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County prescribes cold showers for persistent elk problem

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In their on-going effort to curb the mountain area’s exploding elk population, state and county wildlife officials are trying something new in Jefferson County – abstinence.

Elk who love too much

“If it works, it’ll be a win-win situation,” says Colorado Department of Wildlife spokesman Randy Deere. “We’ll significantly decrease the size of foothill elk herds and strengthen their moral character at the same time.”

Styled “The Great Colorado Rut-Out,” the program comes on the heels of a string of tactics that ultimately succumbed to public resistance or economic limitations. Repeated attempts to raise the bag-limit on elk have met stiff opposition from animal-rights groups, and recent efforts to chemically neuter female elk have proved costly and time consuming. “We can’t shoot them and we can’t put them on the pill,” Deere explains. “The only thing left is to guilt them into submission.”

For the time being, the abstinence strategy will be limited to elk, long recognized as the Cassanovas of the deer family. “Yeah, elk are always on the make,” Deere says. “Depending on our results, we might expand the program to include mule deer, but they typically spend more of the rutting season dreaming up bad haikus than they do getting busy.”

In practice, the ground-breaking program will both educate young elk about the perils of unplanned parenthood and offer tools to help them resist both peer pressure and their natural inclination to behave like animals. “It’s really about empowerment,” says Jefferson County wildlife officer Harry Buck. “These creatures have never been exposed to a structured, self-affirming program that tells them it’s okay to resist their base, procreative urges.”

Buck is one of a dozen county employees who’ll spend late August and September following local elk herds around and reading selected passages from “Not Until I’m Ready” aloud. In addition, a motion-activated recording of “My Body, My Most Precious Gift” as sung by Colorado Springs’ trendy “Chaste ‘n’ Chillin’” youth choir will greet young ruminants each time they pass beneath Highway 74 through the underpass at Elk Bridge Center. “It’s a pretty lame number with no real beat and uninspired vocals,” Buck says, “so it should get the point across without stirring up any unsavory passions.”

As a last deterrent to unsanctified physical relations, young female elk will be prominently marked with ear tags reading “WWBD,” or “What Would Bambi Do?” According to county wildlife psychologist Fawn Imbraisse, numerous studies indicate that young male elk regard the fictional cartoon deer in much the same way young human males once esteemed youth icons like Pat Boone and Richie Cunningham.

“Bambi holds a position of tremendous cultural significance within the deer community, where he’s revered as a symbol of integrity and purity; of ideal ‘deer-ness,’ if you will,” Imbraisse says. “I anticipate that when an interested young stag approaches an attractive doe with licentious purpose, the tag and its implied reproach will force the brute to confront his inner Bambi and expend his sexual energy by mauling someone’s mature and highly prized lilac bushes.”

Based on successes enjoyed by similar programs aimed at reducing human teen pregnancies, “Rut-Out” advocates feel confident that the innovative abstinence program will significantly reduce local elk herds and help solve a growing problem in the mountain area. “If it works on teenaged boys, it’ll work on young elk,” Deere says. “They’re all animals.”

'I don't know who my daddy is'

Mumbling movie mook mars mountain milieu

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About two weeks ago, when she first heard something rooting through her garbage cans after dark, Evergreen resident Brie Kammhem-Behr was annoyed. Sunday night, after she staked out her driveway and caught the culprit in a flashlight’s accusing beam, she became truly frightened.

“At first all I could see was a dark shape hunched over a pile of trash and tearing at a half-eaten Hot-Pocket with its teeth,” she said on Monday morning, still clutching an aluminum baseball bat and clearly shaken. “Then he looked up and snarled at me and his eyes reflected the light like a pair of golden globes. It was Johnny Depp.”

Mook amok.

 

As unlikely as that sounds, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office investigators believe that Kammhem-Behr’s terrifying discovery may go far toward explaining the sudden rash of over-turned trash cans, frightened household pets and soaring Cutty Sark sales that have plagued central Evergreen during the last three weeks.

“It’s starting to add up,” explains deputy Gilbert Grape, carefully dusting a deeply-chewed, silver-tipped ebony cigarette holder for fingerprints. “A jogger found this in a porta-potty at Evergreen Lake that we think Depp may be using for shelter.”

For one Main Street business owner who wishes to remain anonymous until she’s heard back from her agent, the J.D. sighting provides the missing piece of a messy puzzle.

“Every morning when I come in, the delivery porch is littered with stale croissant ends and Galois butts,” she says. “Now that I know Johnny might be crashing in there, I should be able to get a fortune for them on e-Bay.”

Reached by telephone at his Los Angeles office, film-agent Morey Amsterdam declined to give Depp’s present location, or even say when he and his most illustrious client last spoke. He did confirm, however, that Depp walked off the set of his latest picture, “Pirates of the Caribbean: Planks a Million,” nearly a month ago, putting the project on indefinite hiatus

Still, one must ask what personal demons could drive a celebrity of Depp’s stature to such wretched depths. According to the megastar’s therapist, celebrity headshrinker Dr. Royce Carruthers, the answer is tragically simple.

“Basically, he began to feel snubbed by your community and it sent him around the bend,” Carruthers explains. “He fell in love with your town last year, and did his best to embrace it with his whole heart. He went house-hunting among your beautiful hills, shopped in your quaint groceries, noshed at your local bagelries, even took to walking around your lovely lake early each morning. Yet everybody acted like he wasn’t even there. For a film artist who’s adored by millions, that was intolerable. Medically speaking, he went Froot Loops.”

While the thought of an unhinged Hollywood icon skulking around Evergreen’s quiet neighborhoods is certainly disturbing, it’s not without ample precedent. In late 2002, cinema tough-guy Al Pacino terrorized the quiet township of Cactus Creek, Nev., for nearly a month after the local Bijou closed his latest picture, “The Sense of a Wombat,” after only two weeks. And just last year, Hollywood heavyweight Susan Sarandon, esteemed in industries circles as an actress of great seriousness, spent several days wandering the tiny hamlet of Quaker Oaks, N.H., sleeping in the park and eating from birdfeeders. According to Amsterdam, the episode began when Sarandon learned that the popular half-pound “Susan Saran-Ton” garden burger at Mimi’s Silver Screen Diner in downtown Quaker Oaks had been renamed the “Adam Sandler-wich” after the prominent ham stopped to disburden himself on a dwarf chestnut tree on nearby Rural Route 86.

A Sarandon scorned.

 

Even now, county personnel are bending their efforts to catching the troubled superstar. Authorities hope that deftly camouflaged snares laid in Dedisse Park and baited with plastic Oscar trophy replicas will snare the two-time nominee so that he can be safely darted and relocated to a less natural environment.

“We don’t want to hurt him,” Grape says. “We just want to end the fear and loathing in Evergreen.”

Do not engage!

Staunton Park Confidential

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It’s like this…

After weeks, months, and finally years of delays, Staunton State Park finally opened for business on May 18. Now, me, I’m not one to attend a gala grand opening on the grounds that they tend to attract attendees and I hate to share anything in general and trails in particular. For some reason, though, Welsh Doug seemed to think we had to show or die trying and, mindful of Welsh tendencies toward hostage-taking, blackmail and legal harassment, I decided it would be easier to cave. As it happened, on May 17 Welsh Doug came down with an acute case of Craven’s Palsy and bailed on the expedition altogether. Having already composed and sent an entire brief email announcing the hike, I had no choice but to continue as planned. That plan started with catching a 9 a.m. Staunton Park shuttle at the Mountain View Park ‘n’ Ride in Conifer, but upon learning that park-service motor-coaches provide no mentholated towels, television monitors or beverage service, I thought it better to take our chances at the main gate. Iron B, MegaWatt and Yours Truly arrived there at about 8:45, and took our place in line behind perhaps 10 early-rising Parkies. Within 10 minutes the line stretched away out of sight down Elk Creek Road 

The gates opened promptly at 9 o’clock, and we raced into Staunton, seizing a parking space at the Mason Creek Trailhead just in time to wait in another line. On a more positive note, the bathrooms were so clean I couldn’t bear to sully their sanitized perfection. But I could, and did, eat a light breakfast of chocolate croissant and soft-boiled egg off the stall’s factory-fresh floor.

There are about 18 miles of trail at Staunton State Park, and most of them are accessed from the Staunton Ranch Trail – 3.3 miles of showroom-quality, neatly-manicured and virtually un-trod multi-use dirt measuring a précised 4-feet in width and still displaying rake-marks left by wooden-sandal-shod gangs of $200-an-hour Japanese feng shui artists flown in at public expense to groom the park.

That’s the ranger’s house. His name is Colin Chisholm. I know that because we spoke on the phone some weeks ago. He was very helpful on the phone, very forthcoming, very accommodating. When I showed myself inside and asked to use the bathroom he pretended to not know who I was and threatened to have me ejected from the park if I didn’t stop rooting around in his refrigerator and leave immediately. I see now that his previous graciousness was all an act. Very disillusioning.

The Staunton Ranch Trail climbs gently, but steadily, into the heart of the park. Sensing that I was growing parched from my manly efforts, MegaWatt offered me a “Fruit Gum” candy. They are English candies, made by the English, imported from England and purchased by MegaWatt at a Denver store that specializes in impoverishing red-blooded American confectioners. He gave me the first one (lime-eel) for free, then suggested a retail price of $5 for each chewy drop thereafter. He seriously thought me so weak and dependent and self-indulgent that I could be compelled to pay five bucks to suck on a 2-cent orange-eel, mango-eel or raspberry-eel morsel. Turns out he was right. I just love eel. Fortunately I had come prepared to pay steep littering and public indecency fines and was carrying lots of cash.

The rock feature called Lion’s Head is visible from nearly everywhere in the park. Remarkably, from no matter which angle one perceives that mighty pile, it looks nothing like a lion’s head.

About 2 miles in we hit a crossroads. Old Mill trail to starboard led up toward Staunton Rocks. As only Iron B aspires to the rock-climber’s moronic arts, we instead turned left onto Scout Line Trail. It’s hiker-only, which seemed a plus, and has a more trail-y aspect, having apparently been entirely snubbed by the Japanese gardeners.

Iron B took pictures of Staunton Rocks, possibly so she can later scale them mentally on her computer in the comfort of her own home. If so, she’s hit upon an activity even sillier and more useless than rock-climbing.

 

 

Scout Line Trail ascends quickly, leaving the open, harvested central areas and rising into densely-forested realms. And just in time. It was upon this gentle woodland resident that I lavished the precious gift of moisture, which blessing it gratefully accepted. A true “circle of life”.

 Staunton Rocks. Yeah, they’re pretty rocky, alright. But then so is my driveway, and you don’t see it getting all full of itself.

Whatever delight we had in hiking biker-free was soon tempered by Scout Line’s precipitous nature. After a few half-hearted feints at switch-backing, it gave up the pretense of gentility and made straight for the mountain top. The good news is the views were splendid. The bad news is that I was too blinded by tears to notice.

Here’s a view I didn’t see.

The intersection of Scout Line and Marmot Passage Trail. Despite my repeated warnings, MegaWatt persists in engaging with strange hikers. This fellow and his dog are from Oklahoma. Either he or his dog saw Staunton’s opening advertised on the Internet and decided to “git ‘er dun’” He had no food, no water, no map, and no compunction about marrying a first cousin. He did have a really big knife. It’s likely he thinks a really big knife is all a real man needs to survive in the wilderness. He’s half right. Take it from someone who knows – a real man also needs all the food and water he can steal from his two hiking companions.

And a map. Unfortunately, that’s a chamber of commerce merchant map of the 16th Street Mall. Interestingly, MegaWatt didn’t seem to mind, or even notice.

 

 

 

First bicycles, and now this. The whole “multiple use” concept is clearly out of control. What next? Big Wheels? Dogsleds? Segways? Slave-borne palanquins? Actually, that last one sounds kind of cool. I must propose it to Colin at the first opportunity.

 

The Stauntons left a bunch of cabins littered about the ranch. This, on the other hand, is the Staunton Park Visitors Center. It’s much nicer inside.

Staunton Pond. Anybody else catching a theme here?

 

 

 

Still plenty of water in the park. Cool, cool water, on a bed of black aspen leaves. Just right for slaking!

Given my correct and supportable views on rock-climbing, the only destination in Staunton Park I would attempt was Elk Falls. As it happens, Elk Falls lies at the farthest extremity of the very last trail some 6 miles distant from the Mason Creek Trailhead. At this point I’m guessing we’ve done every foot of those 6 miles, and climbed something like 1,500 to 1,800 feet. MegaWatt immediately produced a Sharpie from his backpack and vandalized the sign to read “Elk Falls Overlook H8TIN.” I tried to tell him that only works on stop signs, but he wouldn’t have it.

Iron B and MegaWatt argue before making the last push. Iron B wants to whistle the theme from The Great Escape. MegaWatt wants to whistle the theme from Bridge on the River Kwai. Disgusted, I stepped in and made them whistle the theme from the Andy Griffith Show. And it served them right.

 

There’s the Oakie and his coon-hound, now. Thanks to the masculine power of his really big knife he was able to take a less rigorous combination of trails and arrive at the overlook before us.

 

And there they are. The falls are pretty, sure enough.

 

A plunge of 100 feet, by all accounts. A trail is contemplated leading directly to the falls, but construction can’t begin until all appropriate Shinto purification ceremonies are completed.  By August this view will be considerably reduced. I feel fortunate to have caught Elk Falls in full bugle. By our estimation we were among the first 20 persons to witness this spectacle on Staunton Park’s opening day. That’s gotta be worth fifty bucks, at least. I will submit an invoice to Colin first thing Monday.

MegaWatt brought salted peanuts and nothing to drink. Being saintly, I gladly shared with him my Tum-E Yummies blue-colored beverage. I may as well have shot him in the mouth with a sugar-cannon. What was I thinking?

 

 

Feeling pleased with ourselves and maybe a little fatigued, we took the easier, shorter, quicker Bugling Elk Road, er, Trail back. Do I regret not getting a chance to stick my success in Scout Line’s face? Maybe a little, but only a little.

 

 

Cabins everywhere except this perfect little meadow. Makes you wonder how the Stauntons got so rich

.

Look! A rock climber! One, lone rock climber! I guess Staunton really is a magnet for, er, that guy.

 

 

 

 

After our exertions it was a pleasure to glide back down Staunton Ranch Trail. Like a grand trunk road, Stauntion Ranch meanders down the valley at a gentle slope and easy pace. Just what I needed after the terror at the falls.

 

Twelve miles later back at the park entrance, the festivities were in full swing. By festivities I mean this guy in a funny hat. Colorado State Parks must have blown their 6-figure opening-day entertainment budget on fugu box lunches for the trail groomers.

Party on, Colin!

Johnny Depp Redux

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Our recent exploration of local chatter regarding Johnny Depp prompted numerous readers to contact the newspaper – some positive, some otherwise – and at least two offered clues to the rumors’ origins.

As near as can be determined, the first second-hand Johnny Depp sighting surfaced approximately three months ago. It may be no coincidence that King Soopers cashier Matt Villareal noticed a person matching Depp’s description buying milk, cereal and fruit at his register at about that time.

Have you seen this man?

According to Villareal, an unshaven fellow clad in a stained, gray trench coat and wearing a type of hat often associated with Johnny Depp appeared in the Bergen Park grocery 10 or 12 weeks ago. While shabby shoppers aren’t ordinarily noteworthy, they are when they look suspiciously like famous people and Villareal was immediately struck by the man’s resemblance to Johnny Depp.

“At least two other employees saw him check out, too, and we all thought he looked a lot like Johnny Depp,” Villareal says. “After he paid, I checked the credit card slip but the signature was illegible.” In itself, Villareal’s account is unremarkable. Added to his next statement, however, it could explain a great deal. “This was before all the rumors started, so I pretty much just shrugged the whole thing off.”

But not before sharing the incident freely with their friends and co-workers. Thus, at least three local residents had reason to suspect a brush with greatness on the eve of an epidemic of alleged Johnny Depp sightings. Taken together, they’re what Bill Nye the Science Guy might call a “causal relationship.”

While suggestive, Villareal’s report does nothing to explain the oft-repeated tale that Depp has, or soon will, buy real estate on Upper Bear Creek Road. Fortunately, longtime Upper Bear resident and local Realtor DeWitt Petty offers a plausible theory as to how an unverified Depp sighting became Hollywood West.

Shortly after Villareal’s curious encounter, Petty brokered the sale of a large property on the Clear Creek County end of Upper Bear Creek Road. Freshly infected with the Depp fever, an acquaintance phoned Petty and asked him to confirm her personal belief that the famed actor had purchased the $8 million estate. Whether motivated by commendable professional tact or a keen sense of mischief, Petty equivocated.

“I told her I wasn’t at liberty to tell her that,” Petty says.

What’s not secret is that, when offered a “no comment,” most people immediately attach a mental nudge and a wink to it, and it’s entirely possible that the tales of Depp’s Evergreen house-hunting can be traced directly back to Petty’s inquisitive friend. In any case, the property was sold to a Denver couple with no known cinematic associations.

For his part, Petty finds the gossip machine’s current product especially entertaining in view of a persistent celebrity fiction that’s plagued him for nearly two decades. Some 19 years ago, Petty was interested to learn that the sale of a nearby home was based in part on the strength of its Hollywood pedigree.

“The sellers were telling everybody that Farrah Fawcett used to live there,” Petty says. “As a Realtor, I got curious and did a title search on it.” He wasn’t surprised to discover that the one-time Angel had no more connection to the home than Charlie did, a fact that did nothing to dispel the notion in the popular imagination.

“In the last 19 years, I’ve sold that house three times,” Petty says, “and every time I do, someone says ‘hey, you sold Farrah Fawcett’s house,’ and I always say ‘yeah, I guess I did.’”

Saturdays with Clifford

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Douglas MacFelcher,

 I hope your mani-pedi was worth it, because you missed one heckuva hike. Sunshine, budding ass-pens, suspicious strangers, mortal remains, biblical floods, high drama and thought-provoking controversy. It was like something you’d find in one of the thousands of classic Hollywood films available now through NetFlix.

 

We parked on Silver Plume’s main drag in front of the famous “Innisfree House,” so named because it was featured in John Ford’s memorable 1952 Hibernian reflection, “The Quiet Man”, featuring John Wayne as troubled prizefighter Sean Thornton and Maureen O’Hara as Mary Kate Danaher, the flame-haired beauty who scores a TKO on his heart.

 

This was an important hike for poor Electa, as she’s already been up this rocky road twice but had yet to hit pay-dirt. But hopes were high – almost as high as the balloon carrying Phineas Fogg and his resourceful Passeportout in the lengthy 1956 screen adaptation of Jules Verne’s celebrated “Around the World in 80 Days, “ starring the always-dashing David Niven, Mexican film legend Cantinflas, and a very young Shirley MacLaine utterly miscast as the Indian princess Aouda.

 

You may recall the wealth of mouldering mine ruins that pepper that loose and treacherous trail. Here, Bonnie tries to regain her confidence before continuing, not unlike Nigel D’Ascoyne, just one of eight characters all masterfully portrayed by the endlessly adaptable Sir Alec Guinness in the 1949 English black comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets.”

 

This was new: bleached bones littered the trail, sad reminders of our own mortality, which can also be said for the melancholy 1943 classic Western “The Ox-Bow Incident,” in which a desperate and horrified Henry Fonda stands by helplessly as an enraged Nevada posse metes out Nevada-style frontier justice to Dana Andrews, Anthony Quinn and Francis Ford.

 

O Joy! O Rapture! She made it! You know who else made it? Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayer, ably played by Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, respectively, all the way down the Ulanga River to cinematic immortality in the 1951 classic “The African Queen.”

 

We relaxed for a bit, in the shadow of Clifford Griffin’s somber cenotaph, and Bonnie told us the story of a serial killer who buries his victims in his garden. I didn’t say anything, but I recognized her “original” tale as the precise plot of “Mr. Frost,” French film director Phillipe Stebon’s cerebral and spine-tingling study on the nature of evil featuring the irreplaceable talents of a more-than-usually-creepy Jeff Goldblum.

 

Being in perverse love with Nature, Bonnileski wanted to take a picture of these willow buds. After she took a few, I took a few more. This is the best of the lot, and it sucks like James Arness as the terrifying creature that sucks the life from a doughty group of Air Force scientists trapped with it in the high Arctic in the unforgettable 1952 sci-fi classic “The Thing from Another World,” the black-and-white forerunner of the better know John Carpenter remake, “The Thing.”

 

Barricaded as it was behind a lethal wall of thundering white death, we decided to avoid the 7:30 Mine Tour the way Major Major (Bob Newhart) avoided Private Yossarian (Alan Arkin) in the hilariously disturbing 1970 WWII picture “Catch 22” (screenplay by Buck Henry)

 

Nobly exhausted and heroically famished, we stopped at the Main Street Restaurant in Idaho Springs for nourishment. Bonnie had a burrito the size of Neptune. Electa ordered wagon-wheel-sized peach pancakes with a savory side of pork for Claire. Ever looking to test the boundaries of the possible, I chose an alternative form of mealtime madness and ate the bizarre, but tasty, Cheeseburger Club, which featured three slices of bread, roughly corresponding to the three “Droogs” with whom Malcolm MacDowell’s sadistic “Alex” terrorized the staid and courtly citizens of suburban London in the darkly comical 1971 Stanley Kubrik masterpiece “A Clockwork Orange.”

Fin