Whale Time!

Good evening Loyal Blog Readers,

Welcome to this special edition of GITT (Gusties in the Tundra). I'm your host, "Brit to the Holm".

News was spread across the slope earlier this morning on NPR that the first Barrow whale was landed yesterday at approximately 3:30pm. The wife of the whaling crew captain was ecstatic and praised the Lord for their catch. She mentioned that they would feed the community as soon as they got the whale into town. Yum yum maktak!

My classes were buzzing with talks about the length of the mammalian creature. "It's 29.4 feet long and it only took 5 minutes to pull out of the water!!" Usually, it can take as long as 4 hours to a whole day to pull the bowhead whale out of the water and 29 feet is a nice size whale, but with news of the first whale, many people came out to help pull out it making the job a whole lot faster. The entire community comes out to help and the whaling crew offers a small portion of whale meat in return of the favor. Point Lay also caught it's first whale and it's length was 30.1 feet. (My sources are VERY reliable).

I asked my students if they were going to go out and see it, but none of them said "yes." I was disappointed. There are red flags marking the trail to the lead where the whale is located. If I ONLY had a snow machine!!...and a gun...just in case I meet a polar bear....you never know.

In other Barrow news, the final results for the snow/ice sculpture came out and the snow sculpture that we built placed 6th. I was not very happy with the extension and the combination of the male and female groups at the last second--we would have originally placed 3rd and won a gas card.

Keep on reading!

Peace, Love, and Whaling,
Brit

UPDATE: The whaling crew "Aries" (check for spelling) was the crew that landed the first whale. The whale was harpooned right near the edge of the ice...a true illustration that the whale "gives itself" to the crew if they are worthy. I hear that on the edge of the ice, there's ocean as far as you can see...a sight that I really want to see soon.