And now for something completely different

At first I though this must be some kind of bison, but it's actually a muskox.

There used to be herds of muskoxen across Alaska, Arctic Canada, and Greenland, but the Alaskan population was wiped out by the early 20th century. They've since been reintroduced in several of the parks and wildlife refuges.

It's too bad the sun was behind her (I think this is a female) so I couldn't get better pictures of this very strange creature.

Another youngster

This is a young elk.

Plus a moose!

Most of the moose I saw in Alaska were at a distance, so I couldn't appreciate that strange squarish snout they have. This moose at the AWCC was a juvenile—old enough to have been abandoned by its mother, but not old enough to have turned into an asshole.

But it turns out I had more reindeer

I found a folder, cleverly named AWCC, that I had clearly never investigated. So here are some more pictures of the reindeer.

View from the AWCC

I'm guessing I ignored this picture of the mountains behind the wildlife center because I'd already posted so many pictures of mountains, but it's still pretty.

Flashback: Alaska

I posted some pictures from the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center back in 2014 when I visited it, but I somehow ignored this disconcerting creature.

Reindeer are not native to Alaska; as in South Georgia, they were originally imported as a food source. Alaska Native populations were starving because the whaling industry was disrupting their traditional food supplies, and arrangements were made to bring in reindeer from Russia to supplement the increasingly scarce caribou. Reindeer and caribou are the same species, but different subspecies, and since all of the reindeer in Alaska are semidomesticated, a century and a half of breeding has increased the visible differences between them.

There are fewer than 20,000 reindeer left in Alaska, and by law only Alaska Natives are allowed to keep them.

If I ever knew how these two ended up in the AWCC, I've long since forgotten it. Perhaps they needed rehab to learn to walk with those ridiculous antlers on their heads? They remind me of Max the dog in the original cartoon of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Sunday bird blogging

A closeup of Adonis and his eagle eyes.

So much depends upon a red barn

Just because I love the way the perspective makes the yellow tractor look enormous.

Obviously I'm haunted by these ghosts

Scars are souvenirs you never lose

The center is surrounded by mountains, capped by spectacular clouds today. And ghost trees everywhere.

Another excuse for baby talk

I couldn't get a better picture but I have to include this guy anyway: a young moose, left orphaned, being raised at the center.

Adonis

That's the appropriate name for this handsome fellow.

He's been living at the center for almost twenty years, since he had to have one of his wings amputated after having been shot.

Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center

The AWCC takes in injured and orphaned animals, and gives a permanent home to those that can't be released into the wild.

And it was odd, but I had a very mixed reaction to this. I love animals, and I would rescue every animal orphan on the planet if I could. But it was jarring to suddenly see them -- I almost wrote "behind bars" -- in enclosures. This mama elk and her calf are lucky; they're scheduled for release next year. And I could never personally allow an animal to die just because some idiot tried to keep it as a pet, which was the case with several of the animals here. But I hated to see them in captivity, and it had never bothered me so much before.

I think I've got Alaska in the blood now.