Alaska Man Monday - Beetles, Airdropped Turkeys and Grease Fires

Traveling is tiring. But Grandpa-ing is worth it. We have had some great times being grandparents and parents, as it's not often we get all four daughters together, much less the little ones. And the best bit about grandparenting? It's the revenge we get for having been parents.

It's great watching the family grow up.

But back here in the Great Land, folks have been busy, being Alaskans. So let’s see what my fellow sourdoughs have been up to.

First up: Ew. The flesh-eating beetle business is booming in Alaska. Ew. Eww.

Before he had millions of flesh-eating beetles, Ron Sheldon’s taste in insects was more conventional.
“I’ve always been a bee person. I grew up with bees,” said Sheldon, a native of northern California.
He stood in his workshop, midway through removing superfluous toe bones from a black bear hide atop his fleshing table.
“This actually started by accident,” Sheldon said with nod toward the room, filled with animal heads and horns.
Sheldon uses beetles to strip flesh from skulls as part of his taxidermy and bone-cleaning business. Alaska has a rich tradition of taxidermy, and in the last several years the use of insects to aid the process has become a bigger part of it.

That’s unsettling. But that’s part of the taxidermy gig, as my taxidermist (yes, I have a taxidermist) would affirm. But it would seem to be clean, efficient and best, doesn't require the use of chemicals. I seem to remember reading that this is the method museums use, so it makes sense that taxidermists would do likewise.

Alaska Man score: 4.5 of 5 moose nuggets. Great for entrepreneurship. But the bugs. Eww.

With Thanksgiving just behind us, this seems appropriate.

For the last three years, Esther Sanderlin has been loading frozen turkeys onto her plane to drop them off to Alaskans who live off the road system.
“I was visiting our newest neighbor and they were talking about splitting a squirrel three ways for dinner, and how that didn’t really go very far,” Sanderlin said in an interview Monday. “And I just had a thought at that moment, ‘You know what, I’m going to airdrop them a turkey for Thanksgiving' because I recently rebuilt my first airplane with my dad and so I can do that really easily. During freeze up, you can’t really get around so you can’t travel out there, but you can fly as long as you don’t land.”
She got the idea from her time growing up in Skwentna.
“We had a friend, a neighbor who would air-drop turkeys to my family and to other families in the neighborhood,” she said. “That was just such a huge impact on my life and others in the community.”

There’s a WKRP in Cincinnati “As God is my witness, I swear I thought turkeys could fly” joke in there somewhere. But seriously, this is the holiday spirit as well as Alaska neighborliness in action here.

Alaska Man score: 5 moose nuggets. Well done.

Now, once in a while, you run across a headline that makes you look twice. And then again. This is one of those:

Anchorage Fire Department asks residents not to explode frozen turkeys in hot grease this Thanksgiving

They aren’t kidding, either.

This year, Anchorage officials are relaying to residents some basic steps they can take to avoid burning their property or fouling their plumbing.
One message they want to drive home: If you’re going to deep fry a turkey, be sure not to ignite a gigantic grease fire.
“You want to make sure your turkey is completely thawed,” said Lexi Trainer, public information officer for the Anchorage Fire Department.
Trainer stood before the singed remains of a plump turkey carcass that a few minutes prior had been engulfed in flames. In an effort to spread the word about common seasonal cooking dangers, a firefighter used a long metal rod to dunk a partially frozen turkey into a pot of very hot peanut oil outside AFD’s training facility. The cooking station was promptly enveloped in a tall, hissing plume of fire.

Well, it’s a fair warning. A couple of summers ago, Talkeetna’s famous halibut taco cart exploded, for reasons I’m unaware of but am pretty sure had to do with the propane tank under the cart. It blew out windows up and down Talkeetna’s main drag and the cart was a write-off; the taco cart never returned.

So, yes, having food explode is bad.

Alaska Man score: 5 moose nuggets. Yes, let’s listen to good advice on avoiding exploding food.

And, for our last piece: Enjoy some great Alaska photos from November.

Alaska Man score: 5 moose nuggets, because, beautiful pictures of the Great Land.

Now then, let’s talk about snow!