Russell Knight and his shop, Knight's Taxidermy in Anchorage, have a show on the History Channel called Mounted in Alaska. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

- Audio slide show: Take a tour of Knight's Taxidermy

- Post a photo of your mounted game

HOMESTEAD: Saskia Esslinger and her husband, Matt Oster, are doing the Alaska Food Challenge by pledging to eat only local for a whole year. They are growing a lot of their own food at their "urban homestead" in Midtown Anchorage in addition to buying from local farmers. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

Watch the audio slide show: Urban homesteaders

On a midtown block of Williams Street, where Matt Oster and Saskia Esslinger are a month into a 12-month commitment to eat only local food, earthy idealism blooms as bright as the palm-sized zucchini flowers in their garden.

PUTTING: Matt Forney, president of the Alaska Disc Golf Association, has written a letter to the Anchorage Police Department asking police to enforce laws against public drinking. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)

If ever there were a laid-back game, built on strolling through the woods, hanging with friends and sipping a little beer, that would be disc golf.

But on the city's most popular course at Westchester Lagoon, the mellow feel has faded. Where once evenings used to bring slightly granola-fied 20-somethings with their fluorescent discs and bottled beer, a larger, rowdier crowd has moved in. Things aren't so laid back any more.

SERVED: Process server Todd Severson has been delivering bad news to people since he was 18. (ERIK HILL / Anchorage Daily News)

Todd Severson does not have good news.

If he is on your porch -- a big, clean-cut guy in a windbreaker, chomping cinnamon gum, double-ringing your doorbell, knocking on your door frame -- it's because you didn't take his call. Maybe you thought if you avoided him, you could keep bad news at bay. But of course, the world doesn't work like that.

THE GIFT: President Richard M. Nixon and his wife Pat, center, present pieces of moon rock and a flag from the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to Alaska Gov. Keith Miller, right, and his wife Diana in late 1969. (Photo courtesy Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.)

Am-Marie Martin, 7, with her mother, Andrea Dunwoody, doesn't remember what happened to her last month when a neighbor tried to take her bike away from her and beat her unconscious with a cast-covered arm. Dunwoody and Am-Marie's father, Tom Martin, are grateful for the support Am-Marie and the family have received. (STEPH ANDERSON / Anchorage Daily News)

"I'm gonna bear bait," Levi Johnston texted Bristol Palin in 2008. "Want to come?"

And so began the encounter in a Mat-Su bear stand that led to Palin's teenage pregnancy, at least according to "Not Afraid of Life," the 20-year-old mother's autobiography that came out this month.

Butch Evans has been a driving instructor in Anchorage for 28 years. His advice: “Assume everybody is trying to kill you.” (BOB HALLINEN / Anchorage Daily News)

Under normal circumstances, Butch Evans is not the type of guy who would make you nervous. He wears a ball cap and a white shirt with “Butch” embroidered over the breast pocket. He smiles easily and speaks in calm sentences like a voice on a meditation tape.

These red salmon were caught on the Russian River in June 2008. Some fishermen believe it's good form to give away part of the first catch of the season, lest the fish gods turn against them. (STEPHEN NOWERS / Daily News archive 2008)

THE HOME: Olga Alvord and her garage doors. Photos by BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News

In a Hillside subdivision called Sahalee, there is a war going on at the end of a cul-de-sac among the flawless lawns and three-car garages. It is the kind of war that, no matter what happens, no one will really win.

It has to do with taste, art, conformity and homeowner covenants. It began just after school got out with a garage door belonging to Chip and Olga Alvord.

Photos by STEPH ANDERSON / Anchorage Daily News

It isn’t easy to be an eyesore in Midtown Anchorage among the acres of parking lots, saggy trailer courts and dated strip malls. But the old Northern Lights Hotel probably qualifies.

The kids on Eide Street move in a noisy pack with their fluorescent squirt guns and their little bikes. There are boys and girls, Filipino and Vietnamese, Mexican and Samoan, Alaska Native and white, 20 kids at least, all grade-school age, living stacked up in the bleached multi-plexes between 33rd and 34th Avenues.

On Monday, one kid in the pack, a quiet 7-year-old girl, was missing, a victim of something vicious and brutal from the world of adults.

THE JOB: Jessy Coltrane, biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, talks about her job in her Anchorage office. (BOB HALLINEN / Anchorage Daily News)

Jessy Coltrane, the Anchorage-area wildlife biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, pulled her big white pickup onto Tudor Road and headed for one of the city's worst bear-problem neighborhoods: Muldoon.

The cab of her truck was packed with gun cases and rain gear. The bed held a dog kennel to haul moose calves and one very large net.

On a block in Airport Heights, behind a barricade of fake Christmas trees, is the home of a woman who needs help, her neighbors say.

And if this woman doesn't get help for what neighbors suspect is serious mental illness, they fear something tragic may happen.

At the moment she is in jail, charged with a felony for breaking out a neighbor's picture window with a rock May 22. It's hard to say how long she'll be there. The story of how she got there starts many years ago.

Rudolph the bedbug sniffing beagle and handler Mandy Tollver of Eagle Pest Control inspect a home for bedbugs on Friday April 29, 2011. The home came up clean for bedbugs. (BOB HALLINEN / Anchorage Daily News)

At a low-rate motel on the edge of Spenard recently, I noticed a guy smoking outside who was covered with scabs. Initially, I thought he might have a disease. Then I realized it was probably bed-bug bites. That was, after all, why I was there.

Sean Smith describes the strong reaction he's been getting lately. MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News

Sean Smith has been driving a motorized billboard truck around Anchorage for the last month that says Judgment Day is coming on Saturday. He would like you to know, before you come up to him and start an argument about Scripture while he is on a smoke break, that though he is a religious man, personally, he does not think the world is about to end.

Eivind and Amy Brendtro have an autism service dog named May to assist with their two special needs children Linnea, 9, and Leif, 6. May, a 3-year-old golden retriever, was trained at 4 Paws for Ability and helps track the children when they get lost, she helps with behavior assistance by comforting them, and the kids are tethered to her in public to ensure their safety. BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News

What kind of anxiety-filled parenting scenarios play out when you have two children under 10, one with autism and one with Down syndrome and autism?

Who lives in the 4,587 Anchorage households waiting for federal housing assistance right now?

They are our community's most vulnerable: the elderly, the permanently disabled, victims of domestic violence, and hundreds of families, many with children. The list has never been so long. The affordable housing situation in Anchorage has become desperate. More of us should be paying attention.

MAKING SPACE: Closet-cleaning guru Kimberly Jones, right, advises Elisa Carino to get rid of a pair of pants during a closet organization and style consulting session in Carino's Anchorage home. (MARC LESTER / Anchorage Daily News)

Kimberly Jones, closet-cleaning guru, performed a capri pants intervention on a recent morning in a home on the edge of Spenard. Jones, a wardrobe consultant, would like to rid the world of capri pants, permanently.

"They don't look good -- on anybody," she said.

CAMP: Litter was a common sight in the homeless camps along the Chester Creek greenbelt in Anchorage on Wednesday. (BILL ROTH / Anchorage Daily News)

The homeless camp near my house is making me into a bad person. Or maybe I'm just turning into a bad person on my own. My empathy is drying up and being replaced by impatience and frustration.