COLORADO
Here’s a hair-raising encounter from the Centennial State, reported by The Denver Post. Shannon and Stetson Parker were enjoying a relaxing jaunt through the San Juan Mountains on the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad when Stetson spotted something unusual. “We were looking for elk in the mountains and my husband sees something moving and then can’t really explain it. So he’s like, ‘Bigfoot!’” Shannon told The New York Post. “It was at least six, seven feet or taller. It matched the sage in the mountains so much that he’s like camouflaged when crouching down.” Shannon reported the sighting on her Facebook page, noting that the man sitting next to them on the train also grabbed his phone and started recording whatever it was. Shannon posted her photos as well as his footage on her Facebook page. “Y’all, out of the hundreds of people on the train, three or four of us actually saw, as Stetson says in the video, the ever-elusive creature Bigfoot,” Shannon wrote. “I don’t know about y’all, but we believe.” However, some Bigfoot experts, including Jim Myers, owner of the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado, and paranormal researcher Alan Megargle, weren’t convinced. Westword reported that Myers regards the sighting as a hoax, and Megargle diagnosed it as a case of “Squatch Fever.” Myers and Megargle collaborated on the documentary The Bigfoot of Bailey Colorado and Its Portal, which explains why the elusive cryptid is so darn elusive: Apparently, it’s interdimensional and can travel between worlds through “an alien portal located in a Native American sacred tree.” Okaaay. As one of the T-shirts Myers sells reminds us: “Bigfoot doesn’t believe in you, either.”
UTAH
If you are a fan of legendary environmental activist Edward Abbey, author of The Monkey Wrench Gang and Desert Solitaire, then you’d better sit down for this one. The Durango Telegraph reported that a Moab housing development company broke ground for, well, for an Ed Abbey-themed subdivision featuring streets named after his work, even though new development and road building are utterly antithetical to everything that the curmudgeonly writer stood for. Lifelong friends of Abbey said that dedicating a subdivision to his memory goes against his legacy, to put it mildly. The subdivision, which will be dubbed “The Abbey,” is expected to include 80 houses on approximately 22 acres within Moab city limits. Street names include “Monkey Wrench Way,” named after Abbey’s novel about anti-development eco-saboteurs, and “Hayduke Court,” named for the guy in the book who plants explosives at Glen Canyon Dam. If you’re wondering, as we were, WTF were the developers thinking? Mike Bynum, a Moab businessman, explained that The Abbey was years in the making and is intended as an homage to the writer. After all, Desert Solitaire was set in nearby Arches National Park and helped put Moab on the map. But did the developers actually read any of Abbey’s books? Next on the drawing board: “Silent Spring Pesticides Inc.” and “Black Beauty’s Olde Horsemeat Shoppe.”
WASHINGTON
Since 2012, Whidbey Island has hosted a lone elk known as Bruiser, treating him as a welcome guest. Ralph Downes, an officer for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, has been Bruiser’s “de facto guardian angel” in the 10 years since the elk first appeared on the island, The Seattle Times reported. But since October, there have been warnings to watch out around Bruiser: KOMO News reported that the elk can get ornery and has been picking fights with cars. “This time of year, he tends to get a little frustrated. He doesn’t have anyone to wrestle with and he can’t find anyone to have as a companion,” Downes said. It’s happened before: In 2017, he — Bruiser, not Downes — was tranquilized after getting ensnarled with a buoy and 30 feet of mooring line. Maybe the buoy was tailgating?
WASHINGTON
Ziggy Stardust appears to have lost a few spiders on his way back to Mars. Either that, or maybe it’s just nature. KION46 reported that residents across California’s Central Coast reported “a sticky web-like substance” falling from the sky. But don’t panic: John E. Banks, a professor at California State University Monterey Bay, thinks it derives from “ballooning,” a method that spiders use to get from one place to another. “It’s a special term we use for how spiders disperse from habitat to habitat,” Banks said: They spin out spider silk and use it like a parachute — just as efficient as human air travel, and no carbon emissions involved.
Tiffany Midge is a citizen of the Standing Rock Nation and was raised by wolves in the Pacific Northwest. Her book, Bury My Heart at Chuck E. Cheese’s (Bison Books, 2019), was a Washington State Book Award nominee. She resides in north-central Idaho near the Columbia River Plateau, homeland of the Nimiipuu.
Tips of Western oddities are appreciated and often shared in this column. Write heard@hcn.org, or submit a letter to the editor.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Sagebrush Sasquatch, irritable elk and spiders that aren’t from Mars.
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