WHEREAS, the 89th annual meeting of the American Society of Mammalogists was held at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, 25-28 June 2009; and
WHEREAS, the local committee, in an impressive demonstration of organizational efficiency, managed to fit the entire meeting into a single day; and
WHEREAS, mammalogists from the lower 48 came ready to party all night, and many are still wondering when to start; and
WHEREAS, Link Olson's nefarious plot to downsize the ASM bureaucracy by assigning a room for the Board meeting too small to accommodate all the participants, no electrical outlets for laptop computers, and ordering lunch for only half the participants was foiled by President McLaren's excellent leadership; and
WHEREAS, President McLaren discovered that Board meetings can be much, much shorter when someone points out that the issue they were debating for 2 hours was voted on and decided 10 years ago; and
WHEREAS, like the Board meeting, the Members' Meeting was a model of efficiency and ended early; we just wish that Hugh Genoways could have been here to explain to us how this could have happened; and
WHEREAS, Jenn Smith taught us that for female hyenas, sister power is no laughing matter; Sean Neiswenter showed that publicly refuting a hypothesis previously published by your major professor does not always result in a painful death; Quinn Shurtliff discovered that some females will mate with any male put in front of them; Andrew Edelman informed the students in the audience that Natural Selection wants you to stay home and mooch off your mom; and Jake Esselstyn showed that failing to reject a hypothesis rejected by everybody else could win you a prestigious award; and
WHEREAS, Mark Brigham succeeded in giving a “totally s****y” talk, and sent mammalogists scurrying back to their PowerPoints; and
WHEREAS, for some reason, none of the speakers for the rest of the meeting would touch the wooden pointer; and
WHEREAS, Chris Dickman taught the males in the audience that although “Big Bang Reproduction” might sound like a good idea, sometimes a cold shower might
extend your survival; and
WHEREAS, if you are ever assigned a 50-min speaking time but only have about 20 minutes of information to present, you should ask Mike Mares to introduce you; and
WHEREAS, the long, linear feature identified by Google Earth as the Alaska pipeline was really the breakfast line for the UAF dining hall; and
WHEREAS, the instructions for Elevator Etiquette informed us about the importance of personal space, but didn't tell us how to position those little white towels while traveling between floors to and from the showers in the morning; and
WHEREAS, mammalogists assumed the “no alcohol” signs in the dorms indicated places to stack their empties; and
WHEREAS, ASM members got that the twisty stuff on the back of the program and T-shirts was DNA, but couldn't figure out whether it was supposed to represent caribou antlers or a bicornuate uterus; and
WHEREAS, we greatly appreciated the eyeshades with the printed eyes, allowing us to pretend we were still awake during the Members' Meetings; and
WHEREAS, the local committee saved Gail Michener's reputation by correcting the spelling of “squirrel” in the title of her abstract, but the next Mammal Species of the World will have to add a new entry for the “gog-nosed skunk”; and
WHEREAS, you know you're in Alaska when the Run for Research starts at a ski hut, and runners cross the finish in record time after being pursued for 5 k by hordes of giant Pleistocene mega-mosquitoes; and
WHEREAS, the open bars every day were a mammalogist's dream come true, and almost made up for the airfare; and
WHEREAS, the local committee used the ASM membership to test the loading capacity of the staircase in the Museum of the North, and if the worst happened, hoped it might open up some job opportunities down in the lower 48; and
WHEREAS, we wonder what part of Link Olson's shady past gave him the idea of holding up a number in front of you while you get your ID photo taken; and
WHEREAS, many ASM members were relieved that between the social in the Museum of the North and the picnic at Pioneer Park, Alaskans discovered fire and learned to cook their fish; and
WHEREAS, in the Home Range Symposium, we learned from Joel Brown that even plants have a home range, plunging organizer Roger Powell further into the deep pit of despair over coming up with a Universal Definition; and
WHEREAS, Joe the Polar Bear proposed a brilliant solution to the problem of global warming; and
WHEREAS, now that Ed Heske is no longer Journal Editor, the role of God has officially been passed to Ron Barry, but Ed can still appear in white; and
WHEREAS, we thoroughly enjoyed the great food, warm hospitality, open bars, cool exhibits in the Museum of the North, perky red squirrels, fierce tundra voles, red foxes, moose, and muskoxen;
THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED that the American Society of Mammalogists meeting at their 89th annual meeting at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska, 25-28 June 2009, gives our enthusiastic thanks to Link Olson, Kris Huntermark, Brandy Jacobsen, Hayley Lanier, and the rest of the local committee for a stimulating, fun-filled meeting, and we hope they'll invite us back to the great state of Alaska before another 20 years.