Tag: Unalaska

Articulation progress.

When Caleb starts a project, he typically is unrelenting until it is finished.  When he articulated a Baird’s beaked whale several years ago, he had a short window of time to  learn the process and prepare the materials.  He and Marine Advisory agent Reid Brewer were on the fast track to get the bones cleaned in time for them to be utilized for the project. 

Having a friend who is always the first one notified when a sea mammal stranding is reported is a key to successfully being able to articulate a species.  Reid gets called about a stranding, and if he needs backup doing a necropsy, gathering samples, or whatever, sometimes he calls Caleb to help.  It seemed to happen on such a frequent basis that Caleb even modified tools to help in being able to cut through mammal skin and blubber  with good success. 

Reid Brewer preparing to take samples. Photo courtesy of Marine Advisory Program.

 Reid is great.  He is always thinking.  He has a knack for pre-planning.  “Caleb – lets save this skeleton just in case we need it for something”, is a typical part of Reid’s and Caleb’s conversations.  The male sea lion pictured above, washed up on the beach over 2 years ago.  After the investigation into the cause of death, the bones were cleaned of as much material as possible.  Then at some point, Reid wrapped them in a casing and lowered them back into the sea where they sat for over a year, getting cleaned by the sea and those inhabitants that feast on smelly stuff.

 After they were retreived, Caleb went through the lengthy (months) process of counting, configuring, and doing a final cleansing of the bones.  He also had to either find missing bones or manufacture new fake ones to complete the skeleton.  (Wave action can sometimes tear the casing that holds the bones…then you lose some.)  Strangely enough, Caleb lost one of the biggest….a scapula. 

Sorting out what is what can take ages.

Note:  I promise I will finish this articulation blog.  I am just so tired lately.

Random acts.

It was just an easy job.  Replace the roof on the smoke house.  It’s just a simple little building with a plywood roof with a metal cap, a smoke hole for the smoke to come out.   When Mom and I  got home, Caleb and Dad had begun the project.  After finally getting the paint out of my hair from painting up at the cemetary, I sat down at the computer to catch up on emails.  I heard all this horrendous banging and screeching.   I wandered out after I saw Dad head into his house.  Time for a lunch break he would have said.   Caleb was just finishing up tearing part of the roof off one side of the house. 

After talking  him into a short lunch break, we went back out and started positioning for the second side.  Caleb was prying and whacking and making a  horrible racket.  Dad and Mom came out the door, mom pulling on her work gloves.  The problem was, according to Dad, that they had lost their first smoke house.  It simply exploded into bits in the wind.  So this one had quite a few more galvanized nails than was seemly.  After we all were struggling for quite the while, Mom and I with big pieces of wood that we were using as wedges and levers, Dad with tools and ladder holding, and Caleb making all the pounding and whacking, we were almost to the center of the roof.  The plywood on this side was no where near rotten like the first side, and it was not giving up the ghost.  Mom and I were stretching ourselves to the limit, me standing on a cement block with my eight foot long 2×4, trying to position it, sliding it into the hard won openings that Caleb was creating, then “exerting a steady, upward pressure”.  If you could have seen us all, you would have been rolling on the ground. 

Which must have been what prompted Skip Southworth and his friend to come bounding over the lawn, complete with pry bars and tools in their hands, asking if they could help.  Good God, yes.  A couple of questions about what was going and what was being saved.  Presto, chango, I swear in less than five minutes the job was done.  My mother is saying, “Who are you guys?”  And I tell her, “Mom, it’s Skip.”  Skip tells her she probably doesn’t recognize him without his hands full of crab.  (He does that, too.  Gives seafood to his elders.)

I tell you, the world would be a better place if each one of us would remember that random acts of kindness, in all of their unexpected glory, are what keep a community a thriving, healthy place to live.