Kenai Moose Research Center

Those last three posts were responses to all of the raised eyebrows I've seen when sharing summer plans with people. Figured a little context might be helpful. "You're bottle-feeding baby moose this summer?!" Yep. Predictably, the next question I get asked is, "How did you get yourself involved with that?" Well,...

Sometime last spring, I was browsing online and ran across this article:

http://www.wc.adfg.state.ak.us/index.cfm?adfg=wildlife_news.view_article
&issue_id=9&articles_id=34

It's just about that time in the year when I start doing a little bit of summer dreamin'. Past summers have included volunteering stints working on research studies/data collection work with scientists in forests here in the PNW and working at a food/wine festival in Italy. Both were great chances to travel and live in a different place for a time, learn something new, and stay busy (not a big fan of the lounge by the pool vacations).

After reading through the article just once, I knew that's what I wanted to do. Alaska has long been on the "short list" of travel destinations and, well, if you've read the previous posts, the moose factor was a given. I started sending emails to the names of people mentioned in the article and it was soon thereafter that Tom Lohuis, the Director of the MRC, contacted me and we started discussing plans.

I fly out on Monday and for three weeks will be helping with bottle-feeding 6 moose calves, 7 or 8 times a day. It's been over a year in the making and I couldn't feel better about it.