Meet The State Bird

I’m not sure that this is a topic we’ve covered on the blog before, but it’s high time we’ve mentioned it. Moments after walking into our new house in Goodnews we met the state bird of Alaska. Since then, we’ve had weekly encounters. I’m sure these aren’t pleasant encounters for the bird, but we surely enjoy them. Now, you may be wondering which state bird I’m referring to and that would be the ciivak, (pronounced g-back), known to many of you as the common housefly. We have never seen so many flies in our lives. Just when you think they are all gone one more starts buzzing around. For all of you Breaking Bad fans we’ve had many a Walt moment when seeking to eradicate all of the flies from our house, the school and our co-worker’s house.

For your viewing pleasure: here is a series of pictures that show Ben and me killing flies in his kitchen. They were so bad I was afraid to leave any of the food out uncovered! These things are everywhere! On the positive side they move pretty slow and are usually easy to kill.

Getting mail here in the village can sometimes be a pain and other times it seems to work just like mail does in the lower 48. We have a Post Office that is open 6 days a week M-F 9-12 and 1-5 and Saturday from 1-5. However, there are times when you make a trip to the post office only to find the door locked and not a soul who knows why it isn't open. Most of the everyday mail comes on small Cessna 207 planes with larger items coming on bigger cargo planes. Naturally, if the weather is poor no mail comes in or goes out. After a day or two of no planes there is usually a surplus of mail and mail planes as they try to catch up. We've experienced shipping boxes home via priority 2 day mail that have taken 2+ weeks to get home. What you should know is that since the mail leaves the village on the small planes it's not the post master's job to get the mail to the plane. Getting the mail to the plane is the job of the Yute Village Agent. This person takes the mail to the plane and delivers the mail to the post office. As you can see there are several opportunities for mail to get misplaced. Now for a picture of the inside of our Post Office. This just might be why it takes a few days to get packages. Often we can tell by the tracking that the package is in the post office but don't get it for another day or two.