Heard Around the West

MONTANA Let’s get this straight: Was a unicorn behind the wheel of a truck that crashed in Billings? A deputy prosecutor told a judge that story in all seriousness, asking for a high bond because he thought the driver had claimed a unicorn was driving. But the prosecutor misunderstood a colleague’s e-mail using the term […]

CALIFORNIA Sometimes you can be too vigilant. Someone who spotted a black bag on the side of a road in eastern California reported that it had a suspiciously “foul odor.” A sheriff’s deputy investigated, says the Grass Valley-Nevada City Union. Inside the bag, wrapped in a blue towel, was a dead fish.   WASHINGTON AND […]

THE NATION Molly Ivins, that passionate defender of the underdog, died recently from breast cancer at age 62, leaving behind hilarious books skewering the Texas Legislature and a Texas homeboy named George W. Bush. The word “scrappy” doesn’t begin to describe her style. John Nichols, in a tribute to Ivins in the Nation, called her […]

WASHINGTON At the edge of his Soap Lake, Wash., backyard, Rick Froebe has lined up seven toilets and some old bathtubs and water heaters — all to annoy the golfers whose proximity makes his four dogs bark, which, in turn, annoys his neighbors. Froebe has even placed “three scarecrow-like dummies” on the toilets to look […]

CALIFORNIA AND CONNECTICUT A Squaw Valley ski instructor with mechanical moxie and a $950 rope tow has created a backyard ski area. The Vail Daily says Ken Wittel’s rope tow is powered by a 5 horsepower gas engine that can pull skiers up Wittel’s 300-foot-high hill at 11 to 18 mph. If your backyard lacks […]

CANADA AND IDAHO Spurred by global warming or just plain wanderlust, a female polar bear and a male grizzly got together six years ago for what Borat would call “sexy-time.” What the encounter produced might be dubbed a “pizzly” or a “grolarbear.” The male hybrid was shot earlier this year on a remote Arctic island […]

COLORADO As the Rocky Mountain News put it, “Naked frivolity heats up the night.” Their heads inside pumpkins and their clothes nowhere in sight, hundreds braved cold weather on Halloween to streak past the costumed pedestrians thronging Boulder’s outdoor mall. “With the pumpkin on the head, it’s anonymous,” said Jazzmin Jenkins, 21. “What could be […]

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 […]

COLORADO In the photo, it looks like a cozy den for hobbits, peeking out from underground with a hillside rolling right over its roof. But the builder of this “ultimate secure home” boasts that it can “withstand almost any natural or manmade disaster you can name,” including a nuclear blast and biological and chemical war. […]

NEVADA Thanks to two wet winters in a row, it’s a booming summer for Western toads in the Washoe and Lemmon valleys of Nevada, reports the Reno Gazette-Journal. Suddenly, toads and toadlets are everywhere, and there’s the danger that you’ll step on one as you cross the street, or mow down hundreds when you cut […]

UTAH Lake Powell, now at just 52 percent of capacity, might as well be called The Incredible Shrinking Reservoir: Its twice-extended boat launch at Bullfrog “resembles a tilted airport runway — a concrete slab more than a quarter-mile long,” reports The Associated Press. Multiple bathtub rings are visible everywhere along the shore, and when the […]