One Month Down!

(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:

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.

THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlq2kcYQcLc

NOT THIS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33DWqRyAAUw