When you live in Alaska, sometimes you just have to do it yourself.  Sometimes that means relocating your own bears.

Living on the Penultimate Frontier (after all Space is the final frontier), Alaskans take self-reliance to new levels.  In very minor ways, living in Juneau requires this.  It takes about a week for anything to ship here.  There aren’t a lot of options for buying what you need.  Any information about local businesses online is subject to change with no notice, or possibly at least 5 years old.  Farther afield, people are living off the grid and relying on subsistence techniques for food and shelter or braving ridiculous conditions to move fish and other goods to market (see any of the 100 shows on the Discovery Channel with Alaska in the title).

I’m not immune to this.  At this point I’ve been infused with Alaskan spirit and definitely rolled up my sleeves to tackle a few unique challenges.  So I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when a neighborly check in and chat yielded this tale of heroic Alaskan DIY literally in my own backyard:

(approximate account of the conversation)

“Have you seen many bears come through lately?” (typical question in my neighborhood)

“Yeah we had one yearling that was in our yard nearly every day for a while there who just wouldn’t go away.  My husband set up a live trap and caught him, and we drove him out to the glacier (about 3 miles down the road).  He was back in our yard around 5PM the same day”

(pause and let that sink in)

“So, we set up the trap and caught him again, and this time took him out the road (there’s only one long road in Juneau, and “out” means north anywhere from 10-20 miles out of town).  Haven’t seen him back.”

Well, that’s one way to deal with it.  The Alaskan way.