Special night

Maybe there isn't much around or maybe I haven't been watching closely enough but I haven't noticed a lot of wildlife recently. The moose tracks the other day, yes, but that wasn't even the whole moose. But tonight I saw something special. A wolverine ran across the road. Very rare. In 37 years here this is the second one I have seen and I am not absolutely sure about the first one. So that makes this one extraordinary. There was no doubt this time. The biggest members of the weasel family, they are solitary animals and range over a wide territory so that makes them scarce, plus apparently they stay out of the way on purpose, though their reputation indicates they are not afraid of anything.

This is the best story I know about a wolverine. I knew a guide years ago who in the winter offseason would go beachcombing in Bristol Bay to see what the Bering storms had stranded there Now, beachcombing in the Alaska winter takes on a slightly different mode than the usual idea. On a clear calm day he would fly his Super Cub from near Anchorage to the bay and then fly low along the beaches. If he saw something interesting and he could, he would land and pick it up. One day he flew over the carcass of a walrus that had drifted up onto the beach. He circled it and when he did he noticed a pretty big hole in its side. During another pass he saw a wolverine stick its head out of that hole in the side of the walrus. He said he flew over that walrus two or three times during the course of the winter and each time he did, that wolverine would poke its head out to see what the noise was about. That little fellow had it made: warm and cozy protected by some of nature's best insulation he could survive anything and any time he was hungry, well, he was living inside about two tons of meat well preserved by winter temperatures, not that spoilage probably mattered to him. Pretty nice setup all told, for a wolverine anyway. Can't help wondering what he smelled like in the spring though.

And tonight I got to see one.