Taking out the trash and "bearing" it

Taking out the trash and "bearing" it



















BEFORE

Bear with me here. Nothing disrupts an early spring or summer day more than walking out to your trash bin only to discover that it has become a buffet for a bear (Black Bear) or big dog. There you are at 7 am in your sweats, robe, suit, or whatever and picking up stinky old this and that and tossing it back into the bin in hopes that the sanitation truck will come before the bear does. I got so good at detecting our Serena's tone of bark (she's a really big Border Collie) that I knew, I just knew, that in the morning, I was going to spend 15 minutes chasing down the trash that a bear (possibly big dog..but most likely a bear) spread all over the neighborhood.

I was bemoaning to Ilwacoan Truman Rew about the situation and how I was debating between putting the bin in a Fort Knox style enclosure or padlocking the bin lid shut. Truman said, "no big deal", "just go down to Dennis Company", "buy a hasp and put it on", and "the bear will knock it around like a soccer ball and give up".

So that's what I did. I bought a hasp, bent it to fit the bin, used a piece of scrap Trex (plastic wood) and wood 2 x 4 to secure the hasp and lock and most importantly, tested it to make sure that the hasp hangs free when open (important detail). As our bin had a crack in it, using backing material helped fix that too.


Here's a pic of the hasp in place. A narrow piece of Trex fit nicely between the lid and bin proper. I used short deck screws to fasten everything. The 2 x 4 is inside the bin and also fixed the crack.


















This pic is of the hasp hanging free, an important detail not to be overlooked.

BIN vs Bears&Dogs: Ah, the bin rests victorious, asleep after a long brutal night of futbol with the bears. Better yet, score to date:

Bin 2 Bears&Dogs 0




The downside.

1. 1. IF YOU FORGET TO UNDUE THE HASP ON TRASH DAY...THE LID WILL NOT OPEN. Now you are under a week long trash siege and your spouse will be P.O.'d. This has happened to us twice in a year (oops). The truck drivers are smart and they'll see that your hasp is locked and the bin stays put.



2. PENINSULA SANITATION will "officially" tell you it voids your contract on the bin as you've modified it. Unofficially, and off the record, they don't like garbage spread all over hell and gone either and they are sympathetic to the cause. ALWAYS UNDUE THE HASP. In my case, the bin was splitting apart and my repair job will add years to the life of the bin (as well as keep bears and dogs out).



3. Your neighbors will wonder why you feel the need to lock your bin (actually, it might keep unwanted garbage from appearing in it as it does take a little extra effort to open it up).



4. IF YOU FORGET TO UNDUE THE HASP ON TRASH DAY THE LID WILL NOT OPEN..get the picture.

And one more thing...Black Bears are very very strong. If they really wanted to, they'll open up a car like it was a paper bag so ultimately, this bin fix is as only good as the bear's willingness to give up after a few minutes, which has been the case. There is a lot of food on the beach and the bears are opportunists. That which is easy, they'll go for, that which is not so easy, they'll make an attempt.

Years ago I was in Yosemite National Park at the Ilwahnee lodge..and the NPS kept a nice little photo display of how Black Bears deal with cars that have food inside of them. Scary.

Of taking out the trash, Bald Eagles and River Otters.

Taking out the trash.

Where else but here is there such a glorious view for such a mundane task! Here is Patty bagging away as visitors stroll along and enjoy the beach. Saturday was the perfect day for gathering up debris.

Vacationers hiked from both ends of the beach as we gathered the remains.

Patty and Diane doing the good work as they collect and stack debris.

Darren and the flying kelp. There is alwasy adventure on the beach! A little known fact. Kelp will fly if persuaded. Bull Kelp is usually found resting in large tangled piles with their feet all wound up. To make kelp fly you've got to cut them loose from each other as well as cut their single foot off. Then the gas in the bulb will allow the kelp to rise into the air. This can be accelerated with the aid of any 17 year old teenager with a good arm.

Darren observing flying kelp as it wings its way low over the dunes. A rare view of kelp in the wild. Notice how it is looking down as it searches of another good place for a nap.

The point of all this is that on Saturday, the Friends of the Columbia River Gateway (the 501-c3 that runs the LCIC bookstore and North Head store and donates proceeds to Long Beach Area State Parks) participated in the Grass Roots Garbage Gangs beach cleanup.

Participants were located in local tavs, bars, and watering holes. A cruise to new lands was the bait and a free trip to the Pacific was the hook.

Most eagerly hopped on board, a few weren't so sure and clung to the sides just in case they needed to make a quick get away.

Shanghaied in the end!

The "Friends" have adopted Benson Beach and soon Waikiki Beach as our ward and so we bagged trash from nine to noon. Here we are in the largest piece of trash. A fiberglass lifeboat that has been on the beach for quite a few years. It's not going anywhere and is sort of what visitors might expect to find..an seagoing artifact truly "beached".

One of the most interesting "natural" trash events we spotted was the immature Bald Eagle pondering a breakfast of California Sea Lion. Eagles are opportunists, carnivores and scavengers and in the latter, they tend to be as gross as Turkey Vultures when they dive into a morning snack of well aged marine mammal. Makes one want to gag. No need to bag that as it is part of beach ecology.

This brings up an important point. Dead things need to stay on the beach (well..whales and seals, sea lions, etc..not humans) and not be buried, blown up or hauled away. Why leave them there? They area much a part of the ecology of our area as the living organisms. Benson Beach is a natural beach (aside from the accreted land). Crows, vultures, eagles, gulls, insects, etc. all feed on such dead animals.

Otter tracks were spotted as well, based on the size, I'd guess these to be River Otter (not uncommon for our area). I know that a couple of Sea Otters have been spotted in our area earlier in late winter but these tracks appear smaller than Sea Otter.

We salute the trash picker uppers of The Beach!

For those statistically minded, we found substantially less trash than 3 months ago, I'd say about 25% or 300-400 pounds. Tires were still common (4) but mostly we found rope, water bottles, and misc pieces of plastic debris from the tiny to garbage can sized. Nothing totally weird or unusual.v

Alien Invasion with Tequila II

Alien Invasion with Tequila II

Just a note. The Yucca comes from the Agave family of plants. This group of plants is well adapted to the hot dry desert areas of Central America, Mexico, New Mexico, etc. and many Yucca's are grown as ornamental plants. Being naturally tough..particularly on dry sandy soils, as well as having the ability to survive freezing temperatures, no surprise that they are grown as ornamentals throughout the Pacific Northwest..even though we aren't in their natural range.

Agave's include (Yucca's) those that are distilled (with the worm) into a....liquid that is a favorite refreshment of thirsty revellers... The Blue Agave (see http://www.itequila.org/made.htm) is the source of the refreshing drink (and some memory loss). Thus my play on words. I'll take some photos of Yucca's (and palms) that are growing here on the peninsula as ornamentals.

Come to think of it though..if the rain disappears here and I've choice between drinking saltwater and Tequila..well, maybe those Blue Agave's would survive here. The moth's the real issue (moth pollinated).

What Kathleen and I found fascinating was that this plant was feral. What this speaks to is the domestication of our local environments by the collision of two forces. Humans (and our penchant for gardens) and available habitat for non-native plant species (or animals for that matter). A warming earth would theoretically expand the range of such plants..but for the plants to truly undergo a range expansion..the pollinators also have to expand (like bats and moths) otherwise..no plant sex and they must withstand other impacts (disease, herbivores, etc.).

See my earlier posts on European Dune Grass. The Yucca was growing in a "sea" of European Dune Grass. Now isn't that fascinating as in where am I?

Jim

Alien Invasion With Tequila

Alien Invasion With Tequila

So I'm hiking out from Beard's Hollow with Sue Cody and Alex Pajunas from the Daily A and we're talking about Discovery Trail and how cool it is. As we get to the beach, the trail turns north and we do the same. We ran in into Gerry Shields, nursing a repaired knee into health by taking a long walk south from Seaview. The Turners zoomed by on bikes and other families with their kids. As we walked along I spied this plant in the dunes:

I'm thinking..what the hell is that? Looks like some palm or something that should not be there. Of course, no camera and Sue's wasn't working as well. Anyway, went home, emailed Dave, Kim and the sister Kathleen and let them know strange things are afoot and that if this is global warming, then there's no need to move to Hawaii or Arizona for that matter.

Kathleen calls me immediately and she's got to see this thing and so we hike out and she's dumbfounded. "Mother of God, Like Holly Cow!" and a more prosaic "What are you doing here?". Then "It's a Yucca" as in "You know, like Tequila".

We stand before it, awe struck. Speechless. What the hey? Is this a Sign Of Things To Come or are we entering Gabriel Garcia's twilight zone with a special twist (with lime) for ecologists? Are there more out there?

Then we dig around in the sand and find the top to a disposable soft drink container right near the root wad and some netting that oranges would be sold in and pretty soon it dawns on both of us that this Yucca got here in a storm, was tossed over the dune edge about 30 feet and landed in that soft fine sand that follows a storm. It was probably an outcast from the Columbia River after a flood or as Kathleen says, somebody flipped it over a bank and it floated down and ended up here, on the LBP dunes. And there it grew, in fine shape, possibly 4 years old.

The wind had whipped the Yucca around to a frenzy and probably damaged the trunk as a consequence, the alien invader was likely not particularly long for the world. No diplomatic immunity so we made a citizen's arrest and proclaimed 25 to life in a garden plot.

Yucca! can't believe it.