Heard Around the West

Holy flying s…! “Feces rained from the Utah skies again,” this time in Sevier Country, reports the Salt Lake Tribune. Two homes and two cars were splattered in February. This is Utah’s fourth poop-bombing, and police agree that a jetliner was the likely culprit. Last spring, three homeowners in the Utah towns of Riverton and […]

The U.S. Forest Service is thinking about changing the color of its 15,000 vehicles, now mint green. A new color would help create a more modern image, says an agency spokesperson, according to the Portland Oregonian. Some employees say they’d also welcome some anonymity on the job. Needling the federal agency, the Northwest Forestry Association […]

There’s something about “the big ditch” that’s got the U.S. Postal Service buffaloed. Last year, the federal agency honored Arizona’s Grand Canyon with a stamp that placed the giant gorge in the wrong state – Colorado. That led to the shredding of 100 million stamps. This year, a new 60-cent stamp reverses an image of […]

Cows as we know them seem to be on the way out in the West. The Arizona Republic reports that in the “once stolid cattle country” of southeastern Arizona, a hydroponic tomato greenhouse near Willcox, Ariz., employs more than 500 people, while ranchers now raise “all kinds of weirdness from ostriches to rabbits and chinchillas.” […]

In southeastern Washington, vandals wiped out an entire forest overnight. They did the deed by chopping down the only tree in an arid landscape of cheatgrass and sagebrush near the town of Connell, pop. 2,000. Townspeople have put up a $1,000 reward for the arrest of the saw-wielding bandit, reports Associated Press. The lone tree, […]

After the “battle in Seattle” over world trade simmered down, marketing opportunities began to boil: The streets seemed paved with gold, or at least souvenirs. Budding entrepreneurs scoured downtown and came up with rubber bullets, broken police billies and the occasional tear-gas canister; then they put the booty up for auction on the Internet. One […]

Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura isn’t a bit afraid of inconsistency. He bragged about visiting a Nevada brothel as a young man in his autobiography, I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed, yet a few decades later, his lawyer hints at legal action unless the brothel, the Moonlight BunnyRanch, stops using the governor’s name in its advertising. […]

After a Taiwanese pop star filmed a four-minute video in a Grandview, Wash., cherry orchard, the demand for cherries in Asia boomed, crows cherry promoter Eric Melton. Cherry growers paid $100,000 for the MTV-style video, but the value was “about $3 million,” reports Capital Press. The gain came through higher prices, so that while Asian […]

Homes on the range: photos by High Country News readers This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.

Have cows been getting a bad rap? Do their bovine exteriors hide graceful interiors? Peoa, Utah, resident Randy Barton did not know, but he hoped that dressing cows for the ballet would at least draw an audience and help raise money for the town’s two parks. “Clad in nothing but tutus,” the Cow Ballet drew […]

It began with an insult. Thirteen years ago in Boise, Idaho, radio announcer Paul Schneider defined a prairie dog as “a woman from Fairfield,” a rural town of 450. Instead of reacting with outrage, one woman resident of Fairfield decided to start an ugly contest, and “Mz. Prairie Dog” was born. Competitors lip-synching to songs […]

Is there a “Stupid Motorist Act” in Arizona? You bet, says Elliot Freireich of the West Valley View in Litchfield Park. After summer monsoons hit, dry washes suddenly fill with water and cascade onto roads, he reports. Yet some drivers with more bravado than brains try to splash through. “Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they […]

Two public officials hit the road recently. One had a great time, while the other groused. The fun was had by Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who made his first trip ever to Yellowstone National Park. “Excitedly,” says the Salt Lake Tribune, Leavitt reported to the Western Governors’ Association that he had “walked right up to […]

Professional vegetarians really know how to hurt a guy. A proposed billboard campaign throughout the West from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, features a busty babe wearing a bikini and a big grin, while a string of bologna cascades over one shoulder. But the billboard says there’s a problem: “Eating meat can […]

Fresh from a river trip through Cataract Canyon in Utah, five passengers and the pilot of a single-engine Cessna faced a nasty emergency: The plane from Redtail Aviation was lugging, failing to gain altitude. Adding to the tension was the weight of at least one man, reports the Times-Independent of Moab, Utah. He weighed “above […]

A rodeo held in Aurora, Colo., in July attracted 114 gay men and women to compete in he-man stuff like bareback bronc-riding. “We are true to the Western spirit,” said bull rider J.D. Norton in The Denver Post. “We are cowboys and cowgirls, even though we have a different private lifestyle.” Because it’s not professional […]

How do you describe the odor of 1,800 bison skulls rotting in the sun? Putrid, say a handful of neighbors some nine miles from Red Lodge, Mont. “It makes us gag.” Entrepreneurs Eric Saltzman and Corynne Freeman trucked in the festering heads after land they leased elsewhere was sold; now they’re faced with a nuisance […]

Even bison, it turns out, need a bailout. Too many of the big critters are raised and not enough of us want to eat them. After producing more bison-burger than the market could bear, ranchers recently asked the federal government for help – their second request in as many years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture […]

Utah’s state seal refrains from exhortations, but does feature a bald eagle flapping its wings above a beehive. Judy Fahys in the Salt Lake Tribune finds this far too bland: “To truly personify the state, Utah’s official seal might have illustrated a family the size of a track team slurping vanilla ice cream cones.” The […]

New subdivisions in the West are apt to ballyhoo amenities such as swimming pools or golf courses. That’s not the case in Front Sight, a dusty village in the making in southern Nevada. There, former Californian Ignatius Piazza offers not one but 13 firing ranges and calls his planned community on 550 acres “the Pebble […]