20 years ago

Another bear was killed in defense of life and property near Homer Saturday after the bear got inside a resident’s chicken coop on Roger’s Loop Drive and charged the homeowner when he tried to scare it off. So far this year, five bears, including two brown bears, have been killed in defense of life and property, or DLP, in the Homer area — up slightly from the three black bears killed around town a year ago. This year’s bear killings have followed a pattern that has been repeated for years on the Kenai Peninsula: Bears get food from humans and the bears wind up dead.

— From the issue of July 21, 2005

30 years ago

Walk into Buoyland off Skyline Drive and it seems that you may never know what you’ll find. There are buoys —glass Japanese gillnet floats, fluorescent orange plastic crab floats, an antique buoy made from a wooden barrel, wooden Maine lobster floats and a huge black fender buoy weighing thousands of pounds. In Buoyland, as founder Thom Moreau spells it, they hang from trees like Christmas ornaments. Moreau’s alter ego, Buoyman, first appeared two years ago in the Homer Winter Carnival parade. Moreau says he wanted to enter a float, and thought about covering his pickup truck with buoys. “But that was too much work, so I just covered myself,” he says.

— From the issue of July 20, 1995