MONTANA

The Forest Service is getting more bang for its buck these days. Recently, rangers said they might have to blow up some frozen cows in Colorado to disperse them before they rotted; now comes the news that the Helena National Forest in Montana has already used explosives to bring down some trees -- 500 of them, to be exact, and in just three and a half days. The trees were beetle-killed pine trees that overhung some of the Pioneer Mountain Scenic Byway, where they had a nasty habit of falling over. They were also unsafe to log in a conventional manner, reports the Missoulian. "We don't have a whole lot of really good sawyers," says Charlie Showers, engineering program leader at the Missoula Technology and Development Center. So now a "blaster" controls how the trees come down by deciding where to place the ammonium nitrate-based explosives: "Drilling a hole in the trunk and putting explosives inside does very little damage to the wood, leaving a fuzzy stump," says Showers. "Shrink-wrapping explosives to the outside snaps the tree," the article says. "Proper placement can bring down 50 trees at once, laying them" -- as Showers puts it -- " ‘like hair on a dog's back.' " 

THE NATION

Wisconsin farmer Jerry Apps, a stern-faced man who favors bib overalls with lots of pockets, first published his Rural Wit & Wisdom: Time-Honored Values from the Heartland, in 1997; now, thanks to Colorado's Fulcrum Publishing, it's been re-issued in paperback with evocative black-and-white photos by Apps' son, Steve. It's a keeper, even if a lot of Apps' advice is about what you'd expect from someone who spent years collecting tried-and-true recommendations for a happy and successful life. But there are some surprising bits you might not have heard, such as: "Never trust a barn cat," "Don't turn your back on a billy goat," and "Don't make a pet of a pig; it will spoil your taste for bacon." We also appreciated his advice for how to enjoy below-zero weather: Walk outside, he urges, and "listen and hear nothing except your heart beating." Farm work, of course, is what taught him everything he knows about life, from the routine chores that need to be done with the right attitude -- no sloppiness can be tolerated -- to his dedication to farming itself, as revealed by this pithy anecdote: "A farmer recently won the lottery. When asked what he was going to do with the money, he replied, ‘I'll keep farming until the money runs out.' "

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

ARIZONA

Phoenix broke a record on April , though we can't imagine anyone celebrated the event. The temperature climbed up to 105 degrees -- six degrees hotter than the previous record for that day.

COLORADO

A recent paid obituary in the Denver Post for a man named Michael "Flathead" Blanchard made for some delightful reading. "Weary of reading obituaries noting someone's courageous battle with death, Mike wanted it known that he died as a result of being stubborn, refusing to follow doctors' orders, and raising hell for six decades. … He enjoyed booze, guns, cars and younger women until the day he died." He also said that "so many of his childhood friends that weren't killed in Vietnam went on to become criminals, prostitutes and/or Democrats. He asks that you stop by and re-tell the stories he can no longer tell." But it's probably best to leave all children under 18 at home, the obituary advised, because of the "adult material" they might hear.

CALIFORNIA

Robert Biggs, 69, encountered both an unfriendly lion and an unexpectedly altruistic bear in the mountains above Whiskey Flats, in northeastern California. Biggs had been quietly observing the bear and her cubs, when suddenly the lion sprang at him, crunching his backpack and shredding the skin on his left arm. Much to his amazement, the bear ran up and pulled the lion off Biggs "during a wild 15-second scuffle," reports the Paradise Post. Then "the mountain lion bolted and the bear returned to her cubs before they moved on." 

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

COLORADO

Time has run out for the frozen cows of Conundrum Hot Springs, the immensely popular, 11,200-foot-high stopover for hikers in western Colorado's White River National Forest. According to the Aspen Daily News, several cows jammed themselves into a Forest Service cabin this winter, apparently to get warm, though unfortunately they were unable to figure out how to build a fire. After a while, they died inside, "piled up," and eventually, they all froze solid. The cows apparently belong to a Gunnison area rancher with grazing permits on the other side of the Elk Mountains, who reported 29 cows missing last fall. With spring thaw imminent, the ice-cows will begin to decompose, and the hot springs are at risk of contamination. At first, Forest Service officials said they'd blow up the cows with explosives, then they considered burning them, but both operations would require lengthy analysis and would have impacts of their own. Meanwhile, snow on the 8.5-mile trail ruled out using horses to haul the corpses away, and a helicopter was said to be too pricey. So the rancher sent up three workers with handsaws to help the local wilderness ranger divide them into "appropriate-sized" pieces to be dispersed around the area. "Nature will take it from there," the News reports, "between decomposition and hungry wildlife." Since the latter includes bears, the agency is asking hikers to stay away for at least a month.

NEVADA
A 30-foot-tall neon martini glass welcomes visitors to what some Las Vegas residents call the city's "real" downtown. This seedy and neglected area lies some six miles off the glittering Strip, whose casino-hotels are visited by an astounding 40 million visitors each year. In contrast, the city's quiet downtown has stubbornly resisted redevelopment for decades, specializing in dollar stores, pawnshops, vacant lots and low-rise condos. But now, a financial angel named Tony Hsieh, CEO of the shoe-mecca Zappos.com, has moved into the neighborhood with big plans. Using his own millions, he intends to transform the area into the kind of yeasty urban zone that appeals to both new businesses and budding artists, reports Bloomberg Businessweek's Brad Stone. He's already spent $100 million to buy land, invested another $100 million to develop apartment buildings, and is offering $5 million to back startup businesses. Hsieh says his for-profit company, The Downtown Project, will acquire equity in each business it funds, but won't take a penny until the business earns a profit. "We are not doing it to make money," he says. "We want owner-operators who care about this community." Hsieh says he could have created a cloistered set of buildings for his 1,400 suburban employees -- "our own little Paradise" -- but instead decided to relocate his entire staff to the downtown's former City Hall. As for this being a risky move, Hsieh, who wrote a best-selling memoir, Delivering Happiness, in 2010, says he's not worried: "I don't see my lifestyle changing. In some ways, you could argue I'm not actually risking anything." In his downtown apartment, Hsieh plots his revitalization effort with the help of yellow Post-it notes that detail the kind of businesses he wants to lure, "including a doggie day care and a barbecue joint." But is his vision of a startup hub in a long-ignored area of Las Vegas too audacious, even for a city that was dreamed up by the Mob and constructed in the middle of a desert not all that long ago? Stephen Brown, director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has an answer for that. "Iconoclasm," he says, "is completely normal (here). Nevada is still a place where individual audacity can be successful."

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

COLORADO
Canada geese may not enjoy reading, but one pair has definitely become territorial about the Harmony Library on the campus of Front Range Community College in Fort Collins, Colo. When library patrons try to enter or exit the main door, the 10-to-14-pound geese hiss and flap their wings -- an "intimidating" experience for little kids in strollers who find themselves at eye level with the angry birds, says the Coloradoan. Yet the migratory birds' bad behavior has been tolerated for some years and even become "something of an annual tradition" during the spring, so library staff merely post signs that warn: "Aggressive geese. Keep walking!" Of course, visitors occasionally break into a run when the geese get their dander up, and it's advisable to step carefully, since the geese leave sizable calling cards on the sidewalk. Still, as one unflappable visitor put it: "They're just acting like geese. I'm just amazed they pick this spot."

WYOMING
In Wyoming's southeast corner, the Niobrara Shale oil play is big business with energy companies combing the area hoping to snap up leases. But though the pressure is intense on local people to lease their mineral rights, not everybody succumbs. Leslie Waggener, an archivist with the University of Wyoming's American Heritage Center, has been collecting oral histories from residents to chart the progress of this latest energy development. One day, she met an "aginner" named Harry "Bud" Rogers, who says he turned down so much money he couldn't believe he'd done it, reports the Casper Star-Tribune. But Rogers said he'd "bought this property to pass on to my kids," and that was that. The oral history archive is available at http://digitalcollections.uwyo.edu:8180/luna/servlet/uwydbuwy~51~51.

UTAH
Even billboard-hating drivers in the college town of Logan, Utah, probably don't get angry when they pass an unusual sign on the corner of 700 North and Main. Its giant message isn't selling anything but niceness: "BE KINDER THAN NECESSARY." A couple of years ago, the billboard appeared for the first time on Interstate 15 in the town of Tremonton, the gift of an anonymous donor suffering from a terminal illness. He wanted "to pass on an uplifting message to fellow citizens," reports the Herald Journal. Since then, the Headrick sign company, at the suggestion of salesman Mike Watts, has kept the message alive at new locations, all at company expense.  n

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

NEW MEXICO
It's hard to know whether the calf appreciated its ride in the backseat of the car; maybe it got to poke its head out the window and flap its tongue in the wind, in classic Fido fashion. But the animal must have looked noticeably larger than even a very large dog, because a deputy sheriff in Luna County, N.M., pulled over the Honda Civic to ask the driver a few questions. Then he arrested the three men in the vehicle for rustling the 220-pound calf that was "sharing" the backseat with one of them, reports the Carlsbad Current Argus. The men were jailed and charged with suspicion of larceny of livestock, conspiracy, lack of a bill of sale and exporting livestock. The Associated Press did not mention how the calf exited the car or whether it had to hitchhike to get home again.

OREGON: Made with frilly pink slime, perhaps?

CALIFORNIA
An impatient driver in San Francisco recently received an unexpected comeuppance. After traffic in his lane ground to a halt, reports The Week, he decided to swerve around other cars and keep moving, only to find that his Porsche had entered a lane made of freshly poured cement: "The car sank about a foot and got stuck."

COLORADO
Now in its 20th year, the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in Colorado Springs, Colo., always attracts wannabe authors who eagerly collect advice from the writers and editors present. Invariably, one tip always gets mentioned, says Kirsten Akens of the local weekly Independent, and it has nothing to do with finding an agent. It's "Never, ever, pitch an agent or editor while in the bathroom." Someone once tried that ploy on a "famous" New York editor who was otherwise occupied in a bathroom stall. It proved anything but successful: After the manuscript was slid stealthily under her door, the editor said, "They were very lucky I didn't use it for toilet paper."

WASHINGTON
Speaking of toilets, if you took 400 of them bound for a landfill and ground them up instead, and then added the bite-size bits to concrete, you'd have a road material dubbed "Poticrete." At least that's what they're calling it in Bellingham, Wash., where poticrete was incorporated into the Meadow Kansas Ellis Trail Project. The project achieved LEED-like certification from the year-old Greenroads Foundation, based in Seattle, which means that the new road of former porcelain thrones meets a high level of sustainability.

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

ALASKA AND THE WEST
Grizzly bears never cease to amaze. The latest news about the powerful bruins comes from The Economist, which reports that a British biologist observed a grizzly in the shallows of Glacier Bay National Park doing something unique. The animal would pick up rocks and then discard them until it seemed to find just the right specimen, perfectly encrusted with barnacles, whereupon the grizzly "rubbed away at its muzzle and face for roughly a minute before dropping the stone back into the water." Voila! The grizzly is "the only species other than humans to have invented the comb," declared Volke Deecke, a biologist at the University of St. Andrews. Other mammals have developed tools, including sea otters that smash clams open with rocks; dolphins, which wrap sponges around their noses to protect themselves while foraging on the seabed; elephants, which use their trunks to break off branches and swat insects; and humpback whales that gather in a circle and then confuse trapped schools of fish by blowing bubbles. But as far as we know, only bears have made technological breakthroughs in personal grooming.

In other bear news, a Brigham Young University study of wildlife encounters found that firing a gun at a bear "was no more effective in keeping people from injury or death during a bear encounter than not using a firearm." Biologist Tom Smith analyzed nearly 270 conflicts involving bears and people. A shooter might be able to kill an aggressive bear, he concluded, but there's always a risk of injury to the shooter or others, reports the Billings Gazette. As for what backcountry hikers and hunters should do if threatened by a bear, Smith echoed what conservation groups and the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks agency have been saying for years: "Carry pepper spray when in grizzly bear country and know how to use it."

MONTANA
Who do you call for help when it's the sheriff himself who tossed you through a bar window? That was Robert Savanda's problem last summer after he and the sheriff, Freedom Crawford, got into a fight at the Montana Tavern in Lewiston, Mont. Sheriff Crawford, who'd come to town to provide security during a murder trial, first pleaded not guilty and insisted that Savanda, 48, of Pennsylvania, "accidentally fell through the window." The Associated Press says that Crawford later changed his plea to guilty, admitting that he was undergoing treatment for alcoholism. "I learned a lot about the issues of why I was drinking so much (and) of what I wasn't doing to reach my full potential," Crawford said. A Montana judge sentenced the sheriff to a 6-month suspended jail term, fined him $1,350 and also ordered him to pay more than $2,600 in restitution.

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

MONTANA
Ruby Garrett, the racy grande dame of Butte, Mont., died March 17 at age 94. For many years, Garrett was the proprietor of the Dumas, the town's last brothel, until it closed in 1982, reports the Montana Standard. Garrett had a couple of brushes with the law along the way, serving six months in jail for tax evasion and another nine months in prison for killing her common-law husband Andy Arrigoni while he was in the middle of a card game -- firing five bullets at him. As one person familiar with the case tells it, Garrett "was the victim of severe spousal abuse ... and she was beaten so bad that day that when she walked in that Board of Trade to shoot him, they couldn't recognize her." Garrett was also said to have respected and stood up for the women who worked for her. The Dumas, which first opened back in 1890, thrived throughout the town's decades of copper mining, when prostitution was "one of the main professions in Butte," said Bob Butorovich, who served as Butte-Silver Bow sheriff from 1980 to 1992. He should know, since he was the sheriff who shut down the brothel for good 30 years ago. "She was a colorful old gal," he said of Madam Ruby. "Part of Butte history is gone."

COLORADO He's even cooler than you are. Credit Shaun Gibson

THE DAKOTAS
Are you looking to get away from it all? If so, says writer Pete Carrels, consider South Dakota: It's just the place for people who prefer few neighbors and minimal regulation. A recent report from the South Dakota's Department of Transportation found that of the state's 66 counties, 36 can boast that they lack a single traffic light. But don't even think of bicycling in northwest North Dakota this summer, reports the Associated Press. The oil boom there has filled roads "with mile after mile of big heavy trucks that make cyclists feel very unsafe," says Jennifer Milyko, cartographer with the Missoula, Mont.-based Adventure Cycling Association. "They're scared out of their wits." As of this May, bicyclists who want to retrace the Lewis and Clark expedition will be steered 100 miles south of the association's Northern Tier Route, the biggest change in the nonprofit's 39-year history.

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

OREGON
Three peregrine falcons named Judah, Carbon and Zinc are the go-to birds for a Portland garbage station when it wants to discourage pesky seagulls that scatter food scraps and foul nearby roofs and cars with their droppings. The raptors don't have to attack the gulls to haze them away, reports The Oregonian; all they need to do "is fly around and look like a scary falcon." The gulls quickly get the message that they're in danger and move on, though a transfer-station manager in Tillamook has found that the falcons need to be brought by frequently to keep the seagulls from returning. And though the falcons seldom attack the gulls, which are formidable birds twice their size, sometimes the temptation proves irresistible, says reporter Eric Mortenson, who witnessed one astonishing encounter: "Streaking from a building fan tower, with screaming gulls peeling away in terror left and right, Judah selected a target and delivered a mid-air whack job." Falconer Kort Clayton, who was clearly startled, called that attack atypical behavior, for which "Judah earned a time out" in his wire cage. Meanwhile, the gull Judah nailed was a goner.

WASHINGTON
The issue before a Washington state legislative committee was beaver relocation, and only one person bothered to show up. But he was probably the right person since his name was Neil Beaver, reports the Olympian. Beaver advocated moving the animals away from places where they cause damage to new streams where they could build useful dams.

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

COLORADO
The city of Grand Junction, in western Colorado, just loves controversy, or so you would think from reading the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. First, there was the flap over a high school student who refused to sing an Urdu song because its lyrics translated into an Islamic hymn; then there were the members of the Lions Club, who dressed up as suicide-terrorists for their annual parade through town, complete with white robes, dark glasses and necklaces made of "bombs." One phony Jihadist sported red cylinders resembling dynamite dangling from a cord around his neck; another wore a box on his chest labeled "C-4 explosive," plus an attached cell phone to represent a triggering device. Hundreds of spectators watched and laughed as club members pretended to demonstrate against the fence around the local airport: "Trust us you don't need a fence," said one placard. But after the marchers dumped their costumes in a trash can near a bar, somebody picked up the "C-4 dynamite"-labeled box and put it in front of a door to the Rio Grande Federal Credit Union. That really got folks hopping. A passerby called police, whose explosive experts proceeded to detonate the "bomb," and the airport called the FBI because police told them that Arab protesters were verbally attacking the airport fence. Not surprisingly, in the Sentinel's always lively "You Said It" column, readers expressed outrage at the Lions Club's poor judgment. Other commenters were distressed because so many people sided with the student who couldn't bring himself to sing a Muslim song, with one concluding sadly that there "really isn't too much difference between a Christian extremist and a Muslim extremist." Oh, well, at least the Lions Club, which aims to raise money for worthy community causes, tries mightily to have a good time. In previous years, members have paraded in drag as nuns, which "didn't go over well with St. Mary's Hospital," and during the Enron scandal, "members dressed in barrels with fake derrieres, holding up signs saying they lost their rears when Enron collapsed."

MONTANA
If the residents of Browning, Mont., a town of 1,000 close to Canada, ever need to brag, they can always boast about how their weather goes to extremes. Back in 1916, on Feb. 23, for example, the temperature dropped 100 degrees in a day -- a record -- plummeting from 44 degrees Fahrenheit to minus 56 degrees Fahrenheit. Perhaps because freezing cold, blowing snow and fierce winds are hardly news to the locals, no one seemed too surprised recently when 65 mph gusts pushed a school bus with 11 students aboard right off the road and into a fence, where it remained upright. "Good driver!" commented Ron Boyd to KTVQ.com. "Didn't try to steer it back on the road and roll (over). Just rode it down to the fence." But highly skilled school bus drivers are the norm in rural Montana, says Roundup resident Wendy Beye, who has spent years following her children -- and now grandchildren -- to basketball and volleyball games that are long hours of driving time away. Winter weather is almost always bad, she says, as the kids leave early in the morning in steamy-windowed buses; yet accidents are rare because bus drivers have learned how to drive safely in rotten weather. "Somehow," she says, "all of us almost always arrive intact.

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

ARIZONA
Perhaps it was the "intense public scrutiny," as Jeff Ruch, head of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, put it, or it may have been a sudden attack of common sense, but the director of the National Park Service, Jon Jarvis, recently reversed himself and announced that Grand Canyon National Park can soon ban disposable water bottles less than one gallon in size. Coca-Cola, which sells bottled water, had complained about the proposed ban and delayed its execution for a year.

THE ODD WEST
Police hear so many bizarre things that it's no wonder some officers become jaundiced about human nature. In Carbondale, Colo., the Sopris Sun reports that a man called the police in the late afternoon to report that his bird was missing: "The last time he saw the bird it was 'rolling around on the floor.' " When asked if it had been left outside, the man replied, "It's entirely possible because one never knows." The man then told the officer "he was going to clean up a little and maybe he'd find his bird." Or maybe not; we stopped reading, though the "Cop Shop" conversation kept going. And in Ogden, Utah, a man called 911 late at night to complain that Walmart was closed "and that made him mad." Then he demanded a ride home and grew increasingly angry as he berated the police. The man did get a ride, reports ksl.com. "It just wasn't to the destination that he was preferring."

THE NATION
There's a mystery plaguing hog farms, and researchers at the University of Minnesota are trying hard to unravel it, reports KSTP Eyewitness News. They know what the problem is: Foam has begun forming on the surface of manure pits, sometimes reaching a height of four feet and even drifting onto the top of barns. Wherever it forms, the foam traps gases such as methane. If a spark ignites the foam, the barn can blow up, often killing thousands of the hogs trapped inside. Researchers say the mystery is what kind of bacteria are developing in manure pits; according to the Minnesota Daily, researchers suspect that "a new set of species has formed in these pits in the last few years." They hope to find out soon, because pork production is a billion-dollar industry in Minnesota.  n

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