Duck soup: Visitors to Shadowbrook Farm in Mapleton will notice some of the pet ducks and chickens missing. Donald Duck, Golden and a dozen others made tasty meals for two American bald eagles that live in the hills above the farm.
To avoid the eagles' claws, five remaining ducks and two geese took up winter residence with Don Diego, an Arabian stallion, whose stall sits safely in a barn. As the weather turned warm, the goose laid her eggs in the corner."Poor Diego had to watch every step he took," said Sherry Mainord, farm owner.
Mainord said she felt bad about losing the ducks and chickens, but thinks there was a tradeoff.
"It was good to see parents and children out during the mild winter with binoculars, not guns, looking for rare birds," she said.
Let's hope they weren't watching during the eagles' "big quack attack."
High rollers: A startled Utah Valley State College board of trustees proved they can move pretty darn fast when they're challenged.
Coming out of their board meeting recently, several of the members were nearly run down by a guy on in-line skates.
When President Kerry Romesburg suggested the lad slow down, the speed demon replied, "Show me where it says I can't do this!"
It took the board only until the next meeting to have a policy whipped into shape that asks skaters and cyclists to "exercise due care and reasonable caution."
"They shall yield the right-of-way to pedestrians at all times and shall not exceed a reasonable speed."
Board members were quick to vote for the new policy, but one member pointed out there were no provisions for enforcement.
"That's all right. What we'll do is just catch 'em and pistol-whip the beegees out of 'em," quipped Romesburg.
Show time: It seems ironic to us that Brigham Young University is hosting a world anniversary conference on the Holocaust when the university refused to show "Schindler's List" at its Varsity Theater. The movie's executive producer, Gerald Molen, is even going to speak.
Why is it OK to talk about and visually display the horrors of that debacle in history when it wasn't relevant enough in movie form to override the no-R-rated-movie policy?
And they're off: American Fork city is forming a horse racing and rodeo commission to get more and better use of the track it owns near Tri City Golf Course.
At last week's City Council meeting, Councilman Kent Walker wondered if that meant the city was getting into the gambling business. Mayor Jess Green explained that city and state laws prohibit parimutuel betting. But Walker, who abstained from the vote to create the commission, didn't seem convinced that gambling won't occur.
"We don't want to take away from Wyoming Downs," he said.
Green isn't worried about that. "I don't think we'll take anything away from Wyoming Downs or any other place in the state," he said.
Nevertheless, we're willing to bet that where there's a horse track, there's a wager. The same could be said of the golf course.
But we think Walker ought to relax. Politics itself is like playing craps. Sometimes the dice roll your way, sometimes they don't.
Sing your way home: Rep. Norm Nielsen, R-Utah, organized a bunch of fellow legislators into the "Norman" Tabernacle Choir for the close of the 1995 session. They sang a hearty rendition of "Utah, We Love Thee." We hear it brought tears to the eyes.