A bald eagle which has been at Northwest Trek Wildlife Park since 1976 died Thursday, the park announced.

Park zoologists believe the bird was 35 years old. A bald eagle can live up to 40 years in the wild and longer in captivity, according to the American Eagle Foundation.

The eagle first arrived at Northwest Trek with a gunshot injury. He recovered at the Eatonville-area park but couldn’t be released into the wild because of the injuries.
A necropsy to determine cause of death hasn’t been completed.

He was the park’s oldest animal. That title now belongs to one of the two male golden eagles, who was born in 1974.

Gray clouds blanketed the sky and pelted the campus of the University of Puget Sound with rain. The grass of Todd Field was totally saturated.

Sounds like a perfect time and place to dig through the garbage.

James Vance, a facilities services manager, picked through eight large bags full of trash from one of the Tacoma school’s residence halls Thursday morning. He stood over a blue tarp and separated all the refuse into two piles – the kind that’s recyclable but wound up in the regular trash can and the kind that is destined for the landfill.

“We’re trying to bring attention to what can be recycled,” he said. “I mean, there’s almost always a recycle bin right next to the trash can. Just throw it in there. Make that choice.”

The "garbology" event is part of UPS' Live Green Challenge, in which the entire student body is being asked to focus on sustainability. Vance will be back at Todd Field again at the end of the month with garbage bags from the same residence hall. Organizers hope to find fewer recyclables.

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Worker retraining enrollment at Tacoma Community College is up more than 20 percent from last year’s numbers. I decided to drop by the campus and talk to a few students about why they’re attending classes.

Glenda Smith-Stewart was a student at TCC in 1973 but left when he was presented with an opportunity to pursue her dream – to sing lead vocals for a seven-piece traveling band.

For the next eight years, she traveled the country seeing rhythm and blues and country music. She eventually returned to Tacoma and worked at a doctor’s office as a receptionist and referral coordinator – until last year, when she was laid off.

And now, at 54, she’s back at TCC to earn her associate degree in accounting.

“When I worked at the office, everything was structured,” she said Wednesday. “We just used specialized software. When I stopped working there, I needed to brush up on my technology. I felt like I was in the Dark Ages.”

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I'm at the University of Puget Sound this morning to write about garbology. Facilities service crews and sustainability committee members will go through garbage cans outside the school's residence halls and see how much recyclable stuff they find in the garbage. Should be fun.

Later today, I plan on swinging by Pierce College's Puyallup campus to continue my reporting about increased higher-ed enrollment.