Animals

So I am thinking that I can't live in Alaska. I am too much of an animal lover. I open the paper up everyday and, Bam! Another animal has died. Sometimes it is at the hands of a Fish and Wildlife man, sometimes cops are to blame, cars, a non-native ivy plant, Eskimos at the Olympics. I can't handle it! I have seen advertisements about the Eskimo Olympics coming to town. (Native Alaskans, what is the difference?) How cool is that? I want to go! Walter and I were at the mall and I was reading through the events. Thinking that the events would be similar to regular Olympics, I was shocked to read about some of the events. Ear Tug-of-War........Walking on Knuckles........Laying in a T shape and having people carry you around.... And then I saw it...... The Seal Skinning event. WHAT? Seal skinning? Isn't that illegal? In the contest, the winner is whomever skins the seal fastest with keeping the flippers on. I don't think so! Who do these people think they are?
On this one corner of Anchorage, on the weekends, there are people usually selling baleen. Yesterday we were on our way to the local Fred Meyers and the baleen sellers were out! Walter has been itching for some baleen. I, on the other hand, am not a fan of baleen. Sorry, the thing that is in a whale's mouth that filters out food doesn't float my boat. We decided to pull over and check out what they had. It was a young Native couple from Barrow. They had a nice selection of baleen at a reasonable price. Her mother still lives in Barrow. The mother gets the baleen, cleans it, and polishes it. She then sends it to her daughter so her daughter can sell it on the side of the road in Anchorage. The daughter explains that in her culture you do what your parents tell you to do forever. A little different than in "white man's" culture. The husband seemed a little bitter about it. We went back and forth about what to get. We decided on a 9 foot piece. It is beautiful. As we were looking at the pieces, the woman began to speak about the whale that the pieces came from. All of them were from one whale that was harvested this spring near Barrow. She then continued to talk about how old the whale was. The whale was in the news recently- about a month or so ago. It was the whale that scientists found the projectile in that dated to the 1890s. So, it was harpooned in the 1890s and lived through it! That sold me. We had a little piece of history. I mean, the whale was killed by Native customs and every piece was used. It wasn't like the whale was killed just for fun. We brought "baleey" home in the Colbalt. A little difficult since baleey was almost as long as the car. We are now trying to figure out how to get baleey home. We did make sure that there was a Native signature on it. You can buy things like baleen and ivory if it has a Native's signature on it.
We went yesterday to see the silver salmon in Ship Creek. We didn't see any. We did see some king stragglers still swimming up stream. They looked really tired. We also saw a beaver family building a new home. Very cute! Oh, and the homeless here in Anchorage are not called homeless. I was totally wrong. They are called "public intoxicants." They have a home, they just don't go to it. How wrong I was!
Ok, I must go. Celebrity golf is on and Jack Wagner is about to tee off. Walter doesn't seem envious when I tell him that I saw Jack Wagner in 1985 at the Ohio State Fair. I actually saw him two times that year. He says he feels sorry for my dad! His loss!