Living in Alaska - Life in the Last Frontier

(*From the song performed by Buster Poindexter in 1987)

It has reached 80-something in interior Alaska, several times over the past week.  I’m not whining about it, but I’m perfectly OK with 70s. Even 60s is fine with me.  You see, most of us don’t have air conditioning up here. And in the summer, the sun is up all day long - which means it can be hot all day long.

We’ve managed to keep the house cool by drawing all the curtains and not allowing the sun to shine into the house.  But what fun is that? We spend 7 months of the year yearning for sunshine, and then find ourselves closing the blinds against it in the summer months, so the temperature in the house doesn’t rise to 90F.

At night, we run into another problem. We have a fan in the home office window that draws warm air out of the house. We open the bedroom window so the cooler night air will be drawn in. But we have to close the black-out curtains in the bedroom so we can sleep, which means the air is blocked.  Fortunately, the air does cool down in the middle of the night (if you can call it that). So much so, that we find ourselves closing the window against the 50F air, and snuggling under our soft fleece blanket. Now that’s perfect sleeping weather.

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I hope all of my American readers had a nice Fourth of July. Steve had to work, so I spent time with Lisa on both Friday and Saturday.

On Friday, we decided to take the furkids up to Murphy Dome for a hike. I wasn’t sure how Sedona was going to react to having Bella in such close quarters (the back of my car), but after an initial snarl and a “I’m the queen here, and this is my car” bark, she turned her attention into putting her head out the window and ignoring Bella.

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The weather has been gorgeous lately! Sunshine and warm temps (70s!) has brought everyone outdoors to soak up the sun.  Even though there are a bunch of things I need to get done indoors, I’m not wasting a sunny day to do it.

A few days ago, I was washing up a few dishes and saw a bird fly down to the ground in my yard. I walked out on the deck to get a better view, camera in hand. The bird - a solitary sandpiper - stood up and let out a series of high pitched whistled “weet, weet” sounds. (You can hear the sandpiper’s call here)

She ran in a circle around one particular area, distracting me it seemed. And then I saw the tiny ball of brown striped fluff partially hidden in the grass. A chick. She moved in an ungainly matter, her legs seemingly useless as she rolled onto her back and then righted herself. She must have fallen from the nest.  I learned, in doing a little bit of research, that the solitary sandpiper lays its eggs in the nests of song birds - particularly those of the American Robin (which we have an abundance of in our yard this year).

As I approached the fluffy chick with my camera, I heard the sound of ravens above. Looking up, I saw two perched in the tree branches. Do ravens eat chicks?  I don’t know the answer to that question, but I didn’t want to take any chances with baby sandpiper becoming lunch. I ran inside and grabbed a dish towel so I could move the chick out of the middle of my yard, where there was no protection, and into the treed area.  While I know it is a myth that a mother bird will abandon its young if touched by human hands, I wanted to minimize any trauma to the chick by covering it up before moving it.

I carried the peeping chick to the treed area, while mama bird hopped around me; also following me. I released the chick into the protection of some low bushes and grass, and walked away. The mother bird quickly joined the baby, and the chick climbed under mama’s plump body where she would be safe.

Before I went to bed, I checked on them. They weren’t in the same spot where I left them, so I walked through the yard, listening for her chirp.  When I reached the rear of my yard, she came hopping towards me, whistling loudly again. I scanned the ground looking for the baby, and found her beneath a bluebell plant. She was doing much better with her walking, and I couldn’t help but grin when I saw how long her legs, and how big her feet, were! She was still quite ungainly on her legs, but able to follow mama as she made her way into another wooded area.

Look at this cute baby:

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