In the West, people
sometimes find bears scrounging for food in
the kitchen or cougars pacing the deck. In the East, a chubby house
cat can spook the neighbors. Residents of Bensalem, Penn., became
alarmed when they saw what they thought was a 50-pound wildcat or
worse, a “mysterious monster,” reports The Denver
Post. Seven fearful homeowners called police, who then
mounted a search for the furry predator, even sending digital
photos of its paw prints to the Philadelphia Zoo for analysis. Then
came the embarrassing denouement: Someone was opening a lot of cans
of cat food. “It was basically a big, overgrown pussycat, about 20
pounds or so,” said the town’s deputy director of public
safety.
A
snowmobiling couple in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, won their
case against a farmer who came upon them in
his field and “just lost it,” according to the judge. The way
farmer Grant Scheideman came unglued was dramatic. He flattened the
trespassing snowmobile with his 15-ton tractor and plow blade. “The
farmer claimed it was driver’s error prompted by a balky
transmission,” reports the Edmonton Journal. But
the judge believed witnesses who heard Scheideman say, “Maybe I’ll
put it in the wrong gear,” minutes before his tractor stomped the
Ski-Doo. The snowmobilers said from now on, they’ll stick to the
mountains. Scheideman, fined $1,000, asked, “What can landowners
do? This just proves that we have no rights.”
Vigilantism was
condemned recently by the Arizona
Republic. The paper was reacting
to an anonymous brochure that invited snowbirds to bring RVs,
halogen spotlights and infrared scopes to take part in
“Neighborhood Ranch Watch” on the Arizona border. While it is true
that the number of undocumented Mexicans apprehended in Douglas,
Ariz., alone has escalated to 22,000 a month, the paper said, any
suggestion that this is a good time to “hunt immigrants’ is wrong
and not funny. “These aren’t tears of laughter we’re wearing on
this issue,” the paper editorialized.
Santa Fe New Mexican
columnist Denise Kusel says she has a great idea for the Psychic
Network, which hired 15 New York City
welfare recipients for $10 an hour, plus bonuses, and also offered
on-the-job training in tarot card reading. Since New York pulled
the plug on placing its unemployed in the psychic industry, Kusel
urges the network to come to Santa Fe instead. Not because
residents have any particular aptitude for prophecy – it’s the
bigger paycheck. In Santa Fe, she says, some employers still pay
their workers only $6.25 an hour, yet they have never figured out
“why they can’t hire dedicated people who might want to spend the
rest of their life flipping burgers.”
Wanna-be doctors at the University of
Colorado Medical School take a final exam
that’s a hoot for professors but a strain for students. Actors play
sick people while medical students have 20 minutes to make a
diagnosis, and instructors get to watch it all unfold on television
monitors. Bellicose “Nathan,” for instance, comes in complaining
that he’s losing weight even though he eats up a storm. A
second-year student then has to give him the news that he needs a
rectal exam to rule out colon cancer, reports The Denver
Post. “They use a kind of microscope with a camera,” the
student explains.” What’s a scope?” Nathan asks. “It’s a wire that
can take pictures,” says the female student. “They’re going to put
some kind of wire in my butt?” The toughest part of the test for
medical students may be keeping a straight
face.
To the
animal protection group, PETA, which stands
for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, cowboys can be
cruel, especially in rodeos where they ride horses and bulls that
have been cinched to make them buck. So Virginia-based PETA sent a
letter to Wyoming Gov. Jim Geringer recently, asking him to delete
the image of a bucking bronco and rider from the state’s license
plates. The group said the logo should be “replaced with a symbol
exhibiting a 21st century understanding of animals,” reports
The Denver Post. The copyrighted symbol, adopted
more than 80 years ago, isn’t riding off anywhere soon, said
Wyoming officials.
Heard around the
West invites readers to get involved in the column. Send any
tidbits that merit sharing – small-town newspaper clips, personal
anecdotes, relevant bumper sticker slogans. The definition remains
loose. Heard, HCN, Box 1090, Paonia, CO 81428 or
betsym@hcn.org.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
