COLORADO: Hey, nice rack! Courtesy Dennis Slifer

NORTH DAKOTA

A woman named Donna recently called Fargo, N.D., radio station Y94 to air a problem so bizarre, the station's hosts were almost speechless. Her complaint? Deer-crossing signs placed along busy highways were "irresponsible" because they simply encouraged the animals to cross there, and that was why she'd smacked her car into deer not once, not twice, but three times. "You'd think they'd put deer-crossing signs at school crossings where it would be safer," she said indignantly. "Why place the signs on busy interstates?" When told the signs were warnings to motorists to drive carefully, Donna just couldn't accept it. The government could move signs wherever it wanted, she insisted, and it should stop erecting signs at dangerous places on roads where they "attracted" deer. It took several minutes before Donna -- reluctantly -- saw the light, though she never admitted that she believed deer could read.

COLORADO

How embarrassing for rural Delta County in western Colorado: A file containing the names of a couple of dozen "sovereign citizens" -- residents declaring themselves free of pesky taxes, laws or regulations by governmental authorities -- was labeled "Wingnuts" by one staffer. That title became public when a reporter for the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel wrote a front-page story about the anti-government folks, headlined "Watchdogs or Wingnuts?" A week later, red-faced county commissioners apologized.

MONTANA

The Rev. Rick Page, pastor of the First Christian Church in Lewistown, Mont., is convinced he's found a sure-fire way to lure men to Thursday night services during hunting season: Offer churchgoers the chance to enter a raffle to win a rifle or a crossbow. "I don't think there's too many places around the country where you could do something like this," he told the Missoulian. But it works, he says, pointing to Libby, Mont., which attracted 800 people last year with a similar emphasis on hunting. To help hunters feel at home in his church, Page says the auditorium and fellowship hall will be festooned with mounts, including deer heads, a full-sized bear, two mountain lions, bull elk, moose and some pheasants. Page also intends to hit a hunting theme hard in his sermons. He started with the Apostle Paul, he says, because "before his conversion, he hunted down Christians until God hunted him down." No mention of what kind of ammo the Lord might have used.

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

THE WEST

Now that China's decided to build one coal-fired power plant every week, corporations like Goldman Sachs have become highly interested in helping the country find black rocks to burn. The Powder River Basin of Wyoming and Montana produces what seems an inexhaustible amount, but there's a hitch (isn't there always?): The coal would have to travel hundreds of miles on trains more than 100-railcars long across wide-open Western landscapes and through congested towns. A handful of towns on the Pacific Coast are being considered for the construction of a new port, and that's created another hitch: If prime candidate Bellingham, Wash., north of Seattle, is chosen, Seattle will be very unhappy. The coal trains would almost certainly lumber through the city before going up the coast, creating additional traffic jams for commuters. A headline from The Stranger sums it up: "Coal trains could delay downtown, SoDo traffic by one to three hours daily." At a press conference, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn said the coal trains would "create a wall along our waterfront" leading to "more frustration, more bikers, drivers and pedestrians 'shooting the gap' to get across, which means the potential for more accidents." The consulting firm Parametrix predicted that 10-18 coal trains each day would move through Seattle, with each train delaying traffic by roughly five minutes, and delays occurring at unpredictable times 24 hours a day. Seattle City Council member Mike O'Brien summed up the impacts of a major new port and increased rail traffic as "all negative" for the city. "If a project like this goes forward," he added, "our progress (to become carbon neutral by 2050) goes down the drain." Port developers have said that the project's impacts, including coal dust pollution and derailments, will be fully reviewed in order to meet high environmental standards, reports Businessweek.

COLORADO

There's a "quiet crisis" in Colorado, and it's all the fault of people driving energy-efficient cars, reports the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. "We are at a pretty dramatic tipping point," said Randy Harrison of MOVE Colorado, a group seeking solutions to the problem of underfunded road construction and maintenance. Harrison told a Club 20 meeting of western Colorado counties that electric-car drivers -- who don't have to pay a gas tax -- still need to do their fair share, and he suggested putting transponders on those vehicles so their mileage could be checked and bills automatically sent. "A shipment of all-electric Nissan Leaf vehicles is expected soon in the Republic of Boulder," he warned, and "the rest of us who still drive our Ford 350s" shouldn't have to carry them, the slackers.

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

COLORADO AND WASHINGTON

Zombies must be a little too much in movie news these days. Maureen Briggs of Montrose, Colo., was fishing at Lost Lake on the Gunnison National Forest when a man and his two sons hiked by, with the younger boy asking: “Have you seen any zombies here?” Her reply, “Not yet.”

But in Kent, a suburb of Seattle, residents are witnessing a real invasion of the living dead, reports The Seattle Times, as zombie bees, or “zombees,” flood the area. Unlike healthy bees that go to sleep at night, zombees stay active, buzzing around lights “in jerky patterns and finally flopping on the floor.” It’s all the fault of female scuttle flies, a small parasitic species. They land on the backs of foraging honeybees, and using their “needle-sharp ovipositors,” send eggs into the bees’ abdomens. “They basically eat the insides out of the bee,” says John Hafernik, a San Francisco State University biologist, who has begun tracking the spread of the zombees. And in a departure from the plot of horror movies about aliens, “it’s the parasite that’s native to North America, not the bees,” which settlers imported from Europe centuries ago. Zombees have been spotted in California, with 80 percent of hives in the San Francisco Bay Area infected, as well as western Washington, Oregon, and South Dakota. For the latest information gathered and shared by interested citizens, check ZombeeWatch.org. 

MONTANA AND COLORADO

By now, everyone surely knows the mantra, “A fed bear is a dead bear,” but in Heron, Mont., a community near the Idaho border, Barbara Sweeney told the Sanders County Ledger that she’d been feeding many bears for a long time because they needed her help “to survive in the wild.” During the 22 years she ran an animal sanctuary, she said, people would drop off orphan bears that needed to learn “to run from outfitters and pickups.” Sweeney, who insists she never knew that what she was doing was illegal, is distressed because wardens from Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks recently captured and destroyed seven bears that Sweeney had been feeding — including a 495-pound male and 300-pound female. “People have known I’ve been doing this for years,” she said. “If they would have said something, I would have stopped. I can’t get over killing these animals.” A spokesman for the state wildlife agency said that feeding bears was a safety hazard and that doing so leads directly to their death. 

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

ALASKA - Denny Akeya, a native of the St. Lawrence Island village of Savoonga, wears his opinion on his chest. Courtesy Loren Holmes, Alaska Dispatch

THE WEST

Marketers can sell anything, it seems, even metaphors. You can now buy an air freshener that mimics not the true scent of a national park, which might be a noxious blend of car exhaust and smoke from surrounding wildfires, but the very “spirit of our nation’s pristine treasures.” Air Wick’s take on spirit in the Smoky Mountains happens to be “warm spice and twilight;” at Acadia National Park it’s a foray into the kitchen for the aromas of “sweet vanilla and pumpkins,” while at Shenandoah National Park, the smells are “cedarwood and cinnamon spice.” Without a smidgeon of irony, the National Park Foundation says it collaborated with Air Wick on the new line “so you can enjoy the scents of fall in your home.” Saves on gas, too. 

Not to be outdone, Portland, Ore.-based Antler & Co. has come up with a box of little sticks that you ignite, blow out and then waft the smoke “onto your hipster beard.” Voila! Thanks to Campfire Cologne, reports laughingsquid.com, you emanate the smell of a sooty campfire without actually having to hike anywhere or put up a tent. The makers call the smoke permeating a man’s beard nothing less than a “nostalgic ode to cooking over the fire, secret swimming holes and the unending days of youth. Use it frequently, transport yourself, live the dream.” Also saves on gas. 

MONTANA

A couple in Roundup, Mont., was apparently under the influence of drugs when they called the police to report a bleeding intruder who seemed to be expiring on a bed. Well, not exactly, says The Associated Press, though there was a bed of 262 growing marijuana plants into which Rachael Hanlon “fired four guns while her husband reloaded them and cleared jams.” Federal charges are pending against the misguided couple.

Speaking of guns and unlikely associations, the front page of the Daily Inter Lake of Kalispell, Mont., featured an ad for a raffle that would benefit the Stillwater Christian School. Only 1,000 tickets would be sold, and the lucky winner — selected at a Shoot Out event — would take home a fancy assault rifle valued at $905.

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

CALIFORNIA

Not far from stands of huge redwood trees and often doused by rain, fans of Humboldt State’s Division II football team cheer on their team with an unusual array of helpers. An ax-wielding drum major cavorts in front of the crowd while some members of the Marching Lumberjack Band make music by banging on trashcan lids and sticks; if the band has what you might call a uniform, it’s hardhats and suspenders. They’re joined by a buff-looking crew of four men and two women waving chainsaws; when the team scores a touchdown, the chainsaws get revved up to create a mighty din. Lately, the team’s 7,000-person-capacity Redwood Bowl has been selling out; what’s even more surprising is that the football program is financed without a lick of taxpayer money. Students each pay hundreds of dollars a year to help keep the bare-bones $650,000 football program going, private money does the rest, and the track team and its coach pitch in to clean up the stadium after a game. While the last decade in California saw ferocious cutbacks in funding for all aspects of higher education, Humboldt State can boast that it remains the state’s last Division II football team, and after a few dismal years, the team has finally begun to win, recently trouncing Grand Junction’s Colorado Mesa University. “In a region known more for marijuana culture and environmental activism than athletics,” reports The New York Times, there’s now a sense of “pride in your team and your small town.”

CALIFORNIA AND NEVADA

Congratulations, Death Valley National Park, for beating out Libya for the honor of being “the world’s hottest place.” It took a team of international weather experts to make the call, reports The Associated Press, which now allows Death Valley to claim “hottest” along with “lowest and driest” place. The group, which included several Middle Eastern countries as well as the United States, investigated a long-held record from Libya, now considered inaccurate, that recorded 136.4 degrees 90 years ago. The new and approved record was recorded on July 10, 1913, in Death Valley, when the temperature reached 136 degrees. Recent sweltering days in the park haven’t come close to challenging that record, though it must have seemed sufficiently hot this July 11, when the temperature hit a high for the year of 128 degrees.

THE WEST

Writer Denver Bryan says Todd Wilkinson got it all wrong when this column cited his claim that hunting guides haven’t been hurt by wolf packs cutting down elk herds. It’s not easy to locate outfitters who have downsized or left the business, Bryan said, but after a few weeks of searching, he found Lee Hart of Broken Heart Outfitters in Gallatin Gateway, Dave Hettinger of Dillon, and Rich Hafenfield of Big Timber, as well as others in Montana who believe that their hunting business has been hurt by the presence of wolves. As Liz Jackson of Cooke City put it, “We see the time in the near future when we will no longer be offering elk hunts in this region.”

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

WYOMING AND UTAH

Gun advocates keep turning up pesky impediments to their right to use guns any way they want, and when they do, they usually contact their state legislators and demand action. So recently, a Wyoming legislative panel endorsed a proposed bill that would permit silencers to be used while hunting any wildlife in the state, reports the Billings Gazette. Yet the regulation prohibiting hunters from using silencers on their guns was created entirely for safety reasons. As one reader commented: “This is a terrible, terrible idea. I have absolutely no problem with guns or hunters, but I like to know when someone is shooting a rifle around me when I’m out hiking.” 

And in Utah, a bit of brouhaha has erupted over the lack of human-shaped targets at public ranges run by the Division of Wildlife Resources. Supporters of targets that resemble people charge that squirrel and rabbit silhouettes or bull’s-eyes just don’t cut it when you’re training in “lawful self-defense,” reports the Salt Lake Tribune. The state agency, however, gently reminded the complainers that “in hunter education, we drive home the lesson that you should never point your firearm at something you do not intend to shoot — like other hunters.” To state Republican Sen. Mark Madsen, however, not allowing human-shaped targets at taxpayer-funded shooting ranges is nothing less than a “dangerous precedent.” 

WASHINGTON

A 15-to-20-pound, 6-or-7-foot-long Burmese python, variously described as albino, yellow or “closer to brown with some yellow areas,” escaped into a park in northeast Seattle, a situation complicated by initial confusion as to which park it had chosen, reports resident Dorothy Neville. Fortunately, after city police started tweeting people in the area about the dangers of this “ambush predator,” the snake, under the moniker “Ravenna Park Python,” suddenly began tweeting back: “Just out for a stroll, er slither, on a beautiful day. Heard there was some commotion on the other side of the park. …” The python, whose owner named it “Timid,” remains on the stroll.

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

OREGON

Every town needs something to be proud of. Portland not only has its own television show, Portlandia, but also a toilet. A very special toilet: Portland, if the L.A. Times is to be believed, has revolutionized the public loo, creating a minimalist, solar-powered bathroom that boasts its own Facebook page. It supposedly solves the age-old problems of its kind, which, notes the Times, include "graffiti, trash-can fires, furtive needle activity, commercial lovemaking, emergency baths, laundries for the homeless" and more. "I'm convinced Portland is the only city in the U.S., and maybe the world, that celebrates the opening of bathrooms," said a city commissioner at a toilet dedication ceremony, where students also reportedly sang Skip to my Lou.

CANADA, CALIFORNIA AND COLORADO

It wouldn't be the West without a whimsical story about wildlife and humans snuggling up, would it? On Aug. 25, a crew fighting the Chips Fire, which has burned for more than a month in Northern California, stumbled across a bobcat kitten that had lost its way -- and its mother -- to the fire. The firefighters tried to walk away and let natural selection take over, but the baby cat, about the size of a domestic kitten, followed them, "curling up on (their) boots and snuggling into (their) chaps every time they paused," reports the Sacramento Bee. Firefighters turned the kitten over to Lake Tahoe Wildlife Care for treatment. Meanwhile, in Aspen, Colo., a couple of bears had to be chased away from the finish line of the third stage of the USA Pro Cycling Challenge as the riders climbed the mountains toward the resort town. Aspen police chalked up a whopping 292 bear-related calls in August, a record. While the Aspen bears didn't disrupt the bike race, the same can't be said for Canada's GranFondo Banff cycling event, which had to be rerouted due to bears feeding on the original course.

This edition of Heard around the West was guest-edited by Jonathan Thompson.

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

Around Colorado's Dinosaur National Monument, the livestock are a little different. Credit: Andrew Gulliford

UTAH

It seemed at first like just another armed holdup of a roadside corn stand. Corn-seller Dusty Moore told police that he was innocently selling ears in a North Ogden parking lot when a Hispanic-looking man in his 30s approached, demanded some money (no word on whether he also wanted some corn) and shot Dusty in the back, according to the Ogden Standard-Examiner. Oddly enough, it was the second time Dusty's corn stand had been hit by a gunman. Police went on a manhunt, residents locked their doors, and a private company planned a free concealed-weapons permit class at the public library to help folks protect themselves from the criminal. Or at least avoid shooting themselves in the back. A week later, Moore admitted fabricating the story to save himself embarrassment: He had somehow shot himself in the back with his own gun, which he started carrying after the earlier robbery. Not surprising that he'd arm himself, you'd think. Except it turns out Dusty made up that robbery, too. No word on what motivated this corny tale.

NEVADA

Northern Las Vegas is like many Western 'burbs, a sprawling and homogenous zone of placelessness, where long, wide streets are lined with house after brand-new house, and almost 80 percent of the mortgages are underwater -- hard to picture in such a dry place. But underneath that suburban blandness lurks a wild heart, where street names like Bucking Bronco and Trotting Horse Road aren't just nostalgic nods to a mythic past. That past lives on, thanks partly to Clark County Commissioner Tom Collins, who lives in -- and livens up -- that neighborhood. In mid-August, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, one of Collins' bulls escaped and ran rampant through the streets of northwest Las Vegas. Police shot the bull with a tranquilizer dart, but not until it charged a woman, sending her to the hospital with minor injuries. A cow also escaped, and was captured. Collins got slapped with a misdemeanor, just as he did about six weeks earlier when he was shooting -- while drinking -- on his property. A stubborn tree resisted his chainsaw, reports theLas Vegas Sun, so the commish got mad and opened fire (apparently shooting at a wooden post, as well). Collins, a Democrat, is running for re-election against a Republican and an Independent American, but the incidents apparently haven't hurt his standing. In fact, they may have helped, judging by the sentiment of a commenter on the Review-Journal bull-incident article. "Kerrie Heretic" enthusiastically supported Collins and his cattle's antics: "This town has turned into an entire population of wusses ... most of the men here are a bunch of metrosexuals, who are more concerned with the kind of hair product they use than being real men." Collins, as near as we can tell, doesn't fret about his hair: He usually appears in a big straw cowboy hat.

This edition of Heard around the West was guest-edited by Jonathan Thompson.

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

THE SOUTHWEST & CALIFORNIA

It's been hot lately. Damned hot. Phoenix, Ariz., Palm Springs, Calif., and other Western torrid zones posted temperatures of more than 100 degrees every day during the first two weeks of August. Death Valley's high exceeded 115 degrees on 14 out of those 14 days, and on one occasion reached 126 degrees. And Phoenix's low never dropped below 90 for seven days straight. It's enough to make you want to go jump in a river or a lake. If you can find one, of course, and it isn't teeming with leeches. 'Bloodsuckers prey on foothill swimmers,' was the recent headline in the Calaveras (Calif.) Enterprise, disappointing Twilight fans, once they realized no actual hot vampires were involved. Apparently, folks cooling off in a local reservoir discovered leeches attached to various parts of their bodies. Despite health officials' assurances that the slimy things are harmless, the horrified swimmers vowed never to jump in that lake again.

THE WEST

With all this talk about anthrax, cows, leeches, algorithmic shooters and prairie dogs, one could be forgiven for thinking conspiracy is afoot. Throw in the extraordinary number of recent wildfires, and it's pretty clear what's going on: Russian terrorists, aided by elements within the U.S. military, have invaded the West and are burning it down, for motives way too complex to explain. That's the thrust of a recent piece at beforeitsnews.com and an email sent to Heard Around the West from someone called 'patriotnews.' The evidence includes alleged sightings of Russians loitering at isolated shooting ranges and popular tourist sites, plus the existence of 'an advanced accelerant' that is 'almost nuclear in its ability to spread fire.' Given this summer's conflagrations, we're not surprised: All this record-breaking heat, near-record drought and a century of fire suppression can lead to almost nuclear-impact fires. Strangely enough, no one has mentioned the Eagle Mountain fire in Utah, which charred part of a mock Afghan town on a military range while sparing real 'American' houses. Suspicious, indeed!

COLORADO

Don't worry about the Russians invading; fear the Wyoming ground squirrel, instead. It was once limited to the northern parts of Colorado, but has recently migrated west and southward, creating a 'horror story' for that region's ranchers and the longtime local golden-mantled ground squirrels, says the Denver Post. The newcomer is more aggressive than its old-timer counterpart, has more babies, eats more and digs bigger holes. Worst of all, it's not as cute as the local guy. Post reporter Nancy Lofholm says it is 'a blah greyish color and shaped like a pink-nosed torpedo. It doesn't much like trying to play cute with humans and has been observed actually wrestling down its chipmunk-like cousins.' Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory near Crested Butte, Colo., ground zero for the invasion, are interested because they believe the newcomer may displace the golden-mantled variety altogether. Interestingly, the new squirrel seemed to show up at about the same time, and in the same region, as the previously mentioned cattle mutilations. Coincidence? Or conspiracy?

This edition of Heard around the West was guest-edited by Jonathan Thompson.

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

WASHINGTON: "It's all downhill from here, sweetie." Courtesy Alexis Alloway.

COLORADO

These are dark days for bovines. In northeastern Colorado, 50 cows keeled over this summer, most likely from anthrax, which thrives during drought. That sad news came on the heels of a grisly spate of livestock mutilations in the western part of the state. A horse near Gunnison was shot and its head skinned and its anus removed, according to the Denver Post. A nearby cow suffered a similar fate, the fourth such incident in the area this year. 'It looks like a ritualistic issue,' rancher Mike Clarke told the Post. 'Either that, or they are high on drugs (the mutilators, not the cows). There is just no logical explanation.' Southern Colorado's been plagued, on and off, by mysterious livestock dissections ever since 'Snippy' the horse was eviscerated in the San Luis Valley in 1967, and speculation, logical and illogical, is rife about who or what is doing the slicing and dicing. Suspects include the aforementioned satanic junkies, space aliens (naturally), agents from a secret military installation near Dulce, N.M., doing genetic tests, and faddish chefs trying to satisfy a new culinary hankering for sauteéd l'anus de la vache. (We just made that last one up, but these days, who knows?)

NEW MEXICO

One way to find out who's responsible for animal killings is to stake out local pastures. That tactic, reports the Albuquerque Journal, sort of worked for the prairie dog advocate/vigilantes trying to bust whoever shot a dozen or more of the rodents at a particular intersection in Santa Fe. Prairie dog vigilante Steve Dobbie was keeping watch when he caught Steve Wienke -- a guest scientist at Los Alamos who works on algorithms -- taking a pop at the p-dogs with a pellet gun. Wienke told police that he had never shot at these particular rodents before; he just happened to notice them as he was getting cash at the ATM and figured they were good targets. Dobbie told the Journal that he would continue to watch over the p-dog colony until the animals go into hibernation.

This edition of Heard around the West was guest-edited by Jonathan Thompson.

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