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Alex Trebek, the longtime Jeopardy! host who died in November 2020 after a battle with pancreatic cancer, supported the Musk Ox Farm for more than three decades. The Palmer-based farm is a nonprofit dedicated to the domestication of muskox. It harvests qiviut, an ultra-fine wool, from the muskox and runs farm tours. In the late 1980s, the farm’s former executive director contacted Trebek after learning the game show host’s favorite animal was the muskox. A few months later, Trebek called the farm and the relationship was born. Trebek visited on several occasions. His foundation made financial donations to the farm, and for over 30 years he personally signed every adoption certificate for the nonprofit’s Friends of the Musk Ox program. His involvement was so consistent the staff referred to him as the “herd godfather.” The nonprofit’s current executive director, Mark Austin, says multiple celebrities have visited the farm over his…

Bull muskox spar by butting heads, sometimes running at each other full bore before colliding. Four inches of horn and three inches of bone protect the brain from injury during this violent contact. The first time I encountered muskox in the wild I felt as spectacular as Tom Cruise dancing around in his underwear and football helmet in the movie Risky Business. I was skiing across the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in March as mountains and the coastal plain glowed blue in the winter light. ANWR, long known as the battleground between wilderness and oil lovers, is the sort of place you can slow dance with your inner Frankenstein without the judgement of others. Better yet, it’s one of a handful of regions in Alaska you can see muskox. A herd of 15 grazed on a windswept rise above a frozen river ahead of me. A bull hoofed at…