WASHINGTON
At
the edge of his Soap Lake, Wash., backyard, Rick Froebe has lined
up seven toilets and some old bathtubs and water heaters
— all to annoy the golfers whose proximity makes his four
dogs bark, which, in turn, annoys his neighbors. Froebe has even
placed “three scarecrow-like dummies” on the toilets to
look on as golfers play through the first hole, reports The
Associated Press. But while Froebe, who owns a plumbing business,
defends his fence as “plumber art,” the Lakeview Golf
and Country Club, which abuts his property, calls the porcelain
array ridiculous and an eyesore. “I’m surprised the
health department hasn’t been out there because of the used
toilets and water tanks,” says a country club representative.
“It’s not a sanitary condition.” Meanwhile,
Froebe’s dogs continue to bark at golfers, and the sheriff
has warned the plumber three times that his animals are a nuisance.
WYOMING
What do newcomers need to know about living in the Cowboy
State? Quite a lot, it turns out, or so says the Wyoming
Humanities Council, which is putting together a guide called
Welcome to Wyoming. After talking to folks
who’d moved to the state during the last decade, the council
came up with several suggestions. First, even if newcomers have
built a huge house and have tons of money, they ought to hang back
and learn about where they live before offering advice. Second,
volunteering is a time-honored way to become involved in a
community, and helping somebody out is a Western tradition. New
Jackson resident Brian Dougherty says he was buying furniture at a
thrift store when a man walked by and offered to help. Before he
knew it, the man had loaded up the chairs and table in his own
truck and was following Dougherty to his place: “I remember
taking a right turn at a stop sign and thinking, ‘If I was in
New York, this guy would take a left turn.’ ” But he
didn’t, reports the Casper Star-Tribune.
“ ‘The stranger had no ulterior motives, just
kindness.’ ” Was there any subject that was taboo? You
bet, says a Humanities Council member — wolves. “We had
one woman say, ‘I wanted to learn about (wolves) but the way
to do it was not to ask people about it.’ ”
NEW MEXICO
A
coyote protecting her family can be a formidable opponent, says
Georgia Holguin in the newsletter of the Chihuahuan Desert
Conservation Alliance in Carlsbad, N.M. Holguin found
that out while riding horseback with her husband and two dogs.
Coming over a rise, they were confronted by a furious coyote that
pawed “the ground like a bull ready to charge us.” The
animal even barked right into the face of one of the dogs, all the
while pacing back and forth. Holguin says her husband noticed that
the fierce little female was nursing: “She’s hidden her
cubs nearby; that’s why she’s so frantic.” The
couple hastily withdrew, escorted for about a mile by the coyote.
There’s a moral to the encounter, Holguin says:
“Don’t mess with mamma coyotes. They are small but
mighty.”
THE PLANET
NewScientist magazine’s
New Year Competition asked readers to compose a brief message to
the home planet from an alien visiting Earth. Editors
were bemused by the many responses along the lines of “No
intelligent life found.” But some of the winning entries
embellish the idea: “Weather chilly but improving steadily
over the next century or so. Found out why Aunty didn’t come
back from her Roswell trip.” And: “Our assumptions were
wrong. Their diet is so full of unhealthy chemicals they
don’t taste at all like chicken. Even their chickens
don’t taste like chickens.” And our favorite:
“Dominant species ‘car.’ Colorful exoskeleton and
bizarre reproduction via slave biped species. Aggressive but
predictable. Intelligence uncertain.”
THE WEST
Continuing our
hunt for amusing headlines, we spotted a provocative one recently
from IdahoStatesman.com: “City Councilman suspected
of dying after falling off bridge in Oregon,” and another
from the Salem, Ore.-based Capital Press:
“Rancher smolders long after fire extinguished.” The
Columbia Journalism Review posted a couple of
howlers from Western papers in its recent issue: From the
Herald of Lusk, Wyo.: “Voters flock to the
poles,” presumably both north and south, and in the
San Diego Union Tribune: “Sandal rocks GOP
House leadership.” No word on what kind of sandal it was.
OREGON
Some hospitals in Oregon have decided that their patients
don’t require special meal plans; all they need is healthy
food — sans additives or trans fats. Raves are the
result, with some patients liking the made-from-scratch meals so
much that they “come back to eat after their stay is
over,” reports AP. The Good Shepherd Medical Center in
Portland serves lean bison and wild salmon, while hospitals
elsewhere in Oregon have added their own farmers’ markets.
“The purer and cleaner the food is, the better the ability of
that food to improve the health of people,” says Mark
Peterson, who manages food for St. Charles Medical Center in Bend
and Redmond, Ore.
Betsy Marston is editor of Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia, Colorado. Tips of
Western oddities are always appreciated and often shared in the
column, Heard around the West.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.
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