OUR REGION

with Melvin Toole

Much of Colorado Now Wyoming

(Cowdrey) High winds are blamed for the forced transfer of about 500 acres from Colorado to Wyoming according to meteorologists here. The land, mostly topsoil and road dust, is now in the custody of Wyoming serfs who intend to raise cattle on it.

“At approximately four o’clock Colona time an estimated 498 acres of Colorado crossed over the sovereign border of the State of Wyoming, effectively joining the Commonwealth of Wyoming” said a spokesman for the U.S. Weather Service. “At this time we do not expect topographic maps to be altered or a military response of any kind. We will not know the appropriate action to take until the surveyors have completed a primary charting of the area in question.”

Angry Coloradans from Crook to Cortez are demanding action. Already militia units, backed up by the Air Force Academy marching band, are operating along the border. Carpet bombing has been ruled out since the area in question is covered with thousands of tiny throw rugs.

“There may be a lot of threats and some saber rattling in the Colorado House,” flinched the weather service source, “but we don’t foresee landing troops or arranging a naval blockade at least this morning.”

Calmer heads in the legislature suggest that since the land was not taken by force, the intelligent approach is simply to sit back and wait for a good north wind.

ANARCHISTS CONTINUE TO HOLD LAUNDROMAT

(Lake City) The Lost Sock Laundromat remains in the hands of desperate anarchists who seek to redefine political and social stability in this once peaceful town. The squatting troops, numbering at least four, aided by subversive elements on Henson Creek, insist they can hold out until summer.

The situation has gained national attention as former US District Attorney, Janet Reno and 25,000 FBI agents are currently surrounding the site. The feds, embarrassed by violent overreaction in places like Waco and Ruby Ridge, have yet to make contact with the anarchists. They have, however, created a shortage of bologna, snap peas and ammunition in Hinsdale County.

“We’re pretty sure these rascals are mixing colors and whites and leaving laundry in the dryers longer than what is acceptable in modern society,” said one Dalhart tourist as she washed the family laundry on cold, autumn rocks near Lake San Cristobal. “Some of them aren’t even using fabric softener.”

At press time there is “a lot of dirty laundry” in Lake City.

“Thank goodness for the T-shirt shops or we’d all have to go around naked,” continued the Texas woman, “and nobody wants to see that. This sorry episode has been on the rinse cycle far too long.”

Consumer Group Claims Shock Electric Company

(Ouray) San Miguel Power Company has been accused of using “old electricity” in its wires and of illegal recycling of power by enchanted wind instruments. According to a story in The Pea Green Peeper San Miguel Power has misrepresented its product, selling used electric current as if it were brand new.

“There is no truth to these cruel accusations,” said Oral Waters, legal council for the power company. “They are only the work of angry men who have invested thousands of dollars in generators only to realize that Y2K and Doomsday are just crocks of bird paste. We ferment all of our own electricity right here below Box Canyon Falls. We can prove it. We have the receipts.”

November 31 Competition Canceled

(Gunnison) The annual bloodletting involving the Class A Woodstock Geezers and the Extreme Barbecue Gladiators has been called off since it could rain. The match will be moved to Parlin and played as part of a doubleheader on December 4. Persons who have purchased admission slips for the games will be shuttled to Parlin from evacuation points all along Tomichi Creek. Others unable to attend the event are encouraged to sell tickets at designated shoulders along Highway 50. Scalping will not be tolerated without note from one’s barber.

ASYLUM TO CLOSE FOR REPAIRS

(Delta) The Pea Green Psychiatric Hospital will close for repairs from November 21 to January 31. Inmates, patients and staff will be released on the morning of November 20 so crews can prepare for the long needed overhaul of facilities there. Most seriously ill clients of the asylum will be placed in local government positions since many of the regular employees have taken winter vacations. The remaining patients will be driven to Ouray and Telluride where they will roam the streets until the work has been completed.

Smoke Jumpers Save Burning VW

(Ridgway) 700 battle-hardened smoke jumpers dropped into town the other night just in time to avert what might have been an undetected disaster. The jumpers landed on North Cora Street just as a Volkswagon micro-bus caught fire. The blaze was quickly brought under control prior to the arrival of 400 more fire fighters from the region.

“It’s a good thing those smoke jumpers showed up or we might have lost the entire town,” said fireman David Houtz who reportedly made over $10,000 selling gin and tonics to the crowd.

A Dream Shot of Some Consequence HUNTERS SHOOT HORSE

(Delta) It all seemed to make sense, at first. A friend of ours, who shall remain very nameless, was awakened from his early winter hibernation by a loud pounding on his back door. He threw on a robe and stumbled in the direction of the interruption. When he opened the door he saw two men in blaze orange, heads hung down, shuffling their feet, serious about gaining his immediate attention.

“We done shot your horse, mister,” said the first, “and we come to make reparations.

The second man held out a wad of cash that turned out to be one hundred dollars in the company of four more bills of like currency.

“Well, come in,” yawned my friend. “I guess that was the shot we heard earlier. This time of the year one gets used to guns going off all around. What the hell time is it anyway?”

“Bout eleven,” whispered the first looking around the kitchen in the direction of assorted snores from the hallway.

“You people hit the hay early round these parts, heh?” winked the second man who turned out to be from just outside Dallas.

“We’re up here from Texas hunting and despite what you may have heard we’re responsible, respectable and accountable.”

“Then what’s all this about a horse?” asked my friend.

“Well, you remember the part about responsibility?” offered the first hunter. “That only goes so far, I guess. We’ve been prowling these hills for two weeks and ain’t seen nothing of an elk, unless you count the scat. We were frustrated. We were tired and hungry and headed back to a motel down the road when, just as dusk pulled up her skivvies, we saw movement in the hay field just north of here.”

The first hunter went on.

Jim here decided that it might be our last chance at glory so he took a chance. He sighted in and pulled the trigger. Blam! Then blam again. What a shot! Dropped that elk like a ton of greasy enchiladas on a Saturday night! Cow elk too, you know. No horns. And we each had a million-dollar tag right here in our pocket. Some shootin, Jim.”

The second man just smiled, still embarrassed but yet a little bit proud of his expertise with a rifle.

“We climbed your fence and snuck out to the kill which was dead as an armadillo after arm wrestling a semi on Highway 287. Then the problem emerged. It wasn’t a bull elk. No. It wasn’t a buck or doe, but neither was it a cow elk. It was your horse, mister.”

My friend just stared at the kitchen table.

“The old swayback. She was getting to be an old lady, too slow to ride much less dodge a bullet. Where is she now?”

The two men laid the five hundred dollars on the table and told him the mare was still laying in the spot where she dropped. He sighed.

“How am I going to get around reporting this to the authorities?” he asked.

“We hoped the five hundred would help you make that decision. It ain’t a bribe but it’s a far sight more than that old girl was worth alive. We realize that local cops would put our buts in a sling over this episode but I think you can see that out hearts, if not our brains, are in the right place.”

My friend yawned. He though to himself of a new tractor he needed. He thought of Christmas and his kids. He thought of the good it would do to turn these poor hayseeds into the pencil-pushing cops.

“You boys want a cup of coffee? I gotta think this out. Tell me again, what made you shoot what you thought was game on private property at dusk. Don’t you ever read the back of your hunting license. Cripe, at the cost of the thing I’d think you’d memorize every word just in case you lost it.”

The hunters went through their thinking process one more time dwelling on their fatigue and frustration. They apologized again saying that they wouldn’t blame my friend if he turned them in and pressed charges for trespassing and the whole cheroot.

“OK, but if I ever see you on my land again you’ll be the horsemeat,” he said “Now can you find your way back to your motel or should I drive you?”

They both laughed the laugh of men much relieved. They thanked him again and departed. He watched them as he pulled on his coveralls.

“I hope that backhoe starts. I didn’t plug her in and the weather’s turned cold.”

He stuffed the bills into his desk drawer, told his wife he had to check the cows and wandered into the night. He’d bury the mare before the rest of the family got savvy to what had occurred. He drove through the dark expecting a messy ordeal, then he saw the mound of flesh hugging the ground and approached.

“What the hell?” he barked standing over the kill. “It’s an elk. Those morons shot a cow elk and from the looks of things it was a perfect lung shot. I’ll be dipped!”

Thinking that the meat was still good he proceeded to dress out the elk there on the spot. The cold weather had kept it from going bad right away and the lung shot had insured that the meat wasn’t spoiled by adrenaline and trauma.

“Hell of a shot,” he smiled. “Hell of a shot.”

At dawn he woke up his oldest son who helped him cut up the elk and package it for the freezer. It would feed a lot of people a lot of nights this winter.

“Does this mean we won’t be going hunting, dad?” asked the son on the way to school later that morning.

“What makes you ask a question like that, son,” smiled our friend. “In fact I think we oughta stop by and look at that rifle down at the hardware store. It’s been fired a bit but they might let it go cheap  if we flash them some cash, heh?”

“Whatever you day, dad.”

(Editor’s note: The San Juan Horseshoe in no way endorses withholding evidence from the law however until we can safely determine who the responsible parties might be we can tolerate temporary storage of such data. In closing, this paper likewise does not ignore good karma, frontier justice, divine intervention or just dumb luck. In short: We suggest that one never look a gift horse (or elk) in the mouth, a part of the anatomy that should remain shut on a host of occasions.)

Toilet Seat Shortages “Chronic” in Forests

(Ouray) The lack of toilet seats in the National Forests this year has reached chronic proportions and may be linked to a revenge motive on the part of government agencies says a recently released report in Flusher’s Digest.

The independently published piece claims that the USFS and other federal agencies has dropped the number of prescribed toilets in our national forests to punish persons opposed to fees on public lands over the past few summers.

In one such destination, Yankee Boy Basin, new toilet seats are almost unheard of while luxuries like toilet tissue and air fresheners remain on a first-come, first served capacity, with even the most basic supplies exhausted by mid-week. While many campers bring their own waste facilities the more traditional visitor often relies on porta-johns or other privies to conduct constitutional business in the woods.

According to a story in the Ouray County paper, the scenario has become a “squishy” one with hordes of campers being forced to use the great outdoors as their latrine. While this practice is popular with other mammals humans tend to congregate in designated camp grounds and use nearby land as their dumping grounds.

“Bears and mountain lions often cover 50 square miles per day hunting and staying away from people,” said a spokesman for Poop Jumpers, a local recreational association that is responsible for waste management among other things. “It’s easy to see why they aren’t the problem. Sure, we’re talking organic but the impact is caused by congestion not substance.”

According to the Department of Public Sanitation, a wing of the Homeland Security Agency, the magazine’s accusations are false and there is no revenge motive for the termination of federal funding.

“People who were against the fees will just have to stand in line a little longer or provide for their own comforts,” said Roy Thistledown, a campsite host and former CIA operative from Spar City. “We had the same problem all along the Alpine Loop until we started handing out little pooper scoopers compliments of the local chambers of commerce.”

The article continued saying campsite fees were up three dollars from last year. Whether that increase was enough to build more facilities was unclear at press time. Alluding to a presumably federally generated pamphlet advising campers how to dig a cat hole, the paper went on to describe just how to cover and disguise the aperture.

“People in emerging societies solve these kinds of problems by charging a small fee at the entrance to restrooms,” said one camper who has lived illegally in the Uncompahgre for 25 years. “Often the fee, collected by an otherwise unemployed person, includes tissue and a splash of down under water.

Despite the failures often common to other functions of government there this potty policy seems to have merit.

“I cannot speak for the outlying areas or for jungle redoubts, said the squatter, “since the media continually warns us they are populated by bandits and terrorists and are not safe for deep-seated human habitation.”

When contacted yesterday one state sanitation official agreed to look into the matter.

Criticized for running a feature piece on such a sensitive subject right on the front page an unreliable source at the local paper said that the story needed to be told.

“In addition, they added, “the piece provoked more reader response than coverage of the week’s city council meeting and the Republican state convention combined.

A follow-up/sequel is planned for December.

– Susie Compost

Hunters Wipe Out Tree Venison

(Gunnison) Rifle hunters have virtually wiped out the state’s last remnants of organic tree venison according to information released by the Colorado Division of Still-life. The tiny, often transparent herd mammal, known for its curious behavior of living in trees, has been endangered for the past decade but, since most of the populace doubted the very existence of the species, that sad plight has never been publicized.

“No state congressman in his right mind is going to vote to protect what is perceived as a fictitious species,” said Marvin Ballotte, former Aurora exterminator turned political analyst in October. “It would be political suicide on the scale of Dick Lamm’s euthanasia speech in 1983 or Bill Owen’s the whole place is on fire comment in the early part of the century . For all the hype during summer tourist season you don’t see legislators calling for a boycott on jackalope season or protection for snow snakes. It would be like granting Yosemite Sam a stay of execution on death row.”

Besides the odd living arrangement, a classic branch-canopy habitation combined with ground foraging usually reserved for primates, birds and insects, the tree deer are territorial, lustful and can be ferocious when cornered. This may account for the lack of public support if and when their numbers are threatened.

“Far too many Coloradans have suffered tree deer trauma especially with scary tales over the campfire during root or rutting season,” explains Ballotte. “There’s really no love lost for the deer, who are considered pests at best and who are said to overpopulate at a frightening pace. They’re as bad as rabbits but rabbits rarely attack livestock or hurl themselves out in front of defenseless minivans. Besides, rabbits are cute and these tree deer are an ugly lot.”

The last herd of tree deer was reportedly spotted by hall-of-fame marmot wrestler, Earl “Boy” Pritchard of Sapinero, an accused eccentric who is not considered dangerous unless agitated.  Pritchard claims he ran across a party of tree deer chewing away in an aspen grove in May.

“The only reason they didn’t attack is that I had camouflaged my torso with a palmetto branch and covered my scent with a bottle of cheap toilet water,” spat Pritchard, “but they was there.”

The fact that the animals were not indigenous to Colorado has not helped to relieve their precarious position either. The deer are thought to have been brought to Colorado from California by Basque fishermen to pick fruit back in the Sixties. The ones who didn’t join hippie communes assimilated into the population and became realtors.

With the absence of these fleshy beasts from the food chain it is not clear what wolves will eat as hors d’ oeuvres or bears will use as live bait come spring. -Suzie Compost

ELK BOY FOUND NEAR BALDWIN

(Gunnison) A verified sighting of the fabled Elk Boy of Ohio Creek has been reported here this week. Late season mushroom hunters from Tulsa not only photographed the skinny creature but allegedly exchanged greetings and then shared their lunch with him. For years hikers and jeep enthusiasts have insisted that they watched elk herds roam the region followed by a struggling young male human who imitated the animals and had even begun to look a bit like a wobbly calf. Many tales tell of aggressive behavior on the part of “bulls” whenever the herd was approached. Normally the animals simply flee.

“We don’t know who the kid is or how he got in with these characters in the first place,” said a county sheriff’s deputy on the scene. “Considering the wear and tear of the wilderness and his sparse diet he doesn’t look too bad. We are currently investigating all reports of missing persons in these mountains for the past twenty years. Hopefully we will stumble into some clue as to his lineage.”

Eyewitnesses gave conflicting reports as to the presence of course, heavy body hair and the emergence of stumpy, spiked horns, common to adolescent elk. They agreed however, that the elk boy seemed quite curious and at ease.

“It’s as if he’s always  known that he was one of us,” said Gwen Two Shoes of Baldwin, a native Ute and avid fly fisherman who claims to have first met the boy in 2009. “We fish together and I bring him stuffed jalapenos which he dearly loves. Otherwise he is content to graze, nibble on berries and scratch himself along the quakey bark like the rest of his herd.”

A spokesman for the local Sociable Services has asked authorities to apprehend the boy so that he can be rehabilitated. They plan to set a trap with a gross of the stuffed jalapenos near his watering hole tomorrow, despite the objections of Two Shoes who has threatened to warn him of the scheme.

“We must save this poor unfortunate from the wilds and allow him to become civilized like us,” said Samantha Meeker, a Bored Again Kokanee Counselor for someone’s county. “Then, somewhere down the road if he survives captivity and pays his fair share of taxes, he can decide for himself which species he wishes to emulate.”

Two Shoes, a direct descendent of a Tablecloth Ute chief, says the plan is atrocious and potentially disastrous.

“One hundred years ago they tried to turn the proud Red man into a farmer when all he wanted to do was to race his horses, hunt and soak in the hot springs. Now that same strain of white folks want to drag this wild elk boy into their world kicking and screaming,” she spat. “What will he do… work as a convenience store clerk or open a trendy boutique? Sociable Services even confiscated the new snowboard that I gave him for his birthday last year and he was just starting to really shred! You should see him hit the Baldwin bumps!”

Two Shoes went on to explain that First Americans never really assimilated to the ways of the European overlord.

“What makes them think a boy raised in the Rockies by an elk herd will take to their silly ways?” she flinched.

-Kashmir Horseshoe

Looking south from Silverton