COLORADO As the Rocky Mountain News put it, “Naked frivolity heats up the night.” Their heads inside pumpkins and their clothes nowhere in sight, hundreds braved cold weather on Halloween to streak past the costumed pedestrians thronging Boulder’s outdoor mall. “With the pumpkin on the head, it’s anonymous,” said Jazzmin Jenkins, 21. “What could be […]
Heard Around the West
Posted inNovember 13, 2006: Bred for success
Heard around the West
CALIFORNIA It may sound like a weird thing to have to face at work first thing in the morning, but inside California’s EPA building in Sacramento, squirming worms share space with employees. The live animals, housed in 60-some bins, are such a part of cubicle culture that staffers compete for the prize of “most productive” […]
Posted inOctober 30, 2006: Peace Breaks Out In New Mexico's Forests
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UTAH AND IDAHO Who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Forest Service employees from Utah, that’s who. Two staffers from the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Ogden were working in Idaho’s Sawtooth Wilderness Sept. 23, when they spotted wolves chasing a bull elk across a meadow. They weren’t frightened by the sight of the running […]
Posted inOctober 16, 2006: A River Once More
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THE BORDER Life in southern Texas can get pretty boring if you’re a 20-something National Guardsman sent to patrol the dusty border with Mexico. Three guardsmen recently found life so dreary that they picked up their weapons, jumped in their vehicle and headed out for a joyride. They failed to find much action until they […]
Posted inOctober 2, 2006: From the ground up
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COLORADO In the photo, it looks like a cozy den for hobbits, peeking out from underground with a hillside rolling right over its roof. But the builder of this “ultimate secure home” boasts that it can “withstand almost any natural or manmade disaster you can name,” including a nuclear blast and biological and chemical war. […]
Posted inSeptember 18, 2006: Going Big
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MEXICO AND THE BORDER Believe it or not, some well-heeled people in Mexico pay for the privilege of pretending to sneak across the United States border illegally. They are, in a word, tourists, mostly upper-class professionals who pay $15 each to mimic their less-fortunate countrymen, reports Cox News Service. Though safely in a nature park […]
Posted inSeptember 4, 2006: Blast from the Past
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OREGON Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne recently visited a factory that makes luxury recreational vehicles, those behemoths that look like city buses and sport monikers like Inspire, Allure and Intrigue. In a press release, Country Coach Inc. president Jay Howard said he was pleased with the secretary’s support for his company’s high-end mobile homes, and added […]
Posted inAugust 21, 2006: The Lure of the Lawn
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NEVADA Thanks to two wet winters in a row, it’s a booming summer for Western toads in the Washoe and Lemmon valleys of Nevada, reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. Suddenly, toads and toadlets are everywhere, and there’s the danger that you’ll step on one as you cross the street, or mow down hundreds when you cut […]
Posted inAugust 7, 2006: Is It or Isn't It (Just Another Mouse)?
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UTAH Lake Powell, now at just 52 percent of capacity, might as well be called The Incredible Shrinking Reservoir: Its twice-extended boat launch at Bullfrog “resembles a tilted airport runway — a concrete slab more than a quarter-mile long,” reports The Associated Press. Multiple bathtub rings are visible everywhere along the shore, and when the […]
Posted inJuly 24, 2006: Taking Liberties
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CALIFORNIA What “whiskered blob of blubber” terrorizes swimmers, raids fishing nets and once in a while shoves people off boats? A sea lion is the answer, reports the Los Angeles Times, in its vivid story of a horde of “pit bulls with flippers” muscling their way into Newport Beach for the summer — again. Last […]
Posted inJune 26, 2006: The Tamarisk Hunter
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CALIFORNIA A passenger on a flight from Los Angeles to Oakland apparently felt too important to obey repeated requests to hang up his cell phone so the plane could take off. Everyone else had acknowledged the usual announcement to turn off cell phones, except for this man, who was deep in conversation, according to the […]
Posted inJune 12, 2006: The Perpetual Growth Machine
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THE BORDER On a Web site called Gizmodo, which caters to computer gearheads and other gadget collectors, we found a controversial offering a few months ago from Argentinean artist Judi Werthein. She has designed running shoes for illegal immigrants that feature a built-in compass and flashlight, a pocket inside the shoe’s tongue for aspirin or […]
Posted inMay 29, 2006: 'Clinging Hopelessly to the Past'
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CALIFORNIA Governing magazine calls Vernon, Calif., “the strangest town in America.” Although 44,000 people work there, only 93 people actually live in the tiny Los Angeles suburb; when election time rolls around, 60 people show up to vote. The Los Angeles Times wrote an exposé of the unusual town, which behaves more like a private […]
Posted inMay 15, 2006: The Immigrant's Trail
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THE WEST What makes Mormon crickets run? More than just the lust for protein and salt. The insects hustle because they’re afraid they’ll be gobbled up by the cannibalistic cousins trotting behind them, reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. Researchers from the United States, England and Australia who studied cricket migration in southern Idaho found that the […]
Posted inMay 1, 2006: Magic Valley Uprising
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MONTANA Every year, as many as 700 deer collide with cars in Montana’s Ravalli County — so many that the roadsides reek to high heaven. It’s a big problem, made worse by the fact that growing populations of both deer and people have reduced the number of places where deer carcasses can be “discreetly dumped,” […]
Posted inApril 17, 2006: The War on Wildfire
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CALIFORNIA What a surprise for two off-roaders in the California Desert, who ventured farther off-road than was good for them. Driving a Suzuki Samurai in a restricted area managed by the Bureau of Land Management, they blasted over a ridge and plunged 30 feet straight down an abandoned mineshaft. “I can still hear that scraping […]
Posted inMarch 20, 2006: Town Shopping
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CALIFORNIA San Francisco — which is named after St. Francis, the patron saint of animals — plans to put some of the city’s 120,000 dogs to work. The work isn’t hard, though the yuck factor is impressive: All the dogs have to do is poop, reports The Associated Press. The city’s garbage hauler, Norcal Waste, […]
Posted inMarch 6, 2006: Save Our Snow
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COLORADO The sex-change doctor who created an unusual kind of economic development for the former coal-mining town of Trinidad, Colo., died last month at the age of 82. Stanley Biber began operating on men who wanted to be women in 1969, and over a 34-year span, according to an obituary in the New York Times, […]
Posted inFebruary 20, 2006: High Noon for Habitat
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COLORADO Whoever owns Bongo Billy’s Café in Salida, Colo., must just love kids. A sign by the cash register announces, “Unaccompanied children will be given an Espresso and a free puppy.” THE WEST So much for the mystique of the Old West. Mega-millionaires are putting their pricey ranches on the market, reports the Wall Street […]
Posted inFebruary 6, 2006: The Killing Fields
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NEW MEXICO A mouse living in the house of 81-year-old Luciano Mares of Fort Sumner did not take kindly to being set on fire. Mares said that after he caught the intruder, he threw it outside onto a pile of burning leaves. The burning rodent, however, got its revenge by running back to the house […]