WASHINGTON
Back in the ’70s, a ubiquitous commercial for American Tourister luggage featured an over-caffeinated gorilla trying to destroy a fancy suitcase. Today, the Washington State University Bear Research, Education and Conservation Center is conducting similar trials, but instead of gorillas, it’s using grizzlies. And instead of luggage, they’re testing camping equipment to measure just how “bear-proof” it is. Or rather, “bear-resistant,” since camping equipment is “never 100% bear proof,” the Moscow-Pullman Daily News reports. The WSU center opened in 1986 — the “only grizzly bear research center of its kind in the United States,” according to its website. It was established so biologists could collect data from bears in captivity to better understand and manage grizzlies in the wild.
Evaluating outdoor equipment is a relatively new specialty, though bears have been testing food containers for companies since 2022 — not to mention investigating outdoor gear on their own ever since backpacking was invented. Chelsea Davis has worked at the center for four years stashing various goodies inside the products to entice the bears. “I use the something smelly, something noisy, and something oozy rule when trying to motivate the bear,” she explained. Each bear has its own technique for opening test products. Kio can get into any cooler that has thin plastic walls, while a younger bear, Zuri, prefers a more direct approach, simply flinging things against the walls, and Luna does what Davis calls “CPR” on products to smash them. Davis said that the female bears are more persistent about finding solutions; if a container takes longer than five minutes to break into, the males lose interest and “tend to walk away.” We don’t know how gorillas would deal with today’s products, but then again, we rarely come across gorillas in our national parks. Not yet, anyway.
WASHINGTON
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) was clearly caught between a rock and a hard place. A famous boulder known as the Graffiti Rock, located along Interstate 5 outside Bellingham near the Samish Way exit, had served as a community message board for the last 60 years. Recently, however, it was broken into bits and removed by WSDOT. Keith Cook, the 100-ton boulder’s Facebook page manager — these days everybody needs a manager — was not at all happy, telling The Bellingham Herald: “It’s like a murder. It’s not like a broken arm, and they can put it back together. The value of it was in its entirety.” WSDOT had to move the rock to make room for a $160 million project to widen three salmon-bearing streams that run under the freeway. The massive boulder was “blasted out of the surrounding Chuckanut sandstone” in 1966, when construction started on I-5. Its first tag read “Sealth ’70,” a tribute to a Seattle high school graduating class, and ever since, people have painted memorials, cheered on sports teams and congratulated graduates on it — even left marriage proposals. Cook is asking anyone with photos of the rock to post them here as a final tribute.
IDAHO
This April, hundreds of onlookers flocked to the annual Boise Sheep Crossing along Highway 55 through Eagle, to watch as over 2,600 ewes and lambs cross roadways in a migration that’s over a century old, Boise State Public Radio reported. Wilder, Idaho, rancher Frank Shirts’ sheep were herded by trusty shepherd dogs and human shepherds from the alfalfa fields of Western Canyon County to the greener high pastures of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service lands. “There’s the herder and then the lead ewe with the cowbell in front. And then all the sheep fall in behind,” said Steve Stuebner, who works for the Idaho Rangeland Resource Commission. Gabe Garcia brought his kids so they could watch the tufts of fluff make their annual trek. “It keeps rural Idaho still alive, essentially,” said Garcia. “And I think everyone gets to be a part of it, that’s what’s really cool about it.”
CALIFORNIA
Want a wedding that’s out of this world, one that will be valid in galaxies far, far away and even defeat the dark side? The San Diego County Clerk’s Office will happily perform your nuptials while honoring Star Wars Day, May 4. “In every great love story, there’s a spark that brings two people together — call it destiny, or call it the Force,” County Clerk Jordan Z. Marks, the self-proclaimed “Yoda of Love,” told Fox 5 KUSI NEWS. What could be more romantic? Just bring your own lightsabers, and keep the Wookiees out of the Champagne.
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This article appeared in the July 2026 print edition of the magazine with the headline “Heard around the West.”