Author Archive for M. Toole

Should Organic Farmers Pay for Grazing on Public Land?

(Uncompahgre Plateau) Farmers grazing onions and potatoes on public lands here have petitioned for a general variance that excuses them from seasonal grazing fees. Saying that their vegetables don’t eat anything, are quiet and immobile, the growers, most of them organic tribesmen who migrated to this area from New Mexico in the 19th Century, catch water, add nutrients to the soil and clean up after themselves.

     “It’s not like onions trample existing flora or that potatoes give off methane gas,” said Betty Sweetcorne from her sun-dried tomato camp near the Transfer Road. “And when the harvest comes we don’t haul our produce to lower elevations in cattle trucks leaving cow pies in their wake.”

     Sweetcorne adds that most of the vegetables grown on the Plateau end up at local farmer’s markets and not sold to giant food conglomerates where they are dyed, wrapped in plastic and marked up to be sold hermetically.

      Currently the Department of Inferior is considering a plan that would borrow funds from the newly enacted Horse Flesh Tax legislation to cover these grazing fees.

-Sterling Bidet

My Night on Camp Bird Road

     It was a dark and stormy night or maybe it was the perfect summer evening. I really don’t remember. All I know is that I was hungry, that being redundant since I am a healthy, five-year-old, 350-pound black bear. The heavy rains have netted lots of berries but how many berries does it take to fill the stomach of a bear as big as me? Every so often I need something more substantial, something that sticks to the ribs, as they say. And besides, a fellow has to have a social life—I’m headed to town.

     I was soon in Ouray and expecting something special.

     Wait, there’s a cabin at the end of this aspen grove and no light on. I wonder if anyone’s home? I wonder if the door is locked? It doesn’t matter since I am a bear and doors mean very little, even though we  bruins know full well how to open them. Maybe I should break through a window and check out the provisions. It could be trouble but no one’s around and I am big and hairy.

     I approach from the wooded side of the cabin and get up on my hind legs to have a sniff around. Boy, someone should firm up this porch. It barely holds my weight. I peek into the kitchen and notice that the furniture looks rough. The couch looks like second-hand but I don’t plan to take a nap. I plan to eat! These humans could really use a decorator.

     If I exert just the right amount of pressure on the glass it will give in. A light push…There…with a little crash I’m inside.

     Now to the important part without further delay. I wonder what kind of grub these absent humans have stashed in the cupboards. The fools always leave something around in case of a big snow. Sometimes it’s canned beans or oatmeal. Sometimes it’s smoked salmon and jars of frozen berries. You just never know till you tear off a cupboard door. Dispensing with formalities, pardon me as I I tear off the cupboard door. Oh. Cheerios! I love Cheerios. The only thing better than cheerios is Sugar Crisps. They always have a bear cub on the front of the package.

     Now where have they hidden the honey? These kind of humans always have honey around in one of those plastic bear jars for some reason that escapes me. They should have plastic bee jars. The jars are always real sticky and it’s hard to get the lid off without any thumbs on my paw. Here it is in a small cereal bowl. Real easy to eat. Now I have a feast and there are some grapes in the refrigerator too. I think I’ll go back out on the porch and chow down. Ahhhhh….

     Moments after eating I hear a rustling in the bushes. What? It’s one of those humans with a cooking pot and spoon in her hand. Now she’s banging the pot with the spoon. What’s she trying to do? Wake up the whole neighborhood? If she thinks I’m going to run off because she’s banging around, she’s nuts.

     Now she’s staring at me. Doesn’t she know how dangerous it can be to make eye contact with a bear. And why isn’t she wearing bells? Didn’t she read the little books that the rangers give out at the cute little campsites?

     I stand and give her my best growl. Usually this works. Now she’s gone into the house. Maybe there are a few more boxes of cereal inside. I crawl back through the broken window taking care not to scrape myself on the jagged glass. Look, there’s cans of soup but no opener. There’re marshmallows. And what’s this? Coffee? Bears don’t usually like to eat coffee but we eat garbage. I’ll try anything once. Now I hear the human upstairs on the phone talking about me. She’s telling someone on the other end of the line that there is a bear in her kitchen.

     In a mater of moments a mob of these funny creatures is at the gate. One has a gun. They all look mad. I hope he’s not stupid enough to fire that thing near the house. Someone could get shot. Apparently he does not realize how dangerous firearms can be in the hands of a human. Now he’s aiming the gun in my direction. He lifts it and fires into the air. I charge without hesitation. I’m a bear, you know.

     Despite their sophisticated technology, the humans scatter like roaches at a bonfire. The bluff worked. I knew they weren’t really a threat. I quickly scamper across the yard and into the black timber and up the hill to safety. Maybe I’ll stop and visit Mom. I’ll have to go back another night to finish the rest of the groceries. It’s nice to know they are there.

     That was fun.

Friends of Earwigs Given Charter Here

(Montrose) The national lobbyist contingent Friends of Earwigs has been granted a 100 year charter here it was announced yesterday. The insect advocate group, known for protecting cockroaches, dust mites, wood ticks and deer flies all over the Rockies, plans an open house in September so as to explain its position.

     “Earwigs are harmless, cute, even beneficial and can make great pets,” says Melvin O’Toole, president of the local chapter. “They eat next to nothing, are for the most part non-drinkers, don’t need much exercise and, if you go out of town for a week or so they can get on nicely without you.”

     According to the group inborn fears of earwigs crawling up into the inner ear of humans and laying eggs is nothing but evil slander.

     “Cases of infestation are as rare as wolf attacks. People just need enemies and don’t care for animals species that scurry away when one discovers them under a rock or turns on the lights,” he said.

     Along with earwigs the executive committee is considering the inclusion of box elders and fleas on their stepped-on endangered species list.

     “We’ve got lost of needy box elders but we’d probably have to import fleas to the high country to protect them,” stressed O’ Toole.

     An Adopt-an-Earwig campaign is expected by next summer.

Green thumbs labeled anarchists

(Olathe) Persons with green thumbs tend to be anarchists warns Senator Oral Noise of the Liberal Fascist Party. He says statistics collected over the past decade indicate that people who grow gardens are less likely to go along with the flow and often strike out their own path.

     “We can’t have that,” says Noise.

     Tendencies within this wide range of the population generally indicate a lack of dependency on institutions and a desire to be self-sufficient. As one green thumb advocate puts it: “A man with an acre in corn and cucumbers is less likely to sign up for food stamps.”

     Noise who supports a proposal limiting the size of family gardens says many green thumb horticulturists are growing marijuana and guilty of tax evasion to boot.

     Some of them will sell a bag of butter beans for up to $2 and not pay a lick of tax,” he growled.

     Noise favors a plan that would set up a chain of corporate collective farms where the gov’ment could keep a closer eye on planting and production.

     In a related development the Montrose City Council failed to agree on request that developers must grow gardens when they destroy former pastureland to build subdivisions. The mandatory proposal, a brainchild of the local Organic Communist Party, calls for roughly one acre of green garden for each block of houses.

     “We already name our streets after local environmentalists and county commissioners,” said one developer. “Isn’t that enough?”

Colorow’s Ghost

Part I Act 2

(READER SYNOPSIS: In our last episode we met Salli Radar, a former nuclear physicist who walked off her job at a Nevada Test Site, dropped out of high society and moved back to Western Colorado to find herself. Spending an idyllic summer cultivating hybrid snapdragons and tending the family’s burgeoning marmot flock on her grandfather’s Dallas Divide ranchette, Salli knew bigger and better things were in store for her just down the next dirt road. The first act crash landed as Salli bursts forth with a Western rendition of “The Sound of Music”, waking the majority of marmots from a lengthy siesta and setting local heifers on a collision course with E minor. We pick up the action as Salli prepares to bed down for the night.)

Although a comfortable house beckoned, a rough and ready herdsman often took to sleeping on the ground. It was no less than a show of solidarity with the livestock. Salli was no different. As she tried to fall asleep gazing at Jupiter and the headlights from the tourists down on Highway 62 she thought long and hard about her recent work in the nuclear industry and back in Los Alamos, New Mexico where she had designed and assembled weapons capable of destroying Las Vegas or  Grand Junction.

The wind kicked up sending an eerie message that winter would be making a house call in about October.

“This is already July,” whispered Salli to herself amid cricket chirps and coyote calls, “I’d better get my nuts in.”

As Salli lay in her goose down sleeping bag, purchased from from a designer outdoor boutique while she still had a fat check coming in, she thought of her fly boy, Mango, who had only last month run off with a bowl of wax fruit leaving her with little roughage and a broken heart.

“That bastard,” she thought, remembering feverish nights in the moonlight on Paiute Mesa and sizzling days with her security clearance and the man she loved in the radiant yet hazy Nevada sunshine. “I miss him so.”

As Salli drifted off to sleep to the rhythm of the vigilant whistle pigs and the swayback skunk cabbage she felt the strange sensation that her camp was being observed from above. Each time she popped her eyes open she saw nothing, but a heavy odor filled the air. It was then that she heard the chanting and the sound of distant tom-toms. The drums got louder as the moon came up for another rousing Charleston with a lingering wallflower star.

“What can this be?” she thought, now frightened by all the recalcitrant racket and the rancorous, pervasive musty smell in the air. “I must be losing my marbles. I shouldn’t be surprised. It happens to a lot of us retired atom splitters.”

Rolling over in an attempt to find a soft spot on the planet, Salli fell back to sleep. The random snoring that had driven poor Mango away now attracted something more wild than Paiute Mesa, something more intoxicating than league night at the Pahrump Bowl. What was out there hovering over the marmot herd anyway?

It was then that Salli awoke, sitting straight up in her sleeping bag. A dark, misty figure meandered its way toward her expired campfire. His glorious war bonnet and taut hunting bow seemed in conflict with his preposterous tie-dyed headband and a badly faded synthetic “Indian” blanket, the kind sold in every border town showroom from Tijuana to Ushuaia. He spoke in quiet, drifting tones as if not to needlessly alarm the snoozing snapdragons.

“I am the great chief Colorow, leader of the proud Utes!” said the spooky warrior. “I have returned to the land of my ancestors!”

“Whoa!” gulped Salli. “How did this guy get in here!”

“I am the great Chief Colorow!” the specter now bellowed. “I come for horses with which to hunt the buffalo!”

Salli sat anxiously as the warrior searched the horizon for the spoils of his intended coup. She had digested all the data on UFOs while working for the government but even the classified variety had never alluded to anything like this Colorow character. This was a completely new ball game.

Had this Pale Horse chief returned to his previous haunt to communicate an eternal message to humanity? Would she share the agonizing particulars of the demise of his people? Why did he choose Salli when there were millions of other more suitable humans crammed onto the planet? Would the Dodgers win the pennant?

George Radar, Salli’s grandfather had mentioned a sacred Indian burial ground somewhere to the west of the family dump on Cottonwood Creek. Had someone left the gate open or had this chubby apparition wrapped in a blanket returned from the ages set on some callous revenge? Had he really chosen her as his medium to communicate sacred and primitive thought to the 21st Century? This was almost Biblical!

“I’ve always had a warm place in my heart for the Utes even though my ancestors stole their land, drove them out of the country and used them for target practice,” mewled Salli. “I just love Hopi pottery and trips to Mesa Verde.”

Salli quickly determined that if this Colorow had intended her harm he would have already drawn his tomahawk and taken her hair. She further surmised that he was here on a holy mission and would communicate his feelings to her when the time was right. In the interim, she would just sit tight and wait for his astounding revelation. What an impact this would have on the humanity! Would humankind rethink his calamitous rendezvous with ultimate destruction? What new philosophies would emerge? Could this elusive chief snatch 21st Century Homo Sapiens from the jaws of ecological extinction?

Of course, her newfound celebrity status would not emerge without some sacrifices. There would be the loss of privacy, as government heads all over the world would place incredible demands on her time. There would be the endless interviews by reporters and of course the abrasive talk show circuit. She would need a new wardrobe. Would Mango see her on TV? Salli whirled out of her trance as Colorow cleared his throat as if to speak.

“Here it is,” ducked Salli expecting the infinite truth from the happy hunting ground to fill the nearby canyons. “I am all ears, oh great warrior!”

“What’s for dinner, toots?” asked Colorow.

TO BE CONTINUED

DOW Out of Fish

(Denver) The Colorado Division of Wildlife has admitted this morning that the agency is fresh out of fish. The shortage, which includes all varieties of trout, salmon, perch, bass and northern pike, is reportedly the result of a failure to reorder a sufficient supply to last through the winter months.

“There are no rainbow, native, brown or cutthroat,” said a DOW release, “ and the next fish delivery day isn’t until next March.”

Normally around 2500 fish are kept in reserve and, as ponds and steams are stocked, the supply is adjusted and sent to the areas most in need. Fish counters expressed surprise at the news since they say there were plenty of cold-blooded clients as recently as December. Even with the popularity of catch-and-release the impact is overwhelming when one considers the milllions of tourists that fish Rocky Mountain waters through the summer and fall.

“We do have some nice catfish today,” smiled Lacey Ditchwater, a recognized fish head for the agency. “We’ll even filet them for you. Tomorrow at 4 am we are sending a crack fly team over the frontier into Wyoming to poach a breeder or two. While in those badlands we hope to secure enough fish to last for the week.”

Summer is the busiest time for vacationing fish and fishermen and DOW sources say that with the economic times more people are fishing to eat and not just fishing for sport. They add that license violations are way up since June. Fishermen have been complaining of chronic bad luck syndrome since early May, which is said to have prompted the embarrassing DOW admission.

This is the first documented client/ward shortage since 1989, when the same agency had run out of elk. As I turned out, rogue agents had lost many of the animals in a poker game with the Department of Energy. Others, it was said, had been in New Mexico for a long weekend “Comete Tus Astas” competition which negatively affected the statistics.

“I don’t want to cast doubts here. This is nothing,” said Ditchwater. “We all realize that it is far easier to catch a mess of trout than a mess of elk. We’ll have everything back to normal before long,” she promised from her desk in the abandoned town of Chivington in fish-challenged Kiowa County.

– Rocky Flats