deaths were motor vehicle related, 490 were from drowning, and 12 were firearm related. All of these deaths are surely tragic, most of them could have been prevented, but we only hear about the last 12.
The low cost of living is one of the advantages of Wyoming. One can live fairly well here on the proceeds from a modest clientele. Perhaps the low cost of living is what makes the area attractive for aspiring artists as well. Or maybe it's something in the water. But there are an amazing number of good, if sometimes undiscovered artists in all media who live here at least part of the year. Sculptors and painters, crafters of furniture and firearms, and screeds on freedom. Musicians and entertainers of all sorts who rely on an audience are less common, but frequently hide out here when they're not on the road.
Maybe it is the water.
Friday, March 22, 2002- - -
A friend of mine has a somewhat unusual hobby. He's a farmer by day, sugar beets, barley, silage and feed corn, and Sunday afternoons he's a team roper. The gentleman's rodeo sport. Riding rough stock is for the teenagers - baby boomers don't bounce well any more. But team roping is a finesse game: two men rope a steer, one on the head to hold the animal and a 'heeler' who ropes a hind foot to throw the critter. This is a more necessary skill than one might think: How else would you vaccinate a cranky old range cow? It's also a sport.
They practice in an arena south of town, Sunday afternoons. It's not a cheap sport, you bring your own steer. Not to mention your horse and tack. Eventually the steer will learn that it doesn't like to be tripped and laid on its side. It starts to dodge the ropes. That takes all the fun out of it and you need a replacement steer. The one who's wised up gets fattened up, leading to the obvious conclusion: Sometimes it doesn't pay to get too smart.
I've got to start doing a little map reconnaissance for the turkey trip. I'd hoped to draw here in the Bighorn Basin, where I know the landowners and the lay of the land, but such was not to be. Fortunately, this year they've opened up most all of the Powder River Basin for general licenses, meaning you can buy a license over the counter at the hardware store rather than entering a lottery for a limited number of licenses.
This suggests that the turkey population is becoming large enough that it can sustain a considerable number of hunters. Of course, if the hunters are all as successful as I usually am the turkeys are pretty safe. There's also huge tracts of land that are inaccessible to the public, either due to terrain, to the Forest Service road closures, or to private landowners who don't allow access, so there are many de facto refuges for the critters.
Turkeys are interesting. A hen turkey lays a bunch of eggs, one a day pretty regularly just like a chicken, for over two months. I've heard of up to 75 eggs in a single nest. After an incubation period the eggs begin to hatch, also about one per day. At the right time of year you can walk through the woods and come on hatchlings at all stages of development, from peepers to near-adults fledging out. And all the coyotes, foxes, bobcats, and other predators are lying around with distended stomachs.
Some folks think turkeys are wily, smart critters, but they are just birds. There's not enough room in that cranium for much thinking apparatus. But of every 100 turkey eggs that hatch, only three or four make it to adulthood. The ones that survive are the ones that put their heads down and run at the first hint of danger and don't stop running until they're in the next county. They're not smart, they're paranoid.
An old friend of my sister's who's living in Kaycee found this. As usual with these things when they start circulating on the internet there's no attribution, but it's a variation on an old theme and it was to awful to resist:
Two attorneys boarded a flight out of Seattle, one sat in the window seat, the other sat in the middle seat. Just before takeoff, a physician got on and took the aisle seat next to the two attorneys. The physician 