Another fascinating specimen seen on the beach this morning during my walk with Lucy. Big as a Frisbee.
Later in the morning I left our beach house to return to Anchorage, and about forty miles north of Seward I remembered I left the coffee maker on, one without an automatic shutoff. I briefly considered going back to unplug it, but decided against it thinking what’s the worse that can happen? — the house will stink like burnt coffee when we go down this weekend, or maybe the carafe will be cracked or so badly caked with burnt coffee it will be unusable. Still, when I got home I googled “mrcoffee shutoff fire.” The top hit was a forum where someone had asked if they should be concerned about having left their coffee maker on for three days, if it might cause a fire.
Reply #3 said:
If it doesn’t have automatic shutoff, you should be very worried. The apartment below ours left their pot on overnight, and by the morning there was a fire. The smoke smell was terrible. Please, get someone into your place to turn it off.
Great — that’s all I needed to hear! Fortunately, I found the phone number of our new neighbors who live in Seward year round. They were happy to help us. I gave them the number to the combination lock on the house, and asked that they call me to confirm I had in fact left the coffee maker on. Minutes later they called me back to say I had, and that already (only 4 hours) the carafe was badly burned and the house smelled like burned coffee.
And then they asked if I had seen the black bear wandering the beach while I was out with Lucy. Uh, no, I didn’t. Evidently it was spotted out there only minutes after Lucy and I returned to the house. Pretty late in the season to be seeing bears out ‘n about.
I wondered if black bears eat frozen Jellyfish.