How low can it go …
Our fellow low-tide fans will want to know that a 3.6-foot “minus tide” is on the way just after noon tomorrow, and the afternoon low tide on Saturday is almost that low too. (Check the tide chart here.) If you’d like to explore Saturday’s low tide with an expert guide, West Seattle-based naturalist Stewart Wechsler is promoting an all-ages “Beach Safari” across from Me-Kwa-Mooks, 12:30-2:30 pm — it’s a Seattle Parks program so you need to preregister through Camp Long (by phone @ 206-684-7434).
More great pix
As Earth Day meanders toward evening … two photo posts from WS-based bloggers:
-At Beach Drive Blog, Rhonda captured the graceful great blue herons often seen at water’s edge (especially at low tide).
-At Alki Beach Walks, Cathy captured some of Alki’s Sunday morning beauty.
Need the wisdom of the masses
Two Three (adding one since original post) questions arrived in the e-mailbox today. We have some thoughts on the first two but not a clue on the second third, so we’re throwing them out to the wonderful WSB readership to answer via comments on this post:
#1 — A new WS arrival wants to plant a vegetable garden and is looking for advice on “good times to plant, and good vegetables that thrive here.” (We had success with cabbage, lettuce, and spinach some years back. Planting time would be now, though, since those are mostly cool-season veggies. What else?)
#2 (added 10:16 pm) — A local family is moving from one WS location to another and plans to handle it themselves. Recommendations for who to use for trucks/etc. for self-moving? (We had a good experience with the 35th/Morgan U-Haul, but that was loooong ago.)
#3 — Someone else reports a woodpecker “attacking” their house. For now, they put a rock in the resulting hole (photo below), but they’re wondering what else they can do to discourage it from further attacks.
Alki seal snapshot
Thanks to Shane Marr for sending this photo of the harbor-seal pup who’s been the center of attention on Alki (larger images on his site). We haven’t been able to make it to the beach; any updates on its status, please add a comment or e-mail us — thanks!
What to do if you see a seal
Got a note from someone concerned about a baby seal that turned up out of the water on Alki, and wondering what to do in a situation like that. Authorities’ advice: Leave it alone, until and unless at least 36 hours have gone by; seal moms sometimes leave their babies on a beach so they can go look for food, and they’ll be back. If you think that much time has gone by, or you think it’s injured or otherwise in imminent danger, there’s a hotline at 206-526-6733. (And lots more information here.)
A sight to see
Fauntleroy Creek (across from the ferry dock) is worth a visit sometime soon if it’s not someplace you regularly visit. Not only is salmon season revving up, it’s also the annual blooming time for the official favorite flower of WSB, Darwin’s barberry, which comprises an entire hedge at the creek overlook but still hasn’t caught on as a garden plant (aside from a spray on Genesee Hill, one along Beach Drive, and one along Fauntleroy; let us know if you’ve seen others).
At long last, another WS webcam
Given the natural splendor of West Seattle, we’re endlessly puzzled as to why more webcams aren’t up around here. The list on our WS Cams page has stayed relatively unchanged for months. Last summer, a volleyball group had an Alki cam up for a while, but even that went away. Finally, today, someone put up another live WS cam: the West Seattle Birdcam. Just a backyard and a bird feeder, but we’ll give ’em an A for effort, and add them to the cams page. Let us know if there’s something out there we’re missing — we keep looking!
What lies beneath
You’ve seen the divers just off Seacrest a million times. But unless you too have gone into the water — way into the water — you probably haven’t seen what they’ve seen. One is kindly sharing a recent Seacrest six-gill shark sighting with the world via this webpost, featuring video (note that besides the embedded player, there’s a link at the very bottom to a high-res version).
Eagle-eyed
What a great note to get — from a relatively “new” West Seattleite, who wanted to share the wonder of seeing a bald eagle flying over The Junction today. We still marvel at the sight ourselves, even after all these years; we get frequent flybys up here, but the most recent sighting to thrill us was down on Beach Drive, the last morning our power was out, when a friend with a killer view let us drop by and clean up … before we left, an eagle buzzed our pal’s balcony almost within touching distance. The unfortunate flip side of life for our local eagles is that seagulls and crows pester them to no end, as our e-mail correspondent noticed, writing that “two angry adult seagulls” were in pursuit of The Junction’s eagle. (Honestly, have you ever seen a seagull that didn’t look/sound ticked off about something?)
Their existence is not the problem
Oh good heavens, today’s Times opens up the coyote can-o-worms yet again. Can we just say one more time … PLEASE. DON’T. LET. YOUR. CATS. ROAM. OUTSIDE. EVER. PERIOD. Coyotes are not even remotely the worst threat they face. Human-linked threats (such as cars) are a zillion times worse. We’ve shared our lives with eight cats so far (no, not all at once) … all perfectly happy, safe, and healthy in the house (or apartment).
Gone too far
Two sightings tonight on our side of West Seattle have us in eye-rolls:
(1) A set of teardown-turned-condos on the east side of Cali Ave now bears a name on a big advertising banner: “NOMO 12.” Took us a block or two to figure out that “NOMO” has nothing to do with Hideo the baseball player or Stan Boreson’s basset. Though we can’t find an online reference to confirm this, it HAS to be “NoMo” as in “North of Morgan (Junction),” a la all those pretentious names you find in NYC, Belltown, other trendy or wannabe-trendy neighborhoods. Cringe.
(2) Someone has peppered power poles on the south end of Cali Ave with laminated bright red flyers shouting, COYOTE WARNING/MULTIPLE COYOTE SIGHTINGS IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD/KEEP PETS INDOORS! Heaven & stars, all the flyer’s missing is a picture of Wile E. Coyote with a big circle/slash “no” symbol through his face. We suppose “keep pets indoors” is a more appropriate exhortation than oh, say, “shoot on sight,” but really now. The anti-wildlife hysteria is a little out of control. Keep your pets indoors is a great idea so they won’t get run over; that’s a bigger threat than hungry wildlife. Hmm, maybe we’ll go make up some flyers along the lines of CAR WARNING/MULTIPLE CAR SIGHTINGS IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD/KEEP PETS INDOORS …
Day on the water
Despite not being boat owners, we managed to get out on the water anyway — started the day with a ferry ride, ended it with a Water Taxi trip.
Inbetween, some snags and some sightings:
SNAG: Wanted to have lunch at the new Cactus on Alki. We even called — twice — to make sure it would be open for lunch. We were assured yes, it would be. Then we showed up … nope, not open. Through the open roller doors, workers told us, no, it would only be open tonight for dinner. Bummer. We proceeded to Bamboo, which we’d never tried, believe it or not. (Having now tried it, I don’t believe we were missing anything. The sand under the outdoor tables is a nice touch, but the food was meh.)
SNAG: Since we planned to be downtown a few hours, we were glad to hear the Water Taxi was running into the evening. Unfortunately, we discovered belatedly that its transit connections did NOT run into the evening — the shuttle to the Junction stopped about half an hour before we returned, and no regular Metro buses were running past Seacrest. If we hadn’t had someone to call for a ride home, we’d still be walking.
SIGHTING: Still not entirely sure what kind of store “Divina” (north of Hotwire & its adjoining dentists) is meant to be, but it’s now posted as opening tomorrow.
SIGHTING: Interesting things tacked to the front glass of Liberty Bell Printing — a frantic note pleading for the new Homestead menus not to be printed because of some kind of error — and a month-old “lost bird” flyer that says the bird FLEW THE COUP. (Which coup was that, I wonder — have to go catch up on my international news.)
SIGHTING: Dall’s porpoises from the ferry, jumping fish from the Water Taxi. What a cool life.
Coyote controversy, the sequel
The Schmitz Park coyote flap seems to be raging on in the WS Herald letters to the editor. One letter today points readers to the Friends of Schmitz Park website, which we hadn’t been aware of before.
You may recall, this latest round was touched off when coyotes made off with a dog briefly left alone in a nearby yard. People whom we believe had a connection to the dog are leading a campaign to get rid of the coyotes and claiming that they will inevitably come after small humans in the area, once they are out of small animals.
First, we agree with them — no one should be leaving food out for the coyotes; feeding wild animals does them no favors. Two, we agree with one of this week’s Herald letter-writers; cats (and other pets) belong indoors, and not only if you live near a park or greenbelt. We’ve had cats all our life, they’ve always been indoor cats, and they’ve lived long, healthy, happy lives. If you still choose to let your cats roam outside, they face worse threats than coyotes (or other wildlife).
Three, get the facts about coyote-human attacks. Rare. As this site points out, hundreds of people are killed by so-called “domestic” dogs every year. Anybody calling to ban them? Didn’t think so. So here on our tiny corner of an online soapbox, we’re standing to say, it’s not easy or convenient or perfectly safe to live in an area where we are blessed with some of the last swaths of urban sort-of-semi-wilderness in America. But we can deal with it without exterminating/evicting everything that doesn’t happen to be a cute, tiny, theoretically harmless “wild” creature. The animals don’t have a choice of where to go or what to do. We do. To quote the state site we have linked above (which you can also find from the Friends of Schmitz Park site, which elsewhere displays one of the anti-coyote letters):
Coyote behavior is based on instinctual programming for survival that is centuries old. As intelligent beings, individual coyotes can learn new ways to obtain the food, water, and shelter they need to survive. But coyote needs aren’t going to change.
However, human “needs” to set garbage on the curb, leave dog food outside, or put the cat out at night, can and should be re-examined. If humans want to peacefully coexist with these fascinating wild animals, it’s up to humans to change.
If you are interested in more advice on how to do that, here’s excellent information from the Humane Society of the United States.
Sunday afternoon miscellany
-If you have a small child in the house, something new turned up at the WS Farmers’ Market today … fresh, local, vegetarian food for babies or toddlers.
-For the produce we didn’t find at the Farmers’ Market, we dropped by Tony’s on 35th. Great prices — beautiful apples for 99 cents a pound, mushrooms for $2.50. Kinda fascinating that the guy who runs it is the president of the Burien-area sewer district.
-Further north on 35th, we noticed the “Mars Hill West Seattle, Coming Soon” sign up at Doxa. According to the MH Web site, the dedication was just the other night.
-Also as we cruised northward on 35th, a wildlife sighting … one of our majestic national symbols, being pestered by crows. Common, I know, but always mesmerizing, as the crows are so much smaller than the eagles, yet so brazen about this behavior.
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