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Friday, June 6, 2008
823 - Snakes on a plain
Did you see that photo that was circulating on the Internet of a den of rattlesnakes found in the Gas Hills area east of Riverton?
It was a huge gob of snakes, all rolled up together. Pretty scary. The photo was by former Fremont County Sheriff Larry Mathews. They can be seen on rivertonradio.com.
As an old newspaper writer, I could not resist the thought of the headline “snakes on a plain.”
A geologist once told me about an area of the Gas Hills known as the Rattlesnake Hills. It was named that because the place was literally crawling with rattlers.
Over the years drillers noticed a dearth of snakes. They disappeared over the decades.
Speculation has it that the area is full of old drilling locations. The snakes would crawl into the holes thinking they had found a nice den and, oops, they would fall into the earth never to be seen again.
• Another headline that was probably used a dozen times in Iowa when we were there two weeks ago was “When Pigs Fly!” This is an old English saying to express the impossible.
If you thought something could never happen, you would say that it could happen “when pigs fly.” Much like hell freezing over, etc.
Tornados ripped through a hog confinement building in Iowa and, yes, pigs were seen flying all over the landscape, hence a headline writer’s dream.
• With all the downsizing of airlines, a passenger was recently told by a grumpy gate attendant while boarding a United flight in Denver “welcome to Greyhound with wings.”
• The national presidential primaries ended this past week.
One observation is that I thought the security for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was not as severe as could be expected while attending talks by them two months ago here.
It also seemed quite lax for a speech by former President Bill Clinton. Not sure what I expected, but something just seemed to be lacking.
Nobody signed me up as a press guy at Hillary’s talk. And I was within 10 feet of her with my camera bag over my shoulder, which no one inspected.
At Barack’s rally, a security guy went through our bags and ran a wand over me, so that was better than the other two.
The security was indifferent enough that I started to think how an assassin might think and although there might have been hidden cameras on me and everyone else, they were not evident. Just hope nothing terrible happens between now and November.
Folks of my generation recall the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King and attempts on George Wallace, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.
In this era of roadside bombs and sniper rifles, it was surprising that security was not tighter.
I fear for our candidates. We love our open society but it would only take one crazy loony person out there to change the entire election landscape.
• If you think gasoline prices are high here, in Europe they are nearing $10 per gallon. It has caused riots among motorists, truck drivers and barge operators.
The value of the dollar, meanwhile, continues to sink in comparison to the English pound or the Euro.
Thus, many of the huge RVs you see motoring around our region this summer are being driven by Europeans who holiday here. And they are chuckling mightily at the thought of “expensive” American fuel.
Fully 30 percent of the tourists visiting Yellowstone National Park these days are international.
• During our recent 2,500-mile road trip it was amazing to see the large number of hybrid Toyota Prius cars plus many other small Hondas and Yaris-type vehicles. Still lots of SUVs, but I definitely noticed more cars that get in the 35 mpg or more range.
Tourism inquiries are up at the Wyoming Division of Tourism and at Yellowstone International, both of which have been monitoring the travel trends.
It appears the tourists are coming, high prices or not. And that is good for Wyoming.
• New hot name is “locavore.” It stands for a person who tries to eat as much local food as possible. Somewhat like herbivore and carnivore, I guess.
A big deal that came out of a recent community assessment in Lander was the concept of a “community garden.” Progress is being made on it, too.
The locavore movement is a big one across the country. Our growing season is pretty short, though. Will be interesting to see how this develops.
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