Rugged week for Alaskans, big and little

The next day, while still trying to comprehend the horror those children must have endured, I went to Alaska Mill and Feed for their Pet New Year event. I was there with the Alaska Parrot Education and Adoption group.

At the event, I met lots of people with rescue dogs, cats and birds. They all spoke so lovingly of the animals in their homes. Another bird owner and I got into a discussion of how people think we eat healthy because we always have fruit and vegetables with us at checkout in the grocery store.

We don't mention that all that healthy food is for our birds and the bag of chips hiding in the back of the cart is more likely what we're going to eat.

In fact, last Friday while the snow piled up, I stared forlornly into my refrigerator wondering what to make for the company that was coming since I couldn't get out to shop. Thanks to my birds, I had all the ingredients for a healthy chicken vegetable soup and fruit salad.

Fate is a funny thing, isn't it? My birds, and the birds of everyone I met at Mill and Feed, are loved, fed, watered, bathed and attended to with great devotion. They are beautiful creatures that we are privileged to live with and we do our best to respect them and make them comfortable. But two little kids, infinitely more precious than words can express, somehow end up with someone who tries to destroy them before they even have a chance to learn about love and laughter, security and peace. It is just wrong, and unbearably heartbreaking.

Seems like last week was, all in all, a pretty rough one for Alaskans. You not only had the hurt children, you also had a mixed martial arts guy beat up a woman who didn't stand a chance against his strength and skill, who then set himself on fire. You had a man being stabbed to death in a downtown hotel.

You had another man die at Karluk Manor from, if not acute alcohol intoxication, then from the accumulated effects of years of alcoholic living on the streets. A barista, a beautiful young lady, was kidnapped from her workplace in a very public spot. As I write this column, we still don't know her fate.

All in all, it makes the insanity of the Republican nomination fight look like comic relief by comparison.

At first I wondered if maybe this winter wasn't just driving a lot of people over the edge. It's been snowier and colder than we're used to. It's been dark for a long time and the sun has been mostly absent. Has it all proven just too much for some?

In reading these stories, I can't help but feel that before their coda is written, we will hear the words drugs and alcohol more than once. My first thought on reading about the mixed martial arts person was, "roid rage." Or maybe I'm just hoping that will be the cause of what he did, both to himself and his victim. Because otherwise I would have to believe that he did it sober and that thought horrifies me.

Same with the Barrow case -- I have to hope that we find out the person who hurt those children was either drunk, drugged or both, because if he wasn't, then there truly are monsters in our midst. I've spent a lot of years working in a field where violence and abuse are common. Yet I'm still capable of being shocked by just how terrible people can be to each other.

My heart breaks for the heartbreak of the families affected. These events make me grateful that most Alaskans are good, kind and decent people. Otherwise the darkness would truly be unbearable.

Elise Patkotak is an Alaska writer and author of "Parallel Logic," a memoir of her 28 years in Barrow. Web site, www.elisepatkotak.com.