Breakfast and Bears and Bumbershoots, Oh My!

Enumclaw High School students may have been home on mid-winter break this week but the EHS Commons was a festive sight Wednesday morning during the annual Enumclaw Garden Club Breakfast for the Birds.

Event chair Diane Franchini estimated there were about 190 tickets sold, and members from all 12 garden clubs of the Chinook District in Washington were in attendance. According to the website of the Washington State Federation of Garden Clubs, the clubs consist of Auburn, Des Moines, Eastbrook, Enumclaw, Lake Meridian, Maple Trails, Marine Hills, O’Brien, Parkside, Southgate, Sunset View and Three Tree Point.

This year's theme was 'Bears and Bumbershoots,' which is a departure from the club's 46-year Hat Parade tradition, said Franchini.

The breakfast tradition began as a brunch in 1964 by a group called The Gay Bonnets and featured a hat parade. In time, the Gay Bonnets evolved into the Enumclaw Garden Club which organizes the Breakfast for the Birds each year.

Instead, Franchini said, members this year decorated umbrellas to parade for fellow members. The change was, in part, due to some uncertainty early on over when the breakfast might occur -- particularly as if it had been pushed to the spring, the rain and 'bumbershoots' theme seemed appropriate, she said. 

Members decorated umbrellas as part of a Bumbershoot Fashion Parade and voted for their favorites. Winners received an umbrella with UV protection and the sales of which went to benefit breast cancer awareness, Franchini said.

This year's breakfast was catered by and in the last 12 years the event has also featured a raffle and silent auction with items donated this year form local businesses such as Country Garden Bouquets, Hy-Grass Farms and Scarecrow's Pride. 

Proceeds from the event were going to a number of organizations and projects including Trees for the Trail, Make a Difference Day, Community Enhancement Project(s), Habitat for Humanity Landscaping, Young Life and the Karelian Bear Dog Program.

That last project rounds out the 'Bears' part of this year's theme as members heard guest speaker, local Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife officer Bruce Richards share some funny, poignant and heartwarming stories about working with a Karelian bear dog named Mishka who easily stole the show.

Franchini described Richards' address as explaining the role of the dogs in locating and saving bears that 'wander into our backyards.'

Karelian bear dogs like Mishka were historically bred to hunt bears and moose and came from Finland, Richards said. (See this Animal Planet video for more on this breed.)

Mishka, in fact, is the pioneering dog in the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife Karelian Bear Dog Program, which began in 2003.

Richards told the audience of Mishka's role in helping to capture a bear that swam from Vashon Island and meandered into Kent in 2007.

He shared some video footage and photography of Mishka in action. When handling bears, this was how state Fish and Wildlife describes Richard's and Mishka's work:

Officer Richards engaged Mishka in numerous on site “hard releases” (a non-lethal process that reinstalls a black bear’s natural fear of humans) that for a number of reasons is much-preferred to lethal removal or capture and relocation. Officer Richards estimates an 80% success rate on the black bear he “hard released” this past spring and summer.

Mishka's also aided in a number of enforcement actions, Richards said, including helping to make the case to charge Robert Hurst, of Woodland, for shooting a Roosevelt elk inside Olympic National Park in 2007. Hurst was reportedly seen by another hunter carrying the elk head outside the park but there were no remains or other way to prove that he had killed the animal on protected land, Richards said. Eleven months after Hurst was reported, Mishka was able to locate the elk's remains in a steep and inhospitable area of the park and tissue left on the bones of the animal connected it to Hurst.

Mishka also helped to collect two frightened cougar cubs in Mason County this past fall after they're mother was shot and killed by a deer hunter. "That's my job," Richards said, to groans from the audience that it was a father and son who were out together and the father shot her. "...dealing with idiots."

Thanks to the many successes Mishka has been able to help bring to the organization, Fish and Wildlife has grown the Karelian Bear Dog Program to include six dogs throughout the state, Richards said. A lot of the cost for caring for the dogs come from donations; their handlers take care of their veterinary care. The state puts no money into the program, he said.

In part to support the program, Richards has written a children's book entitled Columbus, The Exploring Bear and garden club members were quick to snatch up the limited copies.

If you'd like to learn more about the Karelian Bear Dog Program or make a contribution, visit the state Fish and Wildlife website for more information.