Abreast of the West

THE WEST

We may be intelligent, but we're hardly in the same league as the Clark's nutcracker, a member of the keen Corvidae family. They cache "up to 100,000 nuts in dozens of different spots at the end of spring, and can find them all again up to nine months later," says scienceblogs.com. And the birds dig up those nuts when snow covers their hiding places. Given birds this clever, wildlife biologist John Marzluff wondered whether crows, also corvids, could be taught to work for the U.S. military, distinguishing between human faces and searching for -- you guessed it -- Osama bin Laden himself, at that time still at large. Marzluff won some military funding to test his theory and discovered that, yes, the crows he studied could learn who's who, and remember it. If you were the mean guy wearing a caveman mask who trapped the birds once, those birds would recognize you in the same mask several months later. What's more, the crows also passed down that knowledge to their young, so that anybody wearing the caveman mask -- even if it was worn upside down -- would be scolded and mobbed. Readers were amused and horrified at the notion of birdbrains put to military use; one said, "None of my crow friends would ever participate in such nonsense; they just cawed their heads off." Yet animals have been shanghaied for military purposes before: Bats were studied for their bomb-delivery smarts during World War II, and pigeons were trained to steer guided missiles.

MONTANA

Alumni magazines can sometimes knock your socks off. In the recent issue of the University of Montana's Montanan, Chad Dundas profiles Megan Fisher, a 2006 graduate who says modestly that she's really just a "five-foot-nothing, one-legged girl." More accurately she's a super-athlete who's turned herself into a more-or-less "four-legged girl." It's all due to her steely resolve to come back stronger than ever after a horrific car accident maimed her left foot, leading to an amputation. Afterward, Fisher could walk only a short distance before experiencing excruciating pain, so she opted for a second amputation just below the knee "because that's where the (prosthetic) technology is." Now, her left leg sports one of four specialized prosthetics that allow her to walk, bicycle, rollerblade or run, all of which she can do fast: The first time she tried running with her elegant new racing leg, she clocked a mile in six minutes, 30 seconds. Since then, Fisher has won several world paratriathlon championships sponsored by the international Triathlon Union and hopes to compete in the Paralympic Games. "I think I'm a positive person because I'm stubborn," she says. "I refused to let this beat me; being sad stinks ... I mean, it stinks to be disabled. Shoot, it stinks to be abled. We all get happy and we all get sad. I choose to be happy."

THE WEST

Ranchers and farmers be warned: Thieves have begun making off with copper parts from center-pivot irrigation systems, reports Dairy Herd Management. The California Farm Bureau Federation recommends parking the rolling pivot systems away from roads and making sure they're locked, because the price of copper, like that of gold, has gone sky-high.  

Tips and photos of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write betsym@hcn.org.