Pikes/Pines | What your feathered friends need on a below freezing Capitol Hill

A Spotted Towhee looking out from food and shelter on a frozen day. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

We might not be able to translate Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs directly to our fellow creatures – afterall we don’t know how much things like belonging matter to a Northern Flicker. But it goes without saying that our feathered neighbors on the Hill all need food, water, and shelter above all else.

With some of the lowest temperatures in decades upon us, it’s a good time to remember what it takes for birds on the Hill to survive. Wild and free they may be and the list might seem simple, but boy, it’s real out there.

For birds, freshwater can be the hardest thing for birds to find when the temperature dips. What collects in a small indentation on a sidewalk or light morning dew can provide enough for a bird like a Song Sparrow, but freezing weather frequently takes this access away. If you want to help birds and other animals during periods of cold weather – give them access to water and find a way to keep it from freezing. Continue reading

Puppies, live music, and beer — Boneyard indoor dog park and tavern coming to the Central District

 

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Dogs love beer including this good one we spotted at Chuck’s (Image: CHS)

The Central Seattle dog park experience is about to change with the addition of Boneyard, an indoor dog park and tavern set to join S Jackson.

Dagmar Rehse, dog lover and Boneyard owner, wanted to create a way for Seattleites and their furry friends to spend and enjoy time together away from their homes — even when it is raining cats and dogs in the city.

“Nine months out of the year you see these dog owners going to dog parks and suffering in the elements to let their dogs play,” Rehse said. “I wanted to create something more comfortable for the humans while their dogs are frolicking around.”

The new space at the corner of 26th and Jackson will be an indoor dog park and tavern, with boarding and doggy daycare for the dogs, and a bar for their owners to play “drink” at. While Rehse doesn’t live in the area, she did notice that the dog friendly neighborhood was missing this kind of hangout. It is also in an area beyond the higher rent neighborhood cores where the rent on a 3,267-square-foot space needed to give rover room to run pencils out.

And while there are many dog-friendly drinking venues around the Central District and Capitol Hill, the Boneyard is the only one centered on making a great, safe space for canine companions. It will also offer something no other beer hall around can offer — fur baby babysitting for dog owners who want a break while they crack a cold one.

Boneyard will be the first space that Rehse has opened, built by her love for dogs and a wish for a place where dog and owner can enjoy themselves together outside of their home. Continue reading

How Urban Animal plans to become nation’s first worker-owned veterinary co-op — and what it means for the people who care for Capitol Hill fur babies

(Image: Urban Animal)

(Image: Urban Animal)

 

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After more than a decade of providing walk-in veterinary care to Capitol Hill, Urban Animal will be transitioning to a co-op business model — the first of its kind in the nation. Drawing from 24 years of veterinary experience, founder Cherri Trusheim is responding to her observations of increasing corporatization and high levels of burnout within the industry.

“It is an emotionally taxing field to work in and sometimes the job lifespan isn’t too long,” Trusheim said. “We’re having a hard time finding veterinary professionals because corporate has come in and designed these jobs for them in a way that’s not sustainable.”

Trusheim’s vision for the cooperative emphasizes giving employees a say in how they provide veterinary care and other business decisions. The business will be owned by workers, which is different from other co-op models, where ownership falls on the consumers or producers of the product. Trusheim says there’s a lot of variance between each cooperative.

“For me, it was really that governance piece. Giving people a voice and not just giving them money,” Trusheim said. “Really having a voice at the table because burnout is, that feeling of overwhelm coupled with helplessness, you just don’t feel like there’s anything you can do to make it different.” Continue reading

Urban Animal — including its Capitol Hill clinic — set to become state’s nation’s first worker-owned veterinary co-op

Founded in 2012 on the edge of the First Hill “Pill Hill” medical neighborhood, Urban Animal is reorganizing as a cooperative and giving the chance to its 110 employees across three Seattle locations including Capitol Hill’s E Thomas to become owners of the veterinary clinic that serves more than 50,000 clients.

“The veterinary industry is in the eye of a perfect storm due to factors such as employee burnout and private equity buyouts, which are diminishing the number of qualified veterinary professionals,” Urban Animal founder and veterinarian Cherri Trusheim said in the announcement. “Urban Animal is presenting this groundbreaking solution to set the bar for the industry and beyond.” Continue reading

The Volunteer Park deer are welcome to stay as long as they like

Thanks to some CHS neighbors for the picture

When the Duwamish called it Whulshootseed — crossing over — woodland creatures were commonplace. In 2023, it’s a little more special to see a doe and a yearling on Capitol Hill.

Thanks to the neighborhood tipsters for the report on the two deer seen enjoying Volunteer Park. It isn’t clear when they arrived or for how long they are going to stay but they seem healthy and happy so far. One report says deer had been recently been spotted around I-5 so the leafy park seems like a much better alternative.

Seattle Parks said it doesn’t have any issues with the visitors. Continue reading

Pikes/Pines | The Capitol Hill Superb Owl LVII Spectacular

A Barred Owl (Image: Brendan McGarry)

If I walked up to a random stranger on the street and said, “Hey, there’s a crow!” I suspect I would either be ignored or looked at with suspicion.

If instead I replaced “crow” with “owl,” I can almost guarantee that I would receive an entirely different reaction. Whether this is because of Harry Potter or because owls look a touch more relatable than other birds (with big heads, large forward facing eyes they might remind us of ourselves), we know and generally like owls. Owls are beautiful, mysterious, and interesting.

Yet, most owls are not very conspicuous and a vast majority of them are nocturnal. A lot of people have never or only rarely seen one in real life. On an average day on the Hill, you are not likely to see an owl. But what if you wanted to? Continue reading

The Capitol Hill New Year’s coyotes are back (they never left)

A Capitol Hill coyote spotted in January 2022

Late December and early January reports of Capitol Hill coyotes are an annual tradition.

CHS has received multiple reports of coyote sightings around Volunteer Park to start the new year.

One spotted Wednesday morning in the park was “maybe 40 lbs and completely brazen” according to a CHS reader who emailed us about the canine.

Cold temperatures means more roaming and hunting during daylight hours. In January 2022, CHS reported on sightings of coyotes on patrol in the area and making their way between greenbelts. A Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesperson told us then that coyotes are common year-round in Seattle greenbelts and parks — “whether people see them or not.”

The 2023 reports around Seattle include Capitol Hill and nearby Montlake but also spaces like the public Jefferson Park golf course have put up signs recently warning people of the presence of the wildlife. Continue reading

First Hill’s Vito’s puts up $1K reward for safe return of Cougar Room mascot after Thanksgiving weekend break-in

(Image: Vito’s)

First Hill nightclub Vito’s is offering a $1,000 reward for the return of its mountain lion.

Barbara, the big taxidermied puma that has been a centerpiece in the club’s Cougar Room, was ripped off in a break-in at the First Hill joint that has been shuttered since a June fire damaged its E Madison building.

“This weekend thieves broke into Vito’s and among other things, smashed the glass and STOLE our beloved cougar in the COUGAR ROOM,” Vito’s posted about the Thanksgiving weekend heist. “The photos are much too depressing to post, but we suspect these idiots will try and sell, or at least brag about the theft of this antique, large and beautiful mountain lion.” Continue reading

Pikes/Pines | That sound you heard over Capitol Hill in the middle of the night might have been a bird

A bird’s eye view of Capitol Hill at night (Image: CHS)

Despite sirens, airplanes, and the overall hum of the city, it is still possible to hear them traveling overhead at night. Not every bird calls during migration, but I expect to hear the thin “seeps” of sparrows and plaintive whispers of thrushes when I step outside on an ideal night in the spring or fall. The weeks between the end of September and just about now are peak travel times for birds pouring south for their wintering grounds. The night before writing this, around 300,000 birds moved over King County.

On a good night, with a full moon, you might even be able to peer at it with binoculars and catch a few birds passing by. One time I caught a small heron, probably a Green Heron, highlighted by a full moon. But that’s not how an estimate of migrating birds happens. In this case I logged into an incredible new website called BirdCast, which uses weather, radar, and a big ol’ heap of machine learning and big data to both forecast and understand migratory patterns of birds. Continue reading

Pikes/Pines | Behold the spectacular Capitol Hill neighborhood jumping spider, man

The spider in question — likely in the genus Phanias. (Image: Brendan McGarry)

My mind was drifting on a recent September afternoon. I was stationed at a check-in table for a work event, waiting for my next group of attendees, thinking about not much and everything all at once. And I looked down and saw someone staring up at me.

Rarely do I feel as though I am being truly looked at and pondered by any creature other than human. Of course there are deeply varying worldviews and lines of philosophical and scientific inquiry swirling about this notion. But ultimately, I notice a difference between when a robin looks at me and when say, a jumping spider does.

I was looking down at a jumping spider looking up with what seemed just as much intent. Not running away, nor poised to leap away. Whether I am anthropomorphizing or not, it felt as if we were just calmly looking at one another with a bit of curiosity.

I have written about spiders on Pikes/Pines before — mostly in an effort to dispel the myths about their level of threat to humans on the Hill. While I want to say flat out that you don’t need to be overly fearful of any spiders in Seattle, you certainly don’t need to be afraid of jumping spiders. The jumping spiders around Capitol Hill either will not or cannot harm us without significant effort on our part. But that’s not the point of this writing, instead consider how spectacular they are.

The family Salticidae, the jumping spiders, is the most diverse group of spiders in the world.

Continue reading