COLORADO
Don’t worry, the zombie plague isn’t upon us — well, not yet, anyway. For now, it’s just a few afflicted/affected bunnies doing their part to put the “rad” in Colorado. When Susan Mansfield, a resident of Fort Collins, Colorado, first spotted some peculiar-looking rabbits hopping around her neighborhood, she described them as having “black quills or black toothpicks sticking out all around” their mouths. One rabbit visited her several times, she told KUSA: “I thought he would die off during the winter, but he didn’t, he came back a second year, and it grew.” Which worries us; “I thought he’d die, but he came back” being among what you might call Famous Last Words, the kind of ominous tagline common to monster movies and infamous cyborgs. Other media sources described the now-legendary lagomorphs as “zombie bunnies” and “Frankenstein rabbits” stricken with Cthulhu-like “tentacles.” But fear not: The University of Missouri confirms that the eerie-looking condition is caused by Shope papillomavirus, a DNA virus “seen most frequently in cottontail rabbits of the Midwest.” And this should bathe you in relief: According to Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the condition doesn’t appear to harm the rabbits or threaten other animals, including humans. Then again, that’s what they always say in the monster movies. …
OREGON
Aside from marauding zombies, is there anything scarier than the sound of a couple arguing? Wolves certainly seem to hate it. And so, in an effort to discourage them from killing livestock, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s loudspeakers have been blasting audio from an argument between Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver in the 2019 film Marriage Story. Evidently, everyone’s a film critic, even wolves. USDA District Supervisor Paul Wolf (no relation), told the Wall Street Journal, “I need wolves to respond and know that, hey, humans are bad.” Before they tried this — they also used the sounds of fireworks and gunshots — wolves killed 11 cows during a 20-day period in Oregon. Since this new “wolf hazing technique” debuted, just two cows were killed in 85 days. Verbal confrontation and marital strife aren’t easy, but they beat a shotgun marriage. What movie will they use next? Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? We just hope the cows wear noise-canceling devices; all this discord might sour their milk.
UTAH
A heroic 6-year-old German shorthair pointer helped save the life of his ride-or-die human companion, Jake Schmitt, a Utah hunting guide who was scouting for mule deer in the Uinta Mountains. After parking his truck on a forest road, Schmitt drove into the mountains in his Polaris Ranger UTV with his trusted buddy, Buddy, by his side. Unfortunately, one of his tires hit a stump while he was navigating a steep incline, and the vehicle flipped and rolled 15 to 20 times before finally coming to rest at the bottom. The tumble broke Schmitt’s leg, ribs and ankles, dislocated his shoulder and left him with severe cuts and bruises. The UTV was scattered, and there was no sign of his gear. “No lights, no phone. Pistol, rifle, inReach, all gone. Everything was gone but my dog,” Schmitt told Outdoor Life. Schmitt MacGyvered a makeshift splint for his broken leg from duct tape and UTV pieces and began a “long, slow crawl in the dark.” His faithful dog never left his side, constantly nudging Schmitt awake and keeping him going, crossing half a dozen creeks out of the mountains — a feverish and exhausting trek that took a nightmarish 11 hours — until they finally reached his truck, 5 miles away. Schmitt somehow managed to drive to a diner and was rushed to the Park City Hospital, where he was treated for his injuries. “I don’t think I’d be talking to you now if that dog hadn’t been there,” Schmitt said. “He gets T-bone steaks for the rest of his life.”
ARIZONA
One of the newest paleontology discoveries is a new taxon of tanystropheid, an unusually long-necked Triassic-era reptile — rather like the Loch Ness monster, if she shrank in the dryer — found in a place called Thunderstorm Ridge in Petrified Forest National Park, ABC4 reports. The reptile’s vertebrae were parsed from rock samples rinsed through fine metal screens, then analyzed under microscopes. When we think of paleontological discoveries, we tend to imagine massive dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park. But the recently discovered tanystropheid, dubbed Akidostropheus oligos — or “tiny, spiked-back bone”—was small enough to fit in an average hand, with a neck bone smaller than a pinky fingernail. Size isn’t everything, although Nessie might disagree.
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This article appeared in the October 2025 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Heard around the West.”
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