Alaska, the Undoing of Tom's Tribe

A grizzly would find Ali to be a nuisance.

I've been watching with great interest "The Alaska Experiment" on the Discovery Channel. On the website HERE, we meet the four groups of volunteers for the experiment in the Alaskan wild for a three-month survival tour. After watching the first episodes, I wonder how much longer the dad and his two college-age daughters can stand one another. If I were the dad of the two girls, I would lock them out of the shelter and leave them for the bears. If you've seen the show, you would understand why I feel this way.

(Reference: See my cast of characters in the right-hand column) Now, I wonder how I would fare in this show with, say, the Wolf Woman as my partner. Now the Wolf Woman loves animals, especially wolves, and very especially cats (she has five, and feeds a stray outside regularly). Wolf Woman and I would probably lose a lot of weight; both of us would find it very difficult to kill an animal. In fact, the Wolf Woman doesn't even kill cockroaches in her house, preferring to "lead" them out the door, as she says. But she does like to cook, so maybe I could look for the carcass of an already-killed animal in the wilds.

Or if I did the show with Princess and Red Chief. The Chief would want to go out and play with the animals or have a snowball fight, while the Princess, once the initial rations were gone, would be ready to go home. I can hear her now: "Dad, the Princess doesn't want to be eaten by a bear."

Or, with Tim and his faithful hound Ali Baba. Ali loves snow, and to see him prance around in a deep snow is a laugh riot. So, he would probably love Alaska, and would be a pretty good watchdog. I would expect a lot of barking at bears and other critters. Tim would want to know where he could get a Marie Callender pot pie or where the nearest fast food place was.

And if it were just me and Maddie . . . well . . . Maddie would cower in a corner of a cabin and not be seen for the entire winter, except occasionally to sit in a sun spot.

Considering all this, I think I'll just stay in the wilds of central Illinois.