This is Alaska, and this is our local wildlife, any questions?

As winter creeps down the Chugach Mountains and the grizzly bears start the move toward their dens, wildlife biologists and others have begun to contemplate whether the city's summer of bears was an aberration or the face of what is to come.

Never before had sprawling urbanization collided so visibly with Big Wild Life. Two people were mauled in the Anchorage Bowl, where no previous maulings had taken place. Another was mauled not far from downtown Eagle River. And a huge grizzly boar was struck and killed by an automobile on a Midtown street. Runners and mountain bikers were chased or confronted by grizzlies in Hillside parks.

"Who knows what this means," said Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Sean Farley. "I don't have a Ouija board for bears."

Two things spring to mind here.

One, how did the McCain campaign ever think they could come up here and intimidate Alaskans when this is the kind of scary shit we deal with on a daily basis? I mean, really!

Two, I have to immediately go and purchase a Ouija board for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. Because anything that might keep me from jumping out of my skin every time I hear a twig snap is a good investment in my book.