Ducks were walking on a layer of ice on Hayden Lake on Tuesday. Due to recent icy weather Hayden Lake is now capped with ice. Many of the region's smaller lakes are ice-bound most years, but the big lakes haven't seen ice in nearly a decade here/Kathy Plonka, Spokesman-Review.

Leaning Straight Up: More than half of U.S. women living without spouse at home and other N.Y. Times lies here.

1. Police have been trying to catch a serial peeping Tom who has managed to sneak his way into the women's showers at a University of Washington dormitory at least three times in the past few months here.

2. Two new mothers have Tualatin search and rescue crews to thank for delivering their babies after they went into labor and couldn't get to a hospital due to the unexpected snow around Portland, Ore., here.

3. Jack Thornburrow, a champion of Idaho's farmers and ranchers, died a second and final time during the last year -- and this time no one was able to bring him back here.

4. A University of Montana dean's professional odyssey has helped unearth what is believed to be a previously unknown work of the great British poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Even more tantalizing, the work is a substantial partial verse translation of Goethe's landmark tragic play, "Faust," written in 1808. For 19th Century Romantic scholars, the discovery is equivalent to finding the Dead Sea Scrolls here.

5. A new animal ordinance approved by the Great Falls (Mont.) City Commission requires households with more than two dogs or two cats to apply for a multiple-animal permit here.

6. IMHO-NW: Jane Opyr/New West North Idaho (Saddam's hanging and the Fiesta Bowl), Tecla Murkosky/UI Argonaut (A Southern Belle's take on frozen north), Carol Mell/New West Boise (When chickens fall from the sky), Steve Crump/Twin Falls Times-News (Getting dirty jobbed by Discovery Channel), and Brandon Macz/UI Argonaut (Stay the course in education).

Online Poll: 76% of 772 respondents to a Seattle PI poll believe that climate change poses a major threat to the world.

*Idaho National Guardsman, based in Post Falls, killed in Iraq by roadside bomb here. Seattle Times obit here.

*Deer freed from entangled rope by getting Tazered here.

*Cal Groen of Lewiston picked to head Idaho F&G Dept. here.

*3 WSU football players in academic jeopardy here.

*Driver rear-ended by Spokane deputy cited for driving without insurance here.

Orbusmax Special: 9-year-old boy sneaks past Sea-Tac security, boards flight here. (BTW, Orbusmax, situated in the Seattle area has topped 10 million page-views since The Orb decided to provide a Drudge-type report NW several years ago. Click here and join me in congratulating The Orb.

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