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 drove into a subdivision and spotted an outdoor barbecue
— whereupon they alarmed folks at dinner by firing their guns
in the air. Maverick County Sheriff Tomas Herrera was remarkably
tolerant of the bad behavior, reports The Associated Press. “There
ain’t much to do in this town,” he explained. “Either you can
go to the local bar and play some pool and drink some beer, go to
the local casino, or go across the border.” The guardsmen, part of
President Bush’s “Operation Jump Start,” face felony charges.
THE NORTHWEST
That
ultra-serious watchdog of the press, Columbia Journalism
Review, encourages readers to chortle or wince
at headline mistakes culled from newspapers around the nation. The
best (or worst) are collected in a column called “The Lower Case.”
Recently, two Northwestern papers provided some shudders: From
Washington, the Olympian’s headline read:
“President takes straddling stance on national tongue,” and from
Portland, an Oregonian story was puzzlingly
headlined: “Inmates locked up longer, but few rejoice.” The
45-year-old magazine offers a $25 reward to readers who spot heads
that mangle and malaprop.
IDAHO AND
WASHINGTON
A sweet-smelling earthworm, 3 feet
long, would be a wondrous sight to behold, although
hardly anyone has seen it since Driloleirus
americanus was discovered in 1897. But the pink worm,
long thought to be extinct, was seen again last year in the rich
farming soils of the Palouse region along the Idaho-Washington
border, spotted by a graduate student at the University of Idaho.
Conservationists now want emergency protection for the animal under
the Endangered Species Act. As worm defender Steve Paulson says:
“What kid wouldn’t want to play with a 3-foot-long,
lily-smelling, soft pink worm that spits?”
IDAHO
If ever a house screamed for a
makeover, it’s the rundown property that Lyman and Jeanine
Hepworth bought in the tiny town of Wilford, in eastern
Idaho. As AP put it, the couple knew the place needed tons of work,
“but they never thought they’d need a snake charmer.” It
seems that non-poisonous garter snakes — thousands of them
— had already chosen the fixer-upper as their den for the
winter. The snakes headed for the property when the temperature
dropped, slithering together into giant balls to conserve heat.
“When it warmed up, we walked onto the yard, and the whole yard
moved,” Jeanine Hepworth told the Rexburg Standard
Journal. The awakened snakes turned up in unexpected
places: When her husband pulled a cord to turn on a light, he
grabbed a snake dangling from the ceiling; when he opened the door
to an outbuilding, hundreds of snakes fell on his head. The
Hepworths have never moved in. But though the seller of the snake
sanctuary has offered a refund, the couple isn’t interested:
They’ve videotaped their visitors crawling in and out of the
house and balling up, and they’ve sent the snake show on to
the makers of Extreme Home Makeover. Next year,
they will find out if their “fix-up challenge” intrigues the
television show’s producers.
COLORADO
Joe Jepson, who lives seven
miles northeast of Silverton in western Colorado, says
that every year, a few all-terrain vehicles wander onto his
property. He points out his no-trespassing signs, and usually the
drivers retreat. But last month, after Jepson saw two men “spinning
doughnuts in wetlands and raising hell,” the encounter turned ugly.
“One guy just hit the throttle and ran into me,” Jepson told the
Durango Herald. Jepson was thrown 25 feet,
breaking his leg. Jepson said the second ATVer initially asked him
if he needed a ride, but then took off after his friend. Jepson
faces surgery; the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office is still
seeking information about the hit-and-run assault.
OREGON
The Northwest hasn’t
nearly as many “extreme commuters” as New York, with
“extreme” defined as any trip to work that lasts 90 minutes or
more. But the Oregonian found that high home
prices are pushing people farther from Portland, in a phenomenon
that real estate agents call “drive till you qualify.” As a result,
commutes longer than 45 minutes are increasing, while the number of
workers who commute a wonderful 15 minutes or less is decreasing.
Betsy Marston is editor of Writers on the
Range, a service of High Country News in Paonia,
Colorado. Tips of Western oddities are always appreciated and often
shared in the column, Heard around the
West.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Heard around the West.
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