Heard Around the West

It began with an insult. Thirteen years ago in Boise, Idaho, radio announcer Paul Schneider defined a prairie dog as “a woman from Fairfield,” a rural town of 450. Instead of reacting with outrage, one woman resident of Fairfield decided to start an ugly contest, and “Mz. Prairie Dog” was born. Competitors lip-synching to songs […]

Is there a “Stupid Motorist Act” in Arizona? You bet, says Elliot Freireich of the West Valley View in Litchfield Park. After summer monsoons hit, dry washes suddenly fill with water and cascade onto roads, he reports. Yet some drivers with more bravado than brains try to splash through. “Sometimes they make it. Sometimes they […]

Two public officials hit the road recently. One had a great time, while the other groused. The fun was had by Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt, who made his first trip ever to Yellowstone National Park. “Excitedly,” says the Salt Lake Tribune, Leavitt reported to the Western Governors’ Association that he had “walked right up to […]

Professional vegetarians really know how to hurt a guy. A proposed billboard campaign throughout the West from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, features a busty babe wearing a bikini and a big grin, while a string of bologna cascades over one shoulder. But the billboard says there’s a problem: “Eating meat can […]

Fresh from a river trip through Cataract Canyon in Utah, five passengers and the pilot of a single-engine Cessna faced a nasty emergency: The plane from Redtail Aviation was lugging, failing to gain altitude. Adding to the tension was the weight of at least one man, reports the Times-Independent of Moab, Utah. He weighed “above […]

A rodeo held in Aurora, Colo., in July attracted 114 gay men and women to compete in he-man stuff like bareback bronc-riding. “We are true to the Western spirit,” said bull rider J.D. Norton in The Denver Post. “We are cowboys and cowgirls, even though we have a different private lifestyle.” Because it’s not professional […]

How do you describe the odor of 1,800 bison skulls rotting in the sun? Putrid, say a handful of neighbors some nine miles from Red Lodge, Mont. “It makes us gag.” Entrepreneurs Eric Saltzman and Corynne Freeman trucked in the festering heads after land they leased elsewhere was sold; now they’re faced with a nuisance […]

Even bison, it turns out, need a bailout. Too many of the big critters are raised and not enough of us want to eat them. After producing more bison-burger than the market could bear, ranchers recently asked the federal government for help – their second request in as many years. The U.S. Department of Agriculture […]

Utah’s state seal refrains from exhortations, but does feature a bald eagle flapping its wings above a beehive. Judy Fahys in the Salt Lake Tribune finds this far too bland: “To truly personify the state, Utah’s official seal might have illustrated a family the size of a track team slurping vanilla ice cream cones.” The […]

New subdivisions in the West are apt to ballyhoo amenities such as swimming pools or golf courses. That’s not the case in Front Sight, a dusty village in the making in southern Nevada. There, former Californian Ignatius Piazza offers not one but 13 firing ranges and calls his planned community on 550 acres “the Pebble […]

There’s a fine art to making enemies, Ed Abbey wrote in Confessions of a Barbarian. He then bragged, “I’ve become remarkably good at it.” In the 10th anniversary issue of Canyon Country Zephyr, publisher Jim Stiles quotes Abbey on a few of his targets: The young: “I say, oh you young fuddie-duddies, you young fogies, […]

A house in Taylorsville, Utah, was suddenly drenched by a foul-smelling liquid, according to The Denver Post. When the sewage fell from the sky, the homeowner beseeched Salt Lake City International Airport for help, logging in more than 60 phone calls. The official response? It’s not our problem. The city’s fire department finally accepted responsibility, […]

The fun of fast and fearless driving is fizzling out in Montana. On May 28, the state’s dubious distinction as the only state in the nation without a daytime speed limit will come to an end. Montana Gov. Marc Racicot signed legislation making the daytime limit 75 mph on interstate highways and 70 mph on […]

There will be no chapped skin from nude skiing when the season ends April 18 at the Crested Butte resort in western Colorado. As the Denver Post put it: “Crested Butte is cracking down on bare butts. And it has nothing to do with smoking.” Last spring, the 25-year tradition of clothing-optional skiing erupted into […]

If you’re standing on the vast Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington and a tumbleweed tumbles your way – better step aside. Last year the federal Department of Energy surveyed tumbleweeds on the 560-square-mile complex, a high-security bomb factory, and found that 20 tested toxic. That’s up from 1995, when only five of the weeds […]

We’re supposed to be getting fitter in America, but could it be we’re just getting fatter? In Seattle, Wash., the answer seems to be yes. Officials running the Puget Sound ferry recently reduced the seating capacity from 250 to 230 after finding that the bottoms of passengers had sprawled. The average width of a rear […]

As 1998 came to a close, the oldest male grizzly ever captured in North America was killed by Montana officials. The 28-year-old, 460-pound bear had raided more than a dozen cabins over a two-week period, reports the Hungry Horse News, and had become a potential threat to people. All of the bear’s teeth were broken […]

Small towns are different – sometimes because they’re the friendly places they’re cracked up to be. In the mountain town of Nederland, Colo., the owner of the local music store told writer Karuna Eberl that, although he’d be closed for vacation, she could still pick up from the local propane dealer a compact disc she’d […]

If hunters can hone their target skills on computer games, why can’t anti-hunters? Now they can, thanks to a $20 parody game called “Deer Avenger,” created by a staff writer for TV’s “Late Night with Conan O’Brien.” It stars a buck with a bad attitude and an arsenal to boot, who fights back with a […]

Who hasn’t bought a gadget or item of clothing that makes no sense but embarrasses us forever? The unscrewable ceramic soap dispenser, the one-cup hot plate, the rhinestone-edged tie, the round ice-cube maker – all mock us: “You are a foolish consumer; you buy useless objects!” A public TV station in Salt Lake City, KUED […]