WYOMING Drivers along a section of Highway 22 near Jackson, Wyo., wondered why drug-sniffing dogs and squads of patrol officers, two or three abreast, were walking the road a few weeks ago. Then the story emerged: They were on the trail of a box of drugs. A dog handler from the sheriff’s department had placed […]
Betsy Marston
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Cheaters and cheatgrass
THE WEST Everybody hates cheatgrass, though it must be admitted that the fluttery plant with the prickly seeds succeeds on sagebrush lands like nobody’s business. A Eurasian invader, it pops up in the spring before native plants do, spreads like wildfire — and burns like wildfire, too. As Wyoming Wildlife magazine put it, cheatgrass “simply […]
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The color-shifting skink
COLORADO Thanks to Colorado Outdoors, the magazine of the state’s Department of Natural Resources, we have a new favorite wild animal — the color-shifting skink. It resembles a stocky snake with lizard-like legs. And like many lizards, it has the wonderful ability to discard and then regenerate its tail any time a predator pounces on […]
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Roll up your sleeves and get cranking
THE NATION Common Cause, the nation’s good-government nonprofit, celebrated its 40th anniversary recently at a party in Denver, helped mightily by the humor and smarts of Pat Schroeder. In 1972, Schroeder was the first Colorado woman to be elected to Congress, where she spent a dozen terms focusing on fiscal accountability from the military and […]
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That bites!
ARIZONA As foreclosures increase throughout the West, ex-homeowners slamming the door on the way out sometimes abandon cats, dogs and other pets, including exotic snakes. And then there are the native snakes that slither back to reclaim their turf once the humans are gone. The variety of poisonous and non-poisonous snakes co-existing with subdivisions can […]
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Fascinating conundrums
THE SOUTHWEST That wistful Iowa farm boy in the ads for a language-learning software called Rosetta Stone — “He was a hardworking farm boy. She was an Italian supermodel. He knew he would have just one chance to impress her” — now has an opportunity to learn Navajo, too, reports the Daily Times of Farmington, […]
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What to do with the dead?
MONTANA The funniest picture in Montana Magazine’s profile of coffin-maker Willy von Bracht shows him and an assistant putting the cover on a casket painted to look exactly like a giant box of Marlboro cigarettes. This was a “personal project” of von Bracht, whose lively sense of humor informs his business, Sweet Earth Caskets and […]
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Once I caught a fish thi-i-i-i-i-s big
UTAH There he was, an eight-point buck, stranded on a narrow ledge five feet above Lake Powell. What could two law enforcement officers — one from Utah, the other from the Glen Canyon National Monument — do? They didn’t want to tranquilize the mule deer, so after making it leap into the water, the two […]
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Love thy neighbor
ARIZONA You know times are tough in Phoenix when more than 15,000 people cram into McDonald’s restaurants to apply for one of 800 to 1,000 jobs, all of them part-time and most of them minimum wage. The Arizona Republic says the success of McDonald’s new McCafe line of smoothies and frappés has spurred the restaurant […]
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Fire and brimstone
COLORADO There’s no doubt that the college town of Boulder has grown all too familiar with fire, thanks in part to those young people — and there are some 30,000 undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Colorado — who have a developed a strange tradition: They ignite couches in front yards or in […]
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Tough job, but someone’s gotta do it
UTAH Baptizing stand-ins for dead people doesn’t seem like a hazardous activity, but Daniel Dastrup of Las Vegas recently sued The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for medical expenses after injuring his back performing about 200 baptisms on Aug. 25, 2007. Lowering volunteers into a pool all day apparently became arduous: “The then […]
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Finding treasure in the “Treasure State”
MONTANA Billings Gazette reporter Diane Cochran decided to personally test her state’s voter-initiated Medical Marijuana Act recently, timing exactly how long it took to get a doctor to recommend the use of pot. Eight minutes was the answer, courtesy of an Internet consultation, but according to the executive director of the pot-advocacy group, Montana Caregivers […]
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Milk and cookies
ARIZONA A McDonald’s restaurant in Phoenix learned a valuable lesson recently, but only after an assistant manager ordered a breastfeeding mother — and her 6-month-old baby — to leave. The lesson: Don’t mess with moms! As TV reporters flocked to the restaurant, dozens of nursing mothers converged inside it to protest what they called discrimination, […]
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Unseemly business
IDAHOFor a long time, a southern Idaho farmer didn’t know it, but there was another crop growing in his cornfields — 300 marijuana plants, valued at $628,000. Azcentral.com says the plants were grown from seed and later transplanted to the farmer’s field, apparently a not uncommon practice. OREGONDon’t even think about selling lemonade in Multnomah […]
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If wolves could drive cars…
WYOMINGMayor Scott Mangold of Powell, population 5,000 or so, in northwest Wyoming, tries to keep it light on the town’s Web site, cityofpowell.com. If you want to vote, he advises, you’d better be 18, a U.S. citizen and a resident, all no-brainer qualifications, he admits. “Could you imagine people in California voting in Wyoming?” he […]
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“Where do you get your questions?”
NEVADAThe last we noticed, elected officials don’t place one hand on the Constitution and solemnly swear to uphold the Bible. But Republican Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite who’s running against Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., sounds as though she’s more than ready to switch books. A former teacher at a religious school and a longtime […]
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Murmuration intimidation
WASHINGTON A bank officer who has earned the title “Duck Man” did it again for the third year in a row in Spokane: He saved the day by helping ducks fly away. Joel Armstrong watched a nest outside his office window until he realized that the ducklings were itching to take off. But the little […]
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If the bears don’t get you, the bicyclists will
COLORADOA specter is haunting the streets of Denver, warns businessman Dan Maes, a Tea Party denizen who hopes to become the next governor of Colorado. The threat is “very well disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes promised supporters. And what exactly is it that threatens our freedom? In a word, bicycles — the riding […]
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1 for the money, 2 for the show, 3 to get ready, now go, yak, go
WYOMINGFor the last eight years, John and Laura DeMatteis have raised a small herd of yaks on their 300-acre ranch in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains. “I needed an ag exemption on my property,” he told the Casper Star-Tribune, “and didn’t want to do cattle, and bison are kind of a pain. So […]
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Exercises in discretion
OREGONVincent Ruark was sitting at home with his two dogs in northern Oregon recently, not doing much of anything, when two Klickitat County officers knocked on his door. Aerial surveillance had spotted marijuana plants growing in his yard, they informed him, and they wanted permission to conduct a search. Taken by surprise and flustered, Ruark […]