Huckleberries Best of the INorthwest — 1/17/07

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.