Heard Around the West

Tiny toads, each only as big as a nickel, got a little help negotiating a bike trail at the Sunriver Resort in central Oregon. The Western toads were migrating from a man-made pond to a pine forest behind a line of condos. But first the little guys had to hop across an asphalt bike lane, […]

It was Aug. 8, 2008, in high-altitude Evergreen, Colo., and Mike Speck was in a hurry because — at 8:08 that evening — he was going to be married. Speck, a 54-year-old contractor, was filling a camper with water and didn’t notice the black clouds building above him, until, wham! Lightning struck, the charge going […]

A Republican businessman from the town of Scapoose in northern Oregon is running an unorthodox campaign for Congress: He’s publicly backing Democrat Barack Obama for president as well as Democratic Senate candidate Jeff Merkley. “I’m sure I’ve been branded by the GOP base as some sort of heretic,” says Joel Haugen. “He’s got that right,” […]

Lest we forget, as the feisty environmental writer Michael Frome reminds us in his book, Rebel on the Road: And Why I Was Never Neutral, environmental reporting was sparse back in the early 1960s. Turner Catledge, then managing editor of the New York Times, was urged by one of his editors to create an environmental […]

Muhammad Ali Hasan, the Republican candidate for the State House in pricey Summit County, Colo., told the Vail Daily that, as part of his campaign, he’s taken a vow of celibacy until January. His Democrat opponent, incumbent Christine Scanlan, commented, “Oh, my goodness. That probably falls in the ‘too much information’ category. Yeek.”

Homeowners in Englewood, a suburb of Denver, now have to scoop the poop in their own backyards, reports the Denver Post. A task force that met for over a year came up with the new law that gives people 72 hours to remove dog-door face fines from $50 to $999. The town got tough on […]

The Durango Herald called it a “car chase,” but for it definitely wasn’t a high-speed one: For 25 minutes, Samuel Luna, 62, drove a less than speedy 3-to-5 miles per hour while trying to escape police. The pursuit in southern Colorado’s Montezuma County began when Luna refused to leave his car even though he was […]

When 90 corporate jets crowded into Sun Valley’s airport recently during a pow wow of business bigwigs, the value of all the “big iron” on the ground — as pilots call it — was estimated at $2 billion, reports the Idaho Mountain Gazette. Airport manager Rick Baird said that more than half the planes covering […]

The Spokesman-Review has begun outing people who bought bogus degrees from a diploma mill based in Spokane, Wash. The Justice Department, meanwhile, refuses to release the list of almost 10,000 buyers to the public. A source familiar with the list says, “There are people in high places with these degrees, and only one of them […]

It’s a battle of the uber-rich — Aspen vs. Telluride — to see whose residents can best wean themselves from disposable grocery bags. Both towns have so embraced the bag battle — aka an educational campaign — that the competition has been extended through Labor Day. Telluride’s Sheep Mountain Alliance and Aspen’s Community Office for […]

Beware of vehicles that sport bumper stickers, warns a social psychologist at Colorado State University: They signal that the drivers have an attitude. It’s not only bumper stickers that tell on a driver, but also window decals, personalized license plates and other “territorial markers,” says researcher William Szlemko in the Washington Post. Apparently, it doesn’t […]

A chimpanzee who served as best man at his owner’s wedding has been eluding pursuers in the San Bernardino National Forest, 50 miles east of Los Angeles. Moe broke out of what The Associated Press calls a “state-of-the-art cage” at Jungle Exotics, which trains animals for Hollywood. His owners, LaDonna and St. James Davis, rescued […]