Here's a good springtime story, from the booming metropolitan heart of the Great Land, Anchorage:
I used to tell people who asked me about Alaska that you could see a Moose anyplace but downtown Anchorage. I was trying to imply that the whole state is wild except for maybe 1 square mile of downtown, so that it didn't sound like we are total rubes up here.. yeah. we got a city.. bright lights, crosswalks, the whole shebang...
Then of course, almost calling my bluff, I saw one on the south side of Westchester Lagoon.. pretty close, but yeah, still not downtown.. I marked that in my head as almost as I swerved around it taking a shortcut past the old Anchorage High, now West High School.
Sure enough, a winter later, traffic was acting funny on 15th street, while I'm in the big city getting stuff done, and low and behold, a momma moose and it's calf pretty close to the top of that fishing rod bridge.. there you have it, everyplace is wild in Alaska, sorry I singled you out downtown.So sure you say, moose are moose, they like to walk snow free and wolf free around downtown, but do the wild animals make it down there? the Reindeer on the Park and at Fur Rondy, they don't count... is every square inch of Alaska wild.. c'mon now, hasn't man screwed up at least some of all that asks the sophmorically jaded Lower 48er.
Nope..
Case in point.. and I heard this story before the black bear family that got into some trouble in the back alleys of government hill over a few weeks in like 2014 or 15.
Some guy lived in Bootleggers Cove as the story was told to me, which is literally down the hill between the inlet and downtown.. literally, the inlet, the Knowles trail and the tracks, Bootleggers, and then the big building that Simon & Seaforts is in.. it's 4 story condos and big houses.. It's where single dentists live so they can bring girls back from F street without getting a DUI, and Officers assigned to JBER who are single and maximizing their ample housing allowance. it's not the bush. It's 3's Company in the last frontier.
That guy was driving someplace.. not sure where because he's so close to everything he literally could walk, but he was going someplace.. early in the morning perhaps, spring or summer I'm guessing. rolls out of his garage and without giving it too much thought, hit's his garage door opener as he hits the gas in forward, coffee in hand, and rolls out for his day. not sure if it was minutes, hours or days, but it wasn't more than a work day is the impression I got, before he returned home.Day done, rolls back home, pulls up to the front of his garage, and like every suburban man from Connecticut to Seattle to San Diego, he taps his garage door opener. As the door opened, he got a surprise..
I'm assuming it's a black bear, but it's more fun to ponder it being a brown.. the thing had been trapped in his garage, where it snuck in when he drove out that morning, foraging perhaps, hungry from hibernation, came down the coast or in from the Chugatch looking for the spring fish runs. A li'l garbage, a li'l fish freezer... The home owner had no idea, went about his day, and when the mechanisms on the garage door sprung to life the bear, likely nervously pondering his fate after trashing the place, was back up with an adrenaline rush, and the story I heard was that it not only hit the door flying as it came up, but it ran right over the top of the guys car on it's mad scramble to freedom..
Downtown ain't just for ungulates.. that's the story I was told!
0 Comments