(no subject)
October 9, 2005 (Sunday)
Yesterday was lovely…D and I got to sleep in and had breakfast in bed in our hotel room!!! I was a room service virgin…but not anymore!!!!! It was great! We snuggled with the dogs and watched CNN and got caught up on the world…
Then we went and walked around downtown Missoula, window shopping for the most part. It’s amazing how much Missoula has changed in the last 6 years since I went to school here! Downtown Missoula, as with all old downtowns, was beat for a while by the big new strip called Reserve Street…where all of the huge box stores have moved in…but downtown Missoula rallied and is now pretty much all coffee shops…there are a few other stores, like a photo store and some old stores that just can’t be beat because no one else carries what they carry…
Tim called and said he got both cubs, he free-ranged the other cub (meaning he shot it with a tranquilizing dart) and it turns out that both cubs were female…excuse me as I curse heavily *$&%Y^@#&%(#(#(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TWO FEMALES!!!!! If you figure a bear can breed for approximately 15 years, but they only have cubs every three years…and average two cubs per litter…between those two little girl cubs…that’s potentially 20 bears that will never exist…those cubs could have produced at least 10 grizzly bears a piece over their lifetime…but those two little cubs will never be in the wild again…those two little cubs are going to a zoo in Indiana…because people wouldn’t clean up their crap to keep bears from coming in on it…these two little female bears will live the next 25 years of their life, at least, in a zoo…living in a small acreage doing the same thing every day…I hope they will be able to be kept together during their life…at least they’ll have each other!!!! Sure they’ll be well-fed and living a safe life…but they’re grizzly bears…brilliant animals that should be out working the earth…helping the ecosystem…helping to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and make me more respectful of the path I may be hiking…
After that, we came back to the hotel room and played on our computers, snuggled with the puppies and eventually fell asleep again.
Usko loves to be up above everything, so our second floor room was a treat for him…he loves to watch things from above, so we gave him a chair to sit in and look out the window and he couldn’t have been happier:
We got up around 4:30 and started getting ready for dinner, took the pups for a walk, then headed over to the house of the Director of Vital Ground where the board came for dinner after an all-day board meeting. It was great to see everyone and have a bit more of an intimate visit with them. We didn’t get home until about 11:00 PM, so I’m glad we got a bit of a nap in.
Of course, nothing is ever easy…around 2:00 AM a group of drunk women ended up being put in the room right next to ours…and I think they had two rooms because, for an hour they were slamming doors and screaming and laughing in the hall…we finally called the front desk and it helped only a little, on top of D sticking his head out of the door and telling them to shut up…but eventually they started doing it again…we called again…and I don’t know if they called the rooms or what, but then our phone rang once and hung up. D called the front desk to find out if they called and it wasn’t them…and D got pissed, told the front desk it was unacceptable and they offered to put us in another room!!! D asked why WE had to be the ones to leave our room and not those women and such…we told the front desk, no, that our sleep was shot for the night anyway, but that we had one more phone call and that was the police. He hung up and about 10 minutes after that call the girls snuck up to our door and pounded on it really quick. I told D to hold his temper for a bit, that they had to fall asleep eventually…especially if they were that drunk…and after about 15 more minutes all was quiet. It took me another hour to fall asleep, but at 5:00 AM I drifted back to sleep and we woke up at 8:00…
We are going to have a slightly leisurely morning, but then will head back up to Columbia Falls where we might have to turn right around again and take these cubs to a rehab center in Helena. We’ll see what the day holds for us!
Yesterday was lovely…D and I got to sleep in and had breakfast in bed in our hotel room!!! I was a room service virgin…but not anymore!!!!! It was great! We snuggled with the dogs and watched CNN and got caught up on the world…
Then we went and walked around downtown Missoula, window shopping for the most part. It’s amazing how much Missoula has changed in the last 6 years since I went to school here! Downtown Missoula, as with all old downtowns, was beat for a while by the big new strip called Reserve Street…where all of the huge box stores have moved in…but downtown Missoula rallied and is now pretty much all coffee shops…there are a few other stores, like a photo store and some old stores that just can’t be beat because no one else carries what they carry…
Tim called and said he got both cubs, he free-ranged the other cub (meaning he shot it with a tranquilizing dart) and it turns out that both cubs were female…excuse me as I curse heavily *$&%Y^@#&%(#(#(!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! TWO FEMALES!!!!! If you figure a bear can breed for approximately 15 years, but they only have cubs every three years…and average two cubs per litter…between those two little girl cubs…that’s potentially 20 bears that will never exist…those cubs could have produced at least 10 grizzly bears a piece over their lifetime…but those two little cubs will never be in the wild again…those two little cubs are going to a zoo in Indiana…because people wouldn’t clean up their crap to keep bears from coming in on it…these two little female bears will live the next 25 years of their life, at least, in a zoo…living in a small acreage doing the same thing every day…I hope they will be able to be kept together during their life…at least they’ll have each other!!!! Sure they’ll be well-fed and living a safe life…but they’re grizzly bears…brilliant animals that should be out working the earth…helping the ecosystem…helping to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and make me more respectful of the path I may be hiking…
After that, we came back to the hotel room and played on our computers, snuggled with the puppies and eventually fell asleep again.
Usko loves to be up above everything, so our second floor room was a treat for him…he loves to watch things from above, so we gave him a chair to sit in and look out the window and he couldn’t have been happier:
We got up around 4:30 and started getting ready for dinner, took the pups for a walk, then headed over to the house of the Director of Vital Ground where the board came for dinner after an all-day board meeting. It was great to see everyone and have a bit more of an intimate visit with them. We didn’t get home until about 11:00 PM, so I’m glad we got a bit of a nap in.
Of course, nothing is ever easy…around 2:00 AM a group of drunk women ended up being put in the room right next to ours…and I think they had two rooms because, for an hour they were slamming doors and screaming and laughing in the hall…we finally called the front desk and it helped only a little, on top of D sticking his head out of the door and telling them to shut up…but eventually they started doing it again…we called again…and I don’t know if they called the rooms or what, but then our phone rang once and hung up. D called the front desk to find out if they called and it wasn’t them…and D got pissed, told the front desk it was unacceptable and they offered to put us in another room!!! D asked why WE had to be the ones to leave our room and not those women and such…we told the front desk, no, that our sleep was shot for the night anyway, but that we had one more phone call and that was the police. He hung up and about 10 minutes after that call the girls snuck up to our door and pounded on it really quick. I told D to hold his temper for a bit, that they had to fall asleep eventually…especially if they were that drunk…and after about 15 more minutes all was quiet. It took me another hour to fall asleep, but at 5:00 AM I drifted back to sleep and we woke up at 8:00…
We are going to have a slightly leisurely morning, but then will head back up to Columbia Falls where we might have to turn right around again and take these cubs to a rehab center in Helena. We’ll see what the day holds for us!