After chasing Kaia around the restaurant and attempting to keep her off the heating stove in the middle of the dining room, we headed out to the beach where we met up with the North Slope Borough Wildlife guy. He was looking for the walrus that was reported to be in the area. We decided to take a drive down the beach to see what we could find.
And here it is:
A gigantic, tired walrus with a huge crowd of about 60. Yes, that is snow in the picture and that girl is wearing shorts and we are all less than 100 feet away from it. It's like the whole town turned up to check him out. He looked around and watched the four wheelers and kids rolling around in the sand. I wonder if he thought we were as interesting as we thought he was. 
People crowded the beach and got right up close to where the walrus had hauled out. I was certain that one guy was going to play "slap the walrus" because he ran up to it so quick and got a picture right next to it! Nothing like a marine mammals protection act to be completely ignored in a village Dependant on them for survival.
I felt really bad for that poor walrus. He looked so exhausted and I'm sure he had been swimming FOREVER! The reports say that the ice pack is more than 200 miles away! and that is where he would have had to come from. I don't know where else he would have been. It's a mystery.
I just hope that the Natives don't get restless and kill him. They have already taken 6 this year and one was just poached for his head / tusks. That makes me SO ANGRY!!! Well, I will save that for another rant.
For now I will leave you with a bit of walrus trivia. Did you know that the walrus penis is proportionally the largest of all mammals and has an ivory bone that helps it erect enough for successful mating? The Natives call this piece of ivory an "Oosik", but I would have thought "Guutfaq" (their word for water arrow) would be more fitting.
5 comments:
Wow, that's pretty amazing. Glad you still went out even though you didn't get someone to take Kaia.
I find that the occasional non fitness program compliant meal helps me to stay on my program. As long as I don't go down the "I'm a failure" slippery slope that ends up with I should just quit now! These days I tend to view it as more gray, which helps.
How cool! I hope no one hurts him. Thanks for the penis fact. I'll impress my husband with it tonight.
How exciting to see such a magnificent creature. I, too, hope the natives treat this animal with respect.
I did not know that walrus fun fact! How crazy is that, a walrus just randomly swam 200 miles?! Crazy!
Sometimes family night can be just as nice as date night. It was my husbands birthday the other day and we had to take Ethan to dinner with us (couldn't find a sitter), but it ended up being so much fun!
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