Night 2 Results
The Skwentna to Finger Lake run is fairly straightforward, but can be made difficult by snow machine traffic wrecking the trail; occasionally dogs are injured on this stretch. This is a run filled with variation - starting on the Skwentna River, then cruising through some swamp and forest, across some meadows and lakes, and finally arriving at Finger Lake. It's generally uphill the whole way, but not severely so.
As our mushers pushed on, they began to incur the occasional dog injury. Two of our racers had to drop dogs related to trail injuries. One racer, however, put her expertise in dog-care to work and was able to restore a couple of Jjohnston's dogs to fit condition. Jj herself was able to fix up a couple dogs sufficiently well to continue the race. Good for her. Some other dogs appear to have been attacked and injured overnight.
In Cohort 1, somebody used some of the precious load capacity of the sled to haul along electronic monitoring gear, apparently, and sent up sentry cameras. Clever, but it didn't appear to matter much. Another of the Cohort 1 folks borrowed a move from another musher the previous evening and knitted booties for her team's dogs. Not an altogether bad plan.
Over in Cohort 2, pounding, sawing, and banging was heard for a while as someone apparently constructed crates to bed down their dogs, hoping the crates would offer protection.
Nearby Cohort 3, an observer found a litter of ridiculously cute Labrador puppies running around in the snow in the morning. They were captured and taken to a shelter, where they are awaiting adoption. It was reported that there were multiple adoptive families vying for each and every one of them. No word on what a litter of puppies was doing out on the trail.
In Cohort 5, they were telling stories of seeing an absurd figure creeping around their camps wearing full snow gear - complete with Groucho Marx glasses for identity protection. Go figure.
A goon in Cohort 6 decided that a snowball fight would lighten up the mood. Passersby (Mushersby?) rolled their eyes to see the supposedly serious mushers chucking snowballs at each other.
Somewhere amongst our players, an anonymous musher leveled a drug and booze accusation against another contestant, but a close reading of the rules revealed that there were insufficient grounds for a saliva or urine test, and so the accusation was ignored.
However, by morning the Iditarod Committee was forced to release news of two tragedies. Unrelated to the snowball fight, PetPony's body was found early in the morning as other mushers were getting their teams ready. Upon questioning, nearby mushers recalled seeing PetPony reaching into her gear to grab a can of her favorites - smoky weenies. They agree that she complained of difficulty breathing, mild double vision, some swallowing problems, and an increasing weakness in her limbs, but nobody viewed it as serious.
Ah... the dangers of home canning. Botulism is no fun, no fun at all. But at least PetPony died enjoying her little smokies. PetPony, who just wanted to be a therapy animal trainer, will never fulfill that dream.
The other tragedy came in Cohort 2, where "Team Italian Greyhound" leader SOV was found dead, lying spread-eagle in the middle of his camp. After hemming and hawing, authorities agreed that the death might be ruled suspicious because of the hand axe jutting from SOV's forehead and the surprised look on his face. It was quietly whispered behind the scenes that perhaps his lead dog - Petunia - was actually quite happy with the outcome, barking to any dog that would listen that she was "just too good for this ridiculous cold weather and wanted to go home anyway and this was NO place for an elegant lady like herself to be." Petunia's only regret is the realization that her owner - a dog masseur - would be unavailable for future massages.
There are still 21 remaining mushers in the race:
Cohort 1
Devyn (16)
Kaydubs (16)
dyachei (14)
wildcatj (16)
Cohort 2
bold text (16)
orcagirl (16)
SOV (15) - a musher who just wanted to help everyone out
nohika (16)
FH (16)
Cohort 3
equineconstant (16)
vetgirl4eva (15)
hedgiehog (16)
JamrOckin (16) - an evil musher
Cohort 4
cuitlamiztli (13)
swingnsave (14)
wldlfstdnt (16)
Cohort 5
Trematode (16)
JJ (14)
WTF (10)
FFM (15)
Cohort 6
wolfspeaker (16)
nyanko (16)
Abney (16)
PetPony (14) - a hard-working musher
Lynch will close at noon central tomorrow, whichever comes first.
We got a wolf first lynch! Maybe they'll all slip up like that and it will be an easy game. 
