Daily Darwin

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Darwin 5 11 23

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Thursday, May 11, 2023 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Thursday, May 11, 2023

 Don't worry. If there's one thing I know how to do, it's tricks on a pogo stick...

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's general assignment reporter, Clair McFarland.

Clair McFarland

Politics

The final days of Wyoming’s primary election season have gotten so negative, Sen. Eric Barlow is wearing a vet sleeve to check his mailbox. 

The Republican gubernatorial candidate is one of the state’s most targeted political candidates, as multiple groups have launched negative mailers and TV commercials against him this summer.

He also has a handy stock of vet gloves from his two decades working as a veterinarian; when he performed pregnancy tests on cattle.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s a rectal procedure."}]

Checking the mail during election season is also a rectal procedure, Barlow joked in a 

In the video Barlow approaches a row of mailboxes and announces that he and his wife have been on the road for four or five days, and, “well, when you get home, you gotta check the mail.”

He references he numerous TV, text, and mail ads flooding the dog days of the primary election season, which ends Aug. 18. 

“It just doesn’t make any sense, folks, that’s not how we treat people in Wyoming,” says Barlow. 

“So here’s what I suggest,” he continues in the video, donning a vet glove up to his shoulder. “You glove up.”

He adds: “You open carefully. Step back. Yep, there’s some in there, I can see it right from here.” 

Barlow tells the viewers to reach into the mailbox, “pull it out carefully, turn that sleeve inside out.”

The gloved Barlow in the video extricates a fecal-looking lump from the mailbox. 

“There. You’ve got it contained,” says Barlow on the video, inverting the glove and confining the lump inside it by tying a knot. 

[{"type":"text","text":"Technically, Yak Poop"}]

Barlow, a yak rancher, told Cowboy State Daily later that he shot the video using his own mailbox - and real dung. 

“If you want to be really technical, it was yak crap,” said Barlow in a Saturday-evening phone interview. 

The vivid demonstration echoes his veterinary practice, during which his “bread and butter” was pregnancy checks of ranch animals, including cattle. 

A cow’s abdomen isn’t suited for a vet to detect early pregnancy in an abdominal examination, so the vet dons a long-sleeve polyethylene glove up to his shoulder and checks the cow through her rectum, Barlow said. 

“It’s generally pretty dirty,” he said. Shifting back to the metaphor he added, “I don’t think it needs to be that way, but others do. So when you approach your mailbox you gotta be careful.” 

Barlow said from watching Federal Election Commission numbers, his team anticipates he’ll weather as much as another $325,000 worth of negative advertising in the next 10 days. 

One group, Women for Responsible Government Action, derided Barlow for voting against a bill that sought to ban child sex-change treatments in 2023. That same year however, Barlow voted in favor of a different bill with the same goal. 

A similar paradox unfolded when the Wyoming’s Turn PAC launched ads attacking Barlow for voting against a sanctuary cities ban in 2025 - when Barlow had voted in favor of a different sanctuary cities ban that same year. 

The one he voted against was widely opposed by Wyoming sheriffs, and died with around two-thirds of Senate Republicans voting against it. 

Wyoming’s Turn PAC invoked multiple other Barlow votes. The group asserted that Barlow’s record shows him supporting illegal immigrants. He called that a mischaracterization and discussed each vote in an 

He said in his Saturday interview that some people he encounters at events have said they find his humorous take on the negativity refreshing. The preg-check video is the latest in a series. 

[{"type":"text","text":"The governor's race isn’t the only one that has gone negative. "}]

U.S. House candidates Steve Friess and Chuck Gray have both been targeted. So have numerous legislative candidates. 

Barlow said after being on the road for about five days, he found 15 campaign mailers in his mailbox. At least one posed an attack on him, he added. 

[{"type":"text","text":"It’s Almost Over"}]

Barlow faces Superintendent of Public Instruction Megan Degenfelder, retired Marine Corps Col. Brent Bien, and Centennial man Curt Blake in the Republican primary election Aug. 18.

[{"type":"text","text":"Barlow, Degenfelder and Bien all had partial victories in recent weeks. "}]

 - which Cowboy State Daily has reviewed - showing him leading the race. 

 of the Wyoming Republican Party's state central committee. 

Trump-endorsed Degenfelder garnered more statements of support, and a 

The winner of that contest will face Democrat Kenneth Casner and Constitution Party nominee Rebecca Bextel, though Bextel has indicated on Facebook that she will “happily stay home” if Bien or Degenfelder wins the primary election. 

Barlow yak crap 8 8 26

<title>Eric Barlow Jokes About Negative Mailers By Pulling ‘Yak Crap’ From Mailbox | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Highly targeted gubernatorial candidate Eric Barlow joked Saturday about all the negative campaign ads by donning a vet glove and pulling yak dung from his own mailbox. “That’s not how we treat people in Wyoming,” he said in a social media video.

Eric Barlow Jokes About Negative Mailers By Pulling ‘Yak Crap’ From Mailbox

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Dale Killingbeck

Dale Killingbeck

Wyoming Life

He was a longtime cowboy and foreman on a noted cattle ranch, cattle inspector for a few months, and gained the respect of Laramie County while serving as undersheriff.

Frank Roach stepped into the top job when his predecessor died in 1912 of kidney disease.

After being elected in 1914 and serving his own term, the 42-year-old sheriff headed out to investigate the reported theft of three horses and gear from a cattle ranch 18 miles west of Cheyenne on Sunday morning, April 30, 1916. 

The ranch was owned by Hans Nielson, but ran by Niels Nielson, who was no relation to his boss.

Married two years, Roach and his wife had just become parents of a baby boy. His wife was a Scottish immigrant and daughter of a banker who invested in Swan Land & Cattle Company. The couple met while Roach worked for Swan as foreman.

His wife was still recovering from the birth.

Once at the ranch, the sheriff and one of the Nielsons tracked the thieves through light snow that had fallen the previous day to the Colorado line and lost the trail as the day wore on. They came to ranch on the Colorado side and the rancher contacted neighboring ranches to warn them about horse thieves in the area.

At the Webster ranch just to the south, the matron of the ranch had news Roach wanted to hear.

“Two men answering the description given by him were at that moment eating a meal she had given them in her home,” the Fort Collins Express reported on May 4, 1916. “She was requested to hold them at the ranch house if possible.”

However, the suspects, Clyde B. Pearson, 27, and Cornelius Gray, 21, known as “Pete Burns,” heard the conversation and told Webster they would not stay in her barn. Instead, the went into the ranch’s pasture, camped in a box canyon and started a fire.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Box Canyon Camp"}]

When Roach, Nielson and three other ranchers recruited as posse members arrived, they could see the fire but noted the box canyon gave them an advantage if they tried to arrest them there.

Roach decided to wait until morning and figured they would return to the ranch’s barn for fresh horses. Instead the pair came back in the early morning for ammunition. They were not afraid to use bullets they already possessed.

Before Monday’s dawn on May 1, Roach and Nielson were shot and killed. The horse thieves mounted and tried to get away.

“Sheriff Roach and Nels Nelson (sic) Murdered by Two Horse Thieves,” the Wyoming Tribune reported in its fifth edition of the day on May 1, 1916, as it provided hungry readers with new information on the killings. “Officer and Granite Canyon Ranchman Shot Down at Webster Ranch South of Granite Canyon.”

Now, 110 years later, that sacrifice received special recognition from the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office.

On the anniversary of Roach’s death and at his gravesite in Cheyenne’s Lakeview Cemetery,

the department recently honored Roach and other officers from the county who have given their lives in the line of duty. A special marker characterizing the significance of Roach’s service and sacrifice was installed at his grave site and the department also introduced a five-point ring and star badge similar to what Roach wore. 

Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak said he was “humbled” and thankful for department deputies “correcting” an oversight and making sure that Roach’s sacrifice is always remembered.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Honoring Legacy"}]

Kozak plans to incorporate Roach’s sacrifice into part of the process of training new deputies.

“As sheriff, I will personally take deputies to the grave site to emphasize the meaning of the badge which is modeled after the one that Sheriff Roach wore,” he said. “The five points of the star represent our values —  brave, resilient, accountable, no-nonsense, dedicated and completing our mission, which is ‘Riding for the Brand’ as one team to fight crime.”

By all accounts in newspapers of the day, Roach took his law-enforcement role seriously and had the respect of those who knew him.

Born in Sussex County, Delaware, in 1874, Roach arrived in Wyoming 20 years later and joined the young men arriving in the West to wrangle cattle. He became foreman at the Swan Land & Cattle Company from 1902 to 1905.

In 1909 he was a cattle inspector for the state and then from September 1909 to February 1910 for the U.S. government. In 1910, he joined the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office as undersheriff. When Sheriff Lewellen Hughes died in January 1912, he was appointed sheriff to serve out his term.

When Roach came into office, his brother Alonzo S. Roach was serving as the sheriff of Platte County. Alonzo Roach would go on to become warden at the Wyoming State Prison in Rawlins.

Newspaper accounts show Roach was busy the month before his death chasing train robber William Carlisle. In August 1915 he was searching for a man who entered a ranch house and assaulted the rancher’s 20-year-old wife and their child.

An earlier case in 1913 had Roach arresting a respected ex-Cheyenne police officer who had served as a first sergeant in the U.S. Army. The man was illegally rustling cattle from a rancher. Hides from the rancher were found in a well.

On the early morning of his death, Roach had sent Nielson to the Webster Ranch barn and Floyd Russell and Perry Williams to a cabin as he kept an outside watch. 

One of the posse members, Art Russell, reportedly crawled down to see if the pair were at the fire. He overheard them talking about needing ammunition and planning to bypass the ranch and going to a sheep camp to get it, according to the Wyoming Tribune on May 1, 1916.

The Tribune stated the information for its story came from Laramie County Attorney Sam Thompson. It was confirmed by those ranchmen at the scene who returned to Cheyenne.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Thieves Gone"}]

Once reporting what he heard to Roach, Art Russell later crawled back out to the camp and found the pair gone. 

He followed what he thought was their trail and it led him away to another ranch. When he arrived he learned Roach and the others had been ambushed, the newspaper reported.

Meanwhile, at the ranch after alternating watch duties between the three, at 2 a.m. 

Roach entered the cabin, sent Williams out and relieved him at about 3:30 a.m. Williams told others that a few minutes later shots were fired and he opened the door to the cabin when a voice yelled “Git back in there” and a bullet flew by.

When Williams and Floyd Russell ventured out at dawn, they found both the sheriff and Nielson dead from gunshots.

The Fort Collins Express reported on May 4, 1916, that the gunmen, Pearson and Gray, were found later in the day riding the stolen horses on a road by the sheriff and a deputy from Larimer County. 

When the law officers in a vehicle passed the pair, they stopped and the sheriff leveled his rifle on Pearson. But the deputy found himself facing the barrel of Gray, who pulled the trigger but the revolver did not fire.

The sheriff quickly covered both as the deputy pulled out his weapon. They arrested and disarmed the pair.

Once in Fort Collins, a posse from Cheyenne that included the county attorney and Charles B. Irwin, the rodeo promoter, arrived to ensure a proper investigation and to interrogate the suspects.

An initial “confession” was debunked and a second was signed by Pearson, who told W. C. Thomas, a friend of Roach’s, that he and “Pete Burns,” who was really Gray, had met 10 days before the shooting.

The newspaper reported Thomas convinced Pearson that he “was a close friend and admirer of the prisoner” as he obtained the details of the shooting.

In the confession, Pearson told Thomas they stole the horses and saddles from Nielson because he had once worked for him and did not like him. 

Pearson claimed on the morning of the shooting he and Gray went to the barn and found Nielson and took him at gunpoint outside, and took his gun away from him. Pearson said he gave Nielson’s weapon to Gray, the Wyoming Tribune reported on May 2, 1916.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Gunman’s Story"}]

Pearson said he ordered Nielson to walk ahead of them and met Roach and told him to “throw up his hands and do it quick.”

Pearson told Thomas that the sheriff said he had to put his rifle down and stepped over to put it on the ground and then put his hands in his pockets and “took a hip shot at me and hit my horse under the chin.”

“Then we both commenced firing. I fired three shots. I shot Roach and Burns shot Nielson,” he said.

Laramie County Undersheriff Orrin Babbitt said the “confession” Pearson made still did not line up with the evidence in the case.

Babbitt told the Cheyenne State Leader on May 3, 1916, that the evidence showed there was no confrontation with the horse thieves by the sheriff and that he was ambushed from behind by an assassin he was unaware was there.

Babbitt said Roach when found by those at daylight still had his revolver in his holster and it had not been fired. 

His sweater and overcoat were buttoned over it. When his rifle was recovered from Pearson, it was loaded with four shells and not been fired.

“The bullet that ended the life of the courageous sheriff of Laramie County entered the back of his head,” the Leader reported. “He therefore was not facing his assassin. He could not have engaged in any conversation with him for he was looking the other way.”

Roach was walking toward the barn when he was ambushed and shot by one of the thieves.

Babbitt told the paper Nielson likely died because he was surprised by a thief as he came out of the barn and then saw the sheriff shot and broke away from the thief and was shot in the abdomen, but fell about 30 feet away near the sheriff’s body.

The story told by Pearson about Roach’s “hip shot” at him was to “make the crime less heinous," Thompson told the Leader.

“Pearson cannot bring himself to say that he shot at an unsuspecting man, and so he fabricates a story of a conversation in order to make it appear that Sheriff Roach opened fire upon him and shot him in the heat of battle,” the newspaper quoted Thompson.

Newspapers reported that if the two thieves had been brought back to Cheyenne, there likely would have been an immediate hanging by mob justice.

Roach’s funeral was held at their home next to the jail due to his wife’s physical condition. 

Undersheriff Babbitt had asked the prisoners, including the train robber William Carlisle, to be quiet so as not to disturb the widow in her grief who was on the other side of the wall from the jail. They agreed.

The Wyoming Tribune on May 2, 1916, reported Carlisle had respect for the sheriff whom he had gotten to know following his arrest.

“My hands are not clean, there’s lots of things I’d do, but I wouldn’t shed human blood, I wouldn’t kill a man for anything,” the Tribune quoted him. “These fellows ought to be hung, I hope they swing.”

People from Wheatland, Laramie and Colorado joined hundreds in Cheyenne to pay their respects for the fallen sheriff.

The Wheatland Times reported on May 3 that Roach’s brother and sheriff of Platte County  immediately headed for Cheyenne on hearing the news of his brother’s murder.

“The affair is of special local interest because of the wide acquaintance with Frank Roach (many) had throughout this section. 

He rode the range in this county for several years and everyone knew and respected him,” the Times reported. The newspaper described him as a “man of courage, fidelity, and faithfulness to every obligation.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Funeral"}]

Newspapers described the sheriff’s funeral as the largest they had seen in the city, with hundreds in the street outside his home and lining the road to the cemetery.

The Cheyenne Police Department and mounted troops from Fort D.A. Russell provided an escort for the hearse to the grave. All Cheyenne businesses shut down for the event. Among the mourners were friends from the Swan Land & Cattle Co.

Both Pearson and Gray were tried and convicted by separate juries in Fort Collins for the murders of Roach and Nielson. Pearson was sentenced to hang and Gray to life in prison.

Pearson’s sentence was commuted by the governor to life in prison.

In 1953, another Colorado governor commuted Pearson’s sentence to 97 years to life allowing him to become eligible for parole. He was paroled that year on good behavior. 

Prior to his release he told a reporter that he had been a stockholder in Chicago’s Selig Polyscope Co. in 1912-13 and had persuaded early Western film star Tom Mix from the 101 Ranch in Oklahoma to movie work.

In 1932, Gray had obtained trustee status at the Canon City Colorado Penitentiary and walked away on July 12. He was captured in September  of that year in Wichita Falls, Texas and returned to  Colorado.

In May 1960, Gray was paroled. He was 65 and had served 44 years. He still could not get the story of Sheriff’s Roach’s killing straight.

He said he and Pearson, who he referred to as “Skinny,” were on horses and were riding in a place called Horseshoe Bend when confronted by a mounted posse at 3 a.m.

“We got off the horses, I yelled to the men we had them covered,” he told The Associated Press in a story reprinted in the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel on May 26, 1960. “One of the sheriff’s took a shot at me, it hit one of the horses. I was scared and started shooting. I fired four shots.”

Gray’s freedom only lasted four months. He was arrested on a parole violation for possessing a weapon. Despite numerous pleas for release again, he spent the rest of his life in prison and died in Canon City on Nov. 10, 1965.

Efforts to determine Pearson’s death and burial place were unsuccessful as were efforts to trace Roach’s wife and son, who appeared a couple of times in newspapers following the sheriff’s death as they visited Roach’s brother’s wife and family.

Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com

Frank Roach grave site inset 1 8 8 26

<title>Wyoming History: Laramie County Sheriff Was Gunned Down By Horse Thieves In 1916 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

In 1916, well-respected Laramie County Sheriff Frank Roach had three horses stolen by thieves and pursued them into Colorado. He was gunned down by the thieves — shot in the back of the head on a ranch a few miles across Wyoming's southern border.

Wyoming History: Laramie County Sheriff Was Gunned Down By Horse Thieves In 1916

[{"type":"text","text":"Somewhere in a box is a bag of really important screws…."}]

Darwin no play 8 9 26

<title>Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 9, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Somewhere in a box is a bag of really important screws….

Daily Darwin: Sunday, August 9, 2026

You Still Here

[{"type":"text","text":"HILARIOUS: Speaking absolute nonsense in a drive-thru....."}]

You still here 8 9 26

<title>You Still Here? Sunday, August 9, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

HILARIOUS: Speaking absolute nonsense in a drive-thru.....

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A golden retriever suffering from seizures seemingly lost her spunk — until one day her owners brought home a miracle cure — a duck named Louie.....

Smile 8 9 26

<title>Daily Smile: Sunday, August 9, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

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Kolby fedore

Kolby Fedore

Wildlife

As hunting season settles over the mountains surrounding Snyder Basin in Sublette County, the moose begin drifting toward a Wyoming woman's ranch. Sometimes alone, and sometimes with calves.

[{"type":"text","text":"To Pamela Chrisman, their arrival isn't surprising."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"It's been happening for nearly 40 years."}]

"They'd come in here and hide from the hunters," Chrisman explained. "This is kind of a safe haven for all those guys."

What began with one hungry old cow moose slowly blossomed into one of Wyoming's most remarkable wildlife stories — a bond built not through training or taming, but through decades of building trust.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fish Creek Ranch "}]

Chrisman was born in Big Piney and has spent nearly her entire life ranching beneath Snyder Basin, where cattle, horses and wildlife have always been part of daily life.

[{"type":"text","text":"She was about 21 years old when she moved onto the remote ranch."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"There was no bathroom, no telephone, no running water,\" she recalled."}]

Winters meant trips to the outhouse through deep snow. Eventually, her mother helped install a well, and the two spoke each night over a CB radio.

[{"type":"text","text":"The isolation never bothered Chrisman."}]

She grew up following her father while he worked cattle and said she always felt at home outdoors.

[{"type":"text","text":"Animals had always occupied a special place in her life."}]

She remembered adopting a steer as a girl, loving her horses, dogs and cats, and riding horseback home after her school bus became stranded in the snow.

Long before the moose arrived, caring for animals was simply part of who she was.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Grandma Mouse"}]

"Sometime in the 1980s", Chrisman says an aging cow moose wandered onto the ranch and began eating hay alongside her horses.

[{"type":"text","text":"The old moose was gaunt."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"\"She was really, really gray,\" Chrisman recalled."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Instead of chasing the animal away, she let it eat."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She affectionately named the old cow \"Grandma Mouse.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The name stuck, and so did the moose."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Grandma Mouse kept returning."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Then she brought offspring."}]

Chrisman watched as one generation followed another. There was Merry Mouse, Miss Mouse, Baby Mouse and an old bull she simply called Old Boy. Each had its own personality.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"They have different temperaments,\" she said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Building Trust"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"At first, the moose simply shared pasture with Chrisman's horses."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The horses accepted them."}]

"They'd go in and stand next to her in the corral," Chrisman said. "She could eat with them."

[{"type":"text","text":"Over time, something even more unusual happened."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The moose began trusting Chrisman herself."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She developed a routine."}]

"I just gave them a hoop or a holler and shook the bucket," she said. "There they come."

Eventually, the relationship became close enough that Chrisman posed for photographs hugging the animals and even briefly sitting atop one especially gentle cow named Miss Mouse.

[{"type":"text","text":"\"I could actually get on her,\" she said. \"They just liked me.\""}]

[{"type":"text","text":"She never tried turning the experience into a roadside attraction."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"In fact, she discouraged visitors."}]

[{"type":"text","text":"The moose accepted her, but they remained wary of everyone else."}]

"I wouldn't let them up there," Chrisman said. "You better stand back, because they're just not really impressed about having quite a few people around."

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'They Know Where To Come' "}]

To many people who spend time in Wyoming's backcountry, getting close to a moose is reason for concern, not celebration.

competing in an ultramarathon through the Wyoming wilderness, and nearly all agreed on the animal they feared most. 

For nearly 40 years, generations of wild moose have returned to Fish Creek Ranch near Big Piney, Wyoming, where they trust Pamela Chrisman so much she can walk up and pet them. "This is kind of a safe haven for all those guys," she said.

Daily Darwin: Thursday, May 11, 2023

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