The Living With Bears in Seward meeting, which I covered for the paper. We had a big problem with bears last summer and earlier this fall, with more bears than usual wandering down from the mountain to snack on our garbage.
This past year four "problem" bears were killed in Seward. During one of those kills, a bullet ricocheted off the bear and hit a young man in the belly. Lucky for him he was wearing heavy fish-processing gear. His coat basically saved his life.
And last month, a boy was swiped by a brown bear as he walked to the bus stop. His backpack saved him from serious injury.
Bears have also tried to break into homes and cars so yeah, it's a bit of a problem.
At the meeting, I finally got to meet my journalism crush LL, who works for Alaska Fish & Game:
LL has never let me down. The guy says the coolest things. He's a writer's dream. One quote I particularly loved:
"Everyone says, 'It’s the biggest bear I’ve ever seen,' and I then I go out there and it’s a sub-adult, but they’re big when they’re pushing on your door."
Anyway, all residents are supposed to have one of these to keep trash secure from bears:
Um, I don't.
Yes, I just wrote a 40-inch story chiding residents for leaving garbage unsecure and hello!, my garbage is unsecure and hello!, bears were in my trash this fall.
Oh, the shame!
I am a hyprocrite, sigh, sigh.
The organization that provides the bearproof containers is out, so I've been keeping my trash in the entryway until trash day. Kind of smelly but you gotta do what you gotta do, eh?
The rest of my week was spent covering stories of a giant geography map:
And more of blurry basketball photos:
Which brings us to this (it looks kind of like a torture device, eh?):
Speedwork, baby, and I almost bonked my first mile interval, just wasn't mentally there. Workout was mile warm-up, 3x mile repeats at 7:30 pace with quarter mile recovery and warmdown.
The second interval felt fantastic--I could have gone on forever. Third was OK, started to get fatigued but held the pace.
Tomorrow, trail run in the mountains--hooray.
Not a problem we have. Yes we have bears around here but we don't see too much of them. There were some bear sightings this fall but I wasn't one of them TG! That is scary about the boy with his backpack! Do you have to watch for bears on your trail runs?
ReplyDeleteI wear a bear bell on my fuel pack and sometimes carry bear spray too, if I'm heading to an area with a lot of scat over the trail. This past summer I only encountered three bears; the year before I saw about eight, and my dog was charged by an angry sow (that was SCARY!). The dog was OK. I, on the other hand, peed my running shorts a bit in fear, lol!
ReplyDelete"ONLY" three bears!!! Yikes...That's all pretty scary. I say, get that garbage can asap :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by...I love my light running shoes and Leonard :) :)