causes rats in laboratory cancer: Sunday. Cold and Cool.

Sunday, January 04, 2009

Sunday. Cold and Cool.

The cold part...

The cool part...

Sundays in the winter a woman feeds bald eagles in the VFW parking lot in Eagle River. The eagles start showing up about five minutes before she pulls up, opens the back of her Jeep, and starts tossing out meat scraps.

It's amazing. There were probably 30 eagles there today, all flying around waiting for their chance to get some meat. It reminded me of seagulls around a fishing trawler. Others were hanging out in the trees, waiting.

And bald eagles are huge. Amazing. We were about twenty feet from them, they flew almost right over us. So completely cool. (And cold. We were standing outside in twenty below weather. Even the eagles couldn't completely distract us from how cold it was.)

This is a different species of eagle, I think, but I don't know what kind of eagle it is.

Also, Zachary asked me to mention that Jessica is a terrrrible texter. I don't know what this means. Sorry, Jessica.

7 comments:

That Bread Lady8:41 PM
I'd like to visit Alaska just to watch the eagles. To think that I was impressed by seeing a couple eagles in an aviary up in Salt Lake. Imagine 30 of them flying overhead! Hope Zach remained un-annointed. ;)
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Julie8:49 PM
Hi, Vickie! This particular opportunity is only available in the wintertime...Which means you have to brave close to or subzero weather. I think it is completely worth it, but then I like the cold and the snow.

Oh, yeah, and nobody got pooped on. Thank goodness. Eagle poop is not tiny, I think.
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Michelle9:12 PM
That may almost make me considering moving to Anchorage.
I am a total eagle lover. Last winter and spring I spent hours each day watching the Wvec.com eagle cam. They are magnificent creatures!
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Patsy10:09 PM
amazing photos! I loved them all, but not sure I would brave sub zero weather unless I was already there and I could wear lots of thermal underwear!
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Anonymous11:29 PM
Oh, wow. Very cool, indeed! I'm amazed that the eagles know before the woman gets there to feed them. And -18 is just cold as hell, except hell is warm, but... ;)
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Unknown7:01 AM
That's all very cool (no pun intended), but what happens if that lady gets sick and can't feed those eagles? Is she really doing them any favors by habituating them to what she's doing? And they ARE habituated ... make no mistake. If they're showing up five minutes before she does ....

It great to see so many eagles - but I would rather see them gathered around some carcass fallen in the wild than to see them clustering for handouts.
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Anonymous8:21 PM
Hi, I just discovered your blog today. Very enjoyable.

This is one of the coolest things I've seen lately. Beautiful creatures.
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You like me! You really really like me!

Or maybe you just find me horribly annoying and are about to let me know. Go ahead, I can deal.

So, whatever, you know, leave a message. Thanks!!!

Okay -- updating my profile because I never removed the guinea pigs from it, even though they have been elsewhere for months.

Um...new obsession (HA) the elliptical trainer in the garage. I hate the thing, but today I burned 395 calories. I know. I so wanted to burn 5 more to make it an even 400, but then I would be at 50 minutes and 19 seconds, so I would have to make that round out to an even 51 minutes, and then the mileage could be rounded up to a more even number, and then the calories would be just a few away from 450, but then I could do just a few more seconds, then another few hundredths of a mile, and so on until finally I would fall off, hit my head, end up in the hospital with another nasty concussion, and gain weight because I am bedridden. It was so much easier to just burn the 395 calories.

We moved from the Sonoran desert of southern Arizona to the almost Arctic of Anchorage. I like the winters of Anchorage better than the summers of Tucson, so far.

Still have three kids, the oldest one is a freshman at the U of Arizona (dang it, now I will have to edit this again in a few months), the other two live on Fort Richardson with me and the dogs and the husband.

Other obsessions...my camera, my IPod Touch, my sewing machine. Fabric. Definitely fabric. Dishes. It's a thing females in my family have, an obsession with dishes. Pottery, and earthenware. Silver, definitely. Not crystal and china though. I am not a big fan of the fussy and overly ornate, and both crystal and china tend to fall into those categories, to me. Plus if I have delicate dishware, then I can't have the kids wash the dishes or put it in the dishwasher.

Other than that, I weigh too much, sleep too little, am very liberal, rabidly pro-choice, find it insane this country does not have universal health care, and think the world may be a better place with Obama at the helm. Oh, yeah, and chocolate. Much much chocolate.