UTAH
Utah lawmakers passed a bill prohibiting the state Division of Wildlife Resources from using any names for birds except the “original” assigned “English-language name,” The Salt Lake Tribune reported. The measure, if signed into law by Republican Gov. Spencer Cox, would basically make it illegal, or should we say, “ill eagle,” for the agency to revise bird names in accord with the American Ornithological Society’s pledge to change the English names of species that were named after human beings. Some critics think House Bill 382 is a bird-brained idea, just birdseed to feed the culture-war vultures. But Utah legislators seem to have no egrets. The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Casey Snider, R-Paradise, said he favors long-standing traditions, even if the birds in question were named after racists or other historic figures with fowl public records, a practice the advocacy group Bird Names for Birds compares to erecting “verbal statues.” “We’re going to maintain that scientific integrity by freezing in time those naming conventions,” he said.
Meanwhile, ornithologists believe it’s time to quit naming non-human critters after humans and instead, as Forbes put it, “focus on the unique features and beauty of the birds themselves.” Scott’s oriole, for example, was named for Gen. Winfield Scott, who helped oversee the forced removal of the Cherokee people from their homelands in the Trail of Tears, while the Audubon’s oriole honors John James Audubon, a slave owner and opponent of abolition, and Townsend’s warbler and solitaire are named after John Kirk Townsend, who stole skulls from Native American graves.
But did anyone ask a spokesbird from the Aves community their opinion? According to @SBoojum, posting on the social platform X, “Cooper’s Hawks actually refer to themselves as ‘Scree! Scree! Erk!’ and we should respect that.”
UTAH
If it takes a village to raise a child, as the saying goes, how many villagers does it take to milk several dozen goats? Jose Garcia and his uncle, Bartolo Garcia, the purveyors of a Merced County, California, dairy farm, just found out. They were driving a load of 50 newly purchased goats from Minnesota to California — a 2,000-mile drive — when they got stranded amid standstill traffic in the middle of a snowstorm, The Washington Post reported. The mama goats were getting desperate; they need milking every 12 hours, or their udders become painfully swollen and possibly infected. Garcia, who said the goats were at the 12-hour mark, was all set to try milking them inside the trailer when traffic finally started moving. Fortunately, there’s a livestock supply store in nearby Stansbury Park, Utah, and when the dairy farmers got there, calls for emergency goat assistance went out. Within 30 minutes, about 40 people showed up, some with jars and bottles, even though most of them had never milked goats before. One should never under-
estimate the milk of human-to-goat kindness.
ALASKA
Alaska’s legendary Iditarod dog sled race consists of 1,000 miles of frigid terrain from Anchorage to Nome. This year, Dallas Seavey won, his sixth victory, but not without a few snafus — and some messy moose guts — along the way, The New York Times reported. In rural Alaska, where you’re bound to encounter a wild animal or two, the Iditarod has regulations at hand. So when Seavey and his dog team got “entangled” with a menacing moose, and one of the dogs, Faloo, was critically injured, Seavey shot and killed the moose. But Rule 34 requires mushers to make every attempt to salvage the meat of any big game animals slain during the race. Seavey told Iditarod Insider that he did his best to gut the moose, but that “it was ugly.” Some competitors complained that their sleds had to run over a sizable carcass in the middle of the trail. Seavey received a two-hour penalty, but despite the setback, he still won the race, completing it in nine days, two hours and 16 minutes. And his dog, Faloo, underwent two surgeries and is at home recovering.
COLORADO
Craving protein, but tired of getting it from your fellow mammals? How about sampling some creepy-crawler cuisine? La Diabla Pozole y Mezcal, a restaurant in downtown Denver, is serving up scorpion tamales, red worm tostadas, grasshoppers with bone marrow, and ant larvae tacos, nbcnews.com reported. Jose Avila, a James-Beard nominated chef, is serious about introducing diners to these Aztec-influenced dishes. But don’t worry: The restaurant, which Bon Appetit listed as one of America’s best, also has a full — and delicious — menu of entirely bug-free fare.
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 May 2024 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Heard around the West.”
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