Huckleberries: Nature’s siren is louder than sheriff’s new toy

Talk about stealing your thunder. A 100-pound black bear upstaged Kootenai County Sheriff Ben Wolfinger’s big reveal for his $335,000 BearCat military vehicle Wednesday morning. Spokesman-Review photographer Kathy Plonka was en route to the BearCat unveiling when she got word that BooBoo Bear had climbed 60 to 70 feet up a tree at Woodland Middle School. Real bear? BearCat? Easy call. Kathy and her camera veered off to the Coeur d’Alene middle school, where she witnessed BooBoo climb down the tree. Get tranquilized. And get whisked off to Idaho Fish and Game HQ to sleep it off. Meanwhile, Coeur d’Alene city spokesman Keith Erickson literally ran into the commotion during his daily jog. Keith considered the near encounter with BooBoo “even more impressive than the big moose (he) encountered a couple months ago at nearby Bluegrass Park.” Bear? Moose? Just another day in viewtiful CdA.

Parking problems

During my noon walk along Lake Coeur d’Alene’s north shore Thursday, I watched one North Idaho College student fail to parallel park her sedan in a spot big enough for a flatbed truck. And heard another being lectured by an NIC security guard who said she couldn’t park her battered pickup nose first in a spot fit for an old VW bug. The bed was hanging out into the road. Don’t they teach proper parking techniques in driver’s ed classes anymore? … Yeah, that was Idaho AG Lawrence Wasden with his right arm in a sling in Coeur d’Alene on Friday morning. He brought his wife to town with him, to serve as a crutch and celebrate an anniversary. Seems the popular AG injured his wing picking up a grandchild. The wounds we endure for love … Take a note to the jerks who left two plastic bags worth of empty beer cans on the west side of Tubbs Hill Thursday morning: Huckleberries Online friend Walkabout picked them up for you slobs. And several blog commenters would like to see the crushed cans returned to you – and put where the sun don’t shine.

Huckleberries

Poet’s Corner: “Imperfect creatures are we all/since the time of Adam’s fall,/and so this truth we shan’t conceal:/Google’s better at the wheel” – The Bard of Sherman Avenue (“Of Driverless Cars”) … Only in Idaho could Republican candidates for governor, with straight faces, describe incumbent Butch Otter as a “liberal” … In a letter to the Coeur d’Alene Press editor, a Coeur d’Alene reader groused about that sign in Coeur d’Alene’s new Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant – you know, the one that says: “Buffalo Wild Wings bans guns on these premises.” But a plurality of 47 percent of my Huckleberries blog readers said they would be more likely to frequent a business that had such a sign. Thirty-one percent said they’d be less likely … Quotable Quote: “Deer and wildlife are just one of the things that make Idaho great. If you want a garden, put up a fence. The old saying ‘Good fences make good neighbors’ works for wildlife too” – Ed Aycock, of Coeur d’Alene … If you’re higher than the proverbial kite, it’s probably not a good idea to call the Post Falls police for help to bring you down. A guy did just that last week. After he was deemed OK by EMTs, PFPD Blues found marijuana in the home. And cited the man for his troubles. Did he think he was in Washington or something?

Parting shot

Mark Coeur d’Alene Councilman Dan Gookin down as a skeptic re: militarization of police. In the Coeur d’Alene Press Online comments section, Gookin dissed Sheriff Wolfinger’s new BearCat military vehicle: “When the police start to become the military, who is the enemy they’re fighting? How many times a year are they going to use this to justify its ongoing maintenance and training expenses? This is overkill. Literally.” But it sure looks like it’d be fun to drive.