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June 20 – Red squirrels provide year-round entertainment for Tina and Judge Wynecoop of Colbert.  But when they started affecting the gas mileage of their vehicle, something had to be done.

“Our Toyota 4Runner did not have much get up and go on its 12-mile trip to town,” Tina said.

“Judge checked under the hood and found a pinecone. When he opened the air filter case he discovered a family of five baby red squirrels in a nest composed of the air filter, the insulation from an old coat and grasses.”

They drove to a Toyota dealer to purchase and install a new filter. The old filter was removed with the baby squirrels snug in their nest.

“The check engine light remained on as we returned home, where the mom was waiting,” Tina recalled. “She checked out her babies; she bumped up against our legs; she sniffed the air filter contents, examined the spot in the Toyota where she thought she had left her babies, and then carried her children off, one by one, and put them in a safe place under the garage rafters.

“A short while later she moved them a very far distance to our barn and made an obscene gesture at the 4Runner.”

June 20 – One of the immutable laws of nature:

The quieter you try to be when getting something out of the refrigerator at 2:13 a.m., the more noise you will make.

June 19 – The police scanners are on all day in the newsroom and we’ve all learned to ignore them. But you can’t help but hear the voices. They are male and female, chatter between officers and dispatchers and always unusually calm, professional, betraying no emotion.

This afternoon, a terrible story is developing. Two sheriff’s deputies have been shot in north Spokane. Suddenly, all in the newsroom were listening to the scanners. And the voices we heard sounded different. A man, a police or fire officer, was describing the suspect to the dispatcher. His voice was higher, hurried and shaky. You know how you sometimes speak louder to stop yourself from choking up? It sounded like this. A very worried man.

Officers down. Their fellow officers are doing their job in their usual professional way, but their voices express the gut-wrench of concern.