LIONS & TIGERS & OH SH_T!!!

Well, it finally happened...we did get visited by one of the bears on Sugar Island!

This one wasn't big, as most bears go...under 200 pounds. Our neighbors had one in their back yard they said was probably between 400 & 500.

I had just come home from work & was sitting at the bar telling MPK (he was sitting at the table) ablut seeing another bear about a mile away, just as I was turning down our road. It was coming
out one neighbor's driveway & headed into the bush right next to another neighbor's house!

All of a sudden the electricity went out. MPK did have the satellite radio on & had been working outside & listened to it through the outside speakers. About 5 minutes later, I saw something out of the corner of my eye out the front window that overlooks the river.

At first I thought it was a black bird on the deck railing...until it raised it's head!

I grabbed my digital camera & MPK grabbed the video camera. I took this shot just after the bear turned away from the window...we were just standing there in awe, because it looked like the bear was coming right at him.

After he headed around the side of the house, I thought he was going for the bird feeder on that side...instead, as I opened the back door & was half way across the deck, he was just coming up the steps! We both did some fancy backward steps & he turned & ran between the car & truck.

After he finally wiped out all of our feeders, he decided to make his way down the road to see if the some of the other neighbors had anything better to eat...like, maybe a Bar-B-Q party going on?

The weather has been so cold that there isn't any food yet (such as berries, etc.) for all the bears who are coming out of hibernation....which is why they are being bolder & coming closer to human habitat.

We do live on a dead end road, but so many more people have moved here since MPK built KFC...we joke about it when we hear traffic go by. MPK says that Walmart has opened their annex at the end of the road!

It's amazing to see these animals close up. And, believe me - there is a very BIG difference about how you feel being that close to them having the window between you & them OR NOT!!!!!

MPK & I both put in to the lottery to get a liscense to hunt bear. This year we will probably both

draw out. We'lll hunt at MPK's hunt camp "The Hoot - N - Holler" which is about 20 miles east, closer to Pickford, Mi. It's a 40 acre camp where we both hunt during the deer season. But I'll save that for a later blog!

I'm just hoping for warmer weather so the bear can go back in the bush & have plenty to eat of their own!

BEAR-LY A SIGN OF SPRING ON SUGAR ISLAND

As I was coming home from work Friday & had gotten about 3 miles from KFC, all of a sudden a very large black bear broke out of the bush. It tore across the road & disappeared into the driveway of a hunt camp. There had been two 55 gallon metal drums in the drive to keep out trespassers, but one of them was knocked over. This is not a good time of year to come face to face with a black bear because they’ve just come out of hibernation & are really hungry!
About 10 years ago I had met the previous owner of the property where the bear had exited. There is a house on that property. I was working in a tourism - related office at the Casino at the time. I was required to take some training courses at offices in the corporate headquarters building about a mile away and was able to take the shuttle service back & forth. Since most of the time I was the only passenger on the shuttle, I usually ended up in a conversation with the driver. We found out that we both lived on Sugar Island but unlike me, he didn’t like it at all. He also said that he put his home & property up for sale & couldn’t wait to move. He told me that they had loved the location when they first moved in. He said that he & his wife moved up here from downstate somewhere when he retired. He had gotten a part time job as a shuttle driver for the Casino to supplement his retirement.
Apparently the first year went without incident & both he & his wife spent lots of time outdoors. It was around that time that he said three different very large black bear started showing up on the property. He told me that he didn’t know if the bears were there when they moved in & just kept away for the first year or they just wandered in. And it didn’t take very long for those bears to get aggressive. Several times he said that he had to call in late to work because one of them would be wandering around outside his house & by his car, so that he couldn’t get out. He told me of quite a few encounters that he & his wife had with them. He eventually called the DNR for help. They have, I think 5 bear traps but at that time they were all in use. They did advise him to try shooting a gun off just to scare them away. The problem with that plan was that neither the guy’s wife, nor he had ever shot a gun, much less owned one! And they had absolutely no plans to learn! They had even called 911 several times, but the bears would just scatter & disappear in the bush while the police were there - just to reappear after they left.
He said that they finally had to move into a motel in town after the last night among the bears. He told me that they were awakened at about 3 or 4 AM to a very loud racket outside. When he went downstairs to investigate, he found all 3 bears outside - literally trying to get inside the house. He said he couldn’t figure out why they didn’t try to get in through the windows, because they could have done so very easily. And although they did stand up to look in the windows, they didn’t so much as touch them. Instead, they focused on trying to get in through the doors. To make matters worse, the wind was blowing really hard & took out the electricity so that they had no phone or lights. They spent one terrifying night trying to fend off those bears. In the morning, he moved his wife into town & he took a friend with him to move their belongings into storage. I’m pretty sure they’ve moved back downstate by now. But, seeing that bear the other day at a dead run coming from the direction of that house…I’m just wondering if the new owners do have a gun or two & just might have put one to use to scare him off.
We’ve had our own problems with black bears on our road. I started out with a can of pepper spray that MPK bought for me. He also taught me to shoot & I’ve had lots of practice as well as having a healthy fear of guns…so much so, that I tend to be overly cautious. Luckily, so far I’ve only had to shoot to either down a deer for our venison or some destructive critter that’s playing havoc with the buildings, gardens, or elsewhere on the property.
A couple of years ago we had a bear terrorizing the folks on our road. Our next door neighbors had their daughter & 2 young grandsons over on a Sunday in the early summer. John had burgers on the grill out on their deck. They had all been outside, including their big black dog which was a cross between a German Shepherd & a wolf. (Believe me, I played with that dog & made the mistake of getting my hand in her mouth & seeing her “FANGS” clamp down!) They all went inside to get cleaned up for supper. Their daughter, Mary told us that she happened to glance out the door & saw something big & black out of the corner of her eye by the bar-be-que grill. Thinking that it was the dog & somebody forgot to bring her in, she called her name. Do you see where I’m going with this? Yup! The dog’s name was “Bear”! Mary told us that after she called Bear, she turned & saw that the dog, Bear was already inside. And when she turned & looked out the door again, she saw that there was a real black bear on their deck checking out what was on the grill! She said that she was so shocked that all she could do was holler “Bear! Bear! Bear!”.
The neighbors did manage to scare off the bear. But I guess that the bear kinda figured that he might just get lucky & get invited to come inside to share a burger or two. Because he kept coming back up on their deck, John also called the DNR & was told that all of their traps were out. But they did give him two (I guess you’d call them) bullets. They told him that they wouldn’t kill the bear. But when they made contact with it, they would make a very loud noise. John told us that by the time he finally got the ammo from the DNR…one of the neighbors had already seen it swimming across the river to Squirrel Island.
Do ya suppose that since Squirrel Island is a Canadian Island, they might think about approaching the bear to determine if it had a valid passport, birth certificate or driver‘s license?
Somehow, I think that with all the added “Homeland Security” on our borders…they might take exceptions to the many critters that have successfully managed to breach all international laws, checkpoints, borders, etc..
That is a comforting thought. To my Canadian friends, I say…Sorry, enjoy your summer at the cottage & good luck!

THE POSIE THAT SAVED A SINKING SHIP

This picture is of a small whimsical sign that MPK made for me to put in my rock garden. And every time I look at it I thank God for it. Because if it hadn’t been for that funny-looking little posie, there would be another sunken wreck on the bottom of Lake Michigan and most likely the loss of at least twelve lives.
I made my first rock garden here at KFC 11 or 12 years ago. A couple of years later, MPK made this sign for my garden as a joke - but I thought it was so sweet that I insisted on putting there. He made it when he was at work. He’s an ABS (Able Bodied Seaman) and works on a combination tug/barge which delivers cement to various ports around the Great Lakes. He’s one of the last of his breed…they don’t make ‘em like him any more. Now the guys are trained in class rooms to do one specific thing on a ship. And when they get on board - they find out they don’t really know a heck of a lot & they usually get their “on-the-job training” from all the other “tug-boaters”. He’s the hardest working man I’ve ever known and I have a hard time keeping up with him…just thinking about him makes me tired!
MPK cut down a small maple tree & screwed my posie to the stump. It’s my favorite thing in the garden. Although it stands about 2 feet tall - it gets completely covered with snow in the winter. I also use it as a gauge to let me know if the snow is really melting in the Spring! I just keep looking for the bright yellow to peep through the snow. (No, I didn’t say “yellow snow”!) After sitting in the garden for 4 or 5 years, it got looking a little rough so MPK decided that he’d take it to work with him about a year ago to spruce it up.
He went off to work in February & took my posie with him. He told me that a lot of the guys on the boat tried to tease him about the posie sign…but at 6 foot 3, it never bothered him. He’d been gone for a few weeks when he called me one night to tell me that my garden posie had probably saved his ship & most likely the lives of all 12 guys on it, including him! Although the crises was over at that moment, I could tell it had been serious by the strain in his voice & he seemed to be still pumped up with adrenaline. He told me that he had been working on the sign in his free time & had gotten it to the point where it was finished & he’d put about 3 coats of polyurethane on it. He said that he planned on leaving it to “cure“ while it was in an out-of-the-way place where he could leave it. He then said that they had left the port in either Green Bay or Manatowok, Wisconsin after delivering a load of cement. He’d been up for hours because he had to work overtime while they were unloading. He’d just gotten off his shift & was really tired. He said that he’d planned on going straight to the tug & to bed, but he thought, at the last minute that he’d check on the posie sign just to make sure that it didn’t need another coat of polyurethane. I’ve been on his ship countless times & he’s given me tours. To get from the deck - it’s a very long walk to the door to the engine room. There are lots of very steep stairs. You have to go through the (very loud) engine room & the ballast pump room & through a door that leads into the hull of the barge. You then have to go through a tunnel to the very front of the hull. It’s very dark & very close quarters until you get to the very front. MPK had work out equipment up there as well as his wood working tools.
Sorry - back to the story…he said that after he went below deck & the closer he got to the space where his work shop was - the louder the sound was of running water. I don’t think that I have to tell you...that’s the worst thing that a seaman could experience. He said that he could see a dent & split in the side of the hull where water was pouring into the ship! He luckily still had his radio with him & reported to the captain that they were taking on water. They tried to get the bilge pumps going but one of them failed. The captain then radioed a “May Day” to the coast guard. At the time he called me, he said the coast guard was towing them back to the port.
The cause of the split in the 2 inch thick steel hull? The day before, they’d gotten stuck in the ice trying to get into the dock & a big piece of ice pierced the metal. MPK said that if he hadn’t gone down to check on the posie, they would have never known of the split in the hull until they got out in the middle of Lake Michigan - with only one bilge pump working. And if that ship would have gone down…the human body can only last so long in those frigid waters, even with insulated life suits on.
He told me that the guys told him to tell me “Thanks”. I said, “What for?” He said that they were thanking him, but he told them it wasn’t him - it was my posie sign.” And to that - they said, “Well then, tell Cheryl we said ‘Thanks’”. Hmmm…guess that means the guys are no longer teasing him about it.
And my posie? It came through yet another Sugar Island winter looking just as bright as the day it was made. And whenever I catch sight of it in my garden, I say a prayer thanking God for giving those 12 men a little longer on this earth.

Happy Easter

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter!

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE MOOSE KIND

These pictures were sent to a gal I work with from her daughter. Her daughter received them from a girlfriend who lives in Timmins, Ont., Canada. The pictures are of a rare white moose found around that area.

There are so many moose in Canada that they have quite a problem with accidents on their roads & freeways. I saw a documentary a while ago where they said the moose come out of the bush to the roads to lick the salt on the roads in the winter. Hitting a moose is a little different than hitting a deer. Moose have longer legs and are A WHOLE LOT BIGGER!!! It would be like comparing a very emaciated small horse to a train locomotive! I could be mistaken, but they might even be a tad bit bigger than Elk & Caribou.

I suppose that I could Google & come up with the stats. But frankly, I would really rather not get into the boring technical stuff. Just trust me to say that I’m somewhere in the ballpark. And the difference between hitting a deer & hitting a moose with a car is: a deer will hit the front of the car & do a whole lot of damage. But when a car hit’s a moose - the only thing that comes in contact with the front of the car is the legs. Guess where the HUGE BODY ends up? Yeah, windshield for sure! Consequently, there are more fatalities with car/moose accidents than with car/deer accidents.

We have moose on Sugar Island, but they’re very rarely seen out of the bush. I feel very privileged to have had an encounter with a moose since I’ve moved up here. And no, I didn’t hit it with my car. It happened when I was renting the small house down the road from KFC. It was about 10:00 AM. I had to be at work at 11:00 so I had to leave to catch the 10:30 ferry. (Hmmm…I’ll save the calculations for catching the ferry as well as the fares for another blog.) I had just backed out of the driveway & had only driven about 20 yards, I was about 10 yards from the property line that had a line of thick trees. The moose came out of that tree-line, through the ditch & onto the road at a slow gallop. It was a very young one…almost as tall as a full grown one. When it came out it saw me, but it merely turned & continued at it’s same pace for another 40 yards or so straight down the road. It then turned into one of the neighbor’s driveway. I stopped & watched it keep going with it’s awkward gait.
I was going slow when he came out on the road, but I got to the point where he was just about 5 feet in front of my car! I just followed him along like that until he went off down the driveway. I had to stop on the road because I was laughing so hard that I couldn't’t see for the tears! I swear, it looked like it’s body rose 5 feet in the air ever time it took a step! I found out a couple of days later that it was probably one of three that my neighbor had seen going through his yard the same way. He told me that there was a male, a female & a calf. He said that the male had a “gimpy” leg. I didn’t hear any more about them.
A year or so after that, there was an article in the local paper with a picture of a moose crossing the I-75 expressway going out of town. There were a lot of reports from people who witnessed it swimming across the river from Sugar Island to the mainland & going through people’s yards in town on it’s way.
I have one more moose related story…sorry, but this one isn’t very funny. This happened around the same time as all the other sightings. Some guy was caught after he killed a moose on Sugar Island. They’re protected and on the “endangered species” list still here in Michigan. The guy’s excuse was that he thought that it was a deer! Besides the size issue, it wasn’t even hunting season! The guy ended up with a hefty fine & jail time.
I’ve been to the western part of the UP quite a few times and I’ve never seen any moose, although I’ve heard there are a lot of them over that way. There’s an auto dealership in a town named Newberry that advertises as being “The Moose Capital of the World”.
MPK actually went on a hunting trip in Canada & shot a moose. We have the rack mounted on the wall in the great room. But I’ll save that for another blog.

In my “blogger frogging” adventures, I get so envious of all those who are blogging about beautiful spring weather & all the pictures of the flowers & green grass and all!

Well, I took a few of my own pictures yesterday! I snapped a couple in the back yard.

The black spot in the middle is the accumulation of the hulls from the black oil sunflower seeds that we put out for the birds. Last year we raked up 2 & 1/2 - 5 gal. buckets of them, just in the spring alone! You can imagine how much seed we go through in a year!

MPK put metal roofs on both the garage to the left & the pole barn in the background. As yoou can see, all the schrubs next to the garage are being damaged every year by the snow that slides off the roof. And I really wanted to plant roses along the side of the pole barn, but there is a whole lot more snow that comes down off that roof!

We're still holding on to the cold & snow....but not by any choice of our own.

And I really would much rather look on the bright side of things than have it bring me down! So, when I downloaded the pictures from my camera, I found a couple that I’d taken a few weeks ago that I’d forgotten about. I took them from the upstairs bedroom window of the fox tracks that went across the front yard & out on the ice that was still there at that time.

You can just barely see them. In the middle of the picture...coming in from the right. The ropes are the railings that lead down the steps to our boat dock & the frozen river.

The tracks lead from the front yard , down the hill & out on the snow-covered icy river.Two days later, there were tracks going from the side yard, to the front & also down to the river.

When I thought about all those tacks, they reminded me of the time when I was about to turn in the driveway one night & a fox darted out of the drive, across the road & into the bush. He’d been checking out the suet we'd saved from our venison that we’d processed last hunting season. We put it out for the birds every winter & get some awesome woodpeckers & the chick-a-dees love it.

A few years ago, I used to rent a small house just down the road from KFC. Quite often I’d be standing at the kitchen sink & look out & see one come out of the bush & run across the yard in broad daylight. And one winter I did manage to get one on our video camera as he was crossing the ice to go over to Squirrel Island. I see quite a few of them on my way to work. I’m not sure if it’s the same one or not, but two different times I’ve had to brake for a cat running across the street….and both times they were being chased by a fox! It was amazing! And I'll never forget the sight of them! This was just down the street from where my supervisor lives. I knew she has a small dog so I told her that she might want to keep an eye on him when she lets him out. And, yeah - it's inside the city limits!!!

Those aren't the only "fox sitings' that I've had since I moved up here & I hope it isn't close to my last!

I chose to live here in this frozen north country...I'd only been here a couple of times in my life when I was very young. But, it made a lasting impression on me. I'd tried a couple of times to talk my ex into moving up here (unsuccessfully) while I was still married...but to no avail.

But, I'm up here now & I'm absolutely LOVING every minute of it!

Next, I'll have pictures of a rare white moose in Timmins, Ont., Canada which isn't too far north of the Soo. And my own "close encounter of the moose kind".

IS IT A SNOW BUNNY OR A WILD HARE?

I work at a hotel that’s attached to a casino. I’m a reservations agent & receptionist. Although I do get to talk to a lot of people - I really don’t see many of them because our office is in a location where we’re surrounded by other offices. In fact, the only window that we have a view from is in the front desk manager’s office. And when she’s not there & the door’s closed - half the time we don’t know if the sun’s shining or we’re in the middle of a blizzard.
There are times when we do have to venture out of our “dungeon” to the other offices or the Hotel front desk. One situation came up today where I needed to talk to the supervisor who happened to be working the front desk.
When I came out the door, there was a woman standing at the counter in front of her. She was apparently checking in. As I came out the door, I heard the woman saying to the supervisor, “Well, we came up here to play in the snow, but there isn’t any snow!” Gotta tell ya, I’ve worked at my job for 14 years & I could tell by the tone of her voice…..nope, I didn’t need to hear “No Mo”!!! So, I merely turned on my heal & headed right back out the door!

I swear, after this many years - just when I think “I’ve heard ’em all!”…..another person opens their mouth & proves just how wrong I am!
Now, don’t get me wrong, I really do like my job & I love talking to all kinds of people all day long! But, there seems to be a chosen few who kind of “deviate from the norm”, if ya know what I mean. And lately I’ve given in to fantasizing about what I would REALLY like to say to some of them! And while I’m thinking about it - I find that I also tend to make up my own names for them too. I pegged her as a “Snow Bunny”. For instance, since this gal was young, blond (Yep! Sorry!) and clearly not dressed to “play in the snow”. At least not in the UP. She wasn’t wearing either a snowmobile suit or sub-zero Carhartts. She really didn’t look like the type to be pushing a snow-blower, or using a snow shovel. And I wouldn't have pegged her as a “musher” either. She looked more like a cat-lover to me.
In the 16 years since I’ve lived in the UP, I’ve seen a lot of snow. But in the middle of March, the weather has fluctuated to such extremes that whatever snow we have left is striated with layers alternating between a mixture of melted snow, salt, sand & plain dirt.
At this point I’m thinking she must have been misdirected when she booked her reservations on-line. Maybe when she clicked on the “snow” icon - she accidentally clicked on the “Sault Ste. Marie” site, when she really meant to choose the “Vail” one instead! And - I really wanted to scream at her - “What do ya mean - No Snow?!!! Where’s your sense of adventure?! Just get out there, scrape off the top inch or so of dirt, hop on that Polaris & open her up! Come on - there’s still at least 1 ½ to 2 feet of the stuff out there!” I could even have told her about my trip in to work when I passed the snowmobile trail & there were about 7 or 8 snowmobiles still trying to get the most out of it. Of course I would have left out the fact that, as I passed by the college (Lake Superior State University), I noticed a male student at the cross-walk in shorts & wearing FLIP FLOPS!!!!!!! I just figured that since the temps. were still in the low 30’s - he was still caught up in his Spring Break fantasy!
Here I was hoping for some really warm weather to melt the (four-letter-word) stuff….hey - I was gonna say SNOW!!! And Ms. Hare comes along & expects the Hotel management to comp her whole stay, including meals. Then - after she found out that the Casino has a free shuttle to & from the airport (which is 30 miles away) , she tried to find a way to get the rental car company to issue a credit to her credit card & pick up the vehicle which she’d parked in the hotel lot.
Hmm….at this point, I’m thinking about some really old TV, cop, whodonit show that used to be on when I was a kid. They had a classic saying at the start of each episode that went -

“There are a thousand stories in the naked city. And this…. is just one of them.”