Daily Smile

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

<title>Daily Smile: Friday, April 26, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

We're guessing 500.....

Daily Smile: Friday, April 26, 2024

Mac Watson

Daily Video News

It’s time to take a look at what’s happening around Wyoming for Monday, June 8th.  I’m Mac Watson

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Our most-read story over the weekend is a two-part series from features reporter Jen Kocher on a cold case in Rawlins from 1974. More than 50 years after four young girls vanished in what has become known as the 'Rawlins Rodeo Murders,’ the case remains unsolved. Cowboy State Daily’s Jen Kocher reports that one name kept coming up.

“In 1974 four girls disappeared, and their ages range from 10 to 19. Two girls were local Rawlins girls, and the other two were visiting family and friends. One was visiting from South Dakota, and one was visiting from Red Lodge, Montana. There's no link between the four girls. One of the predominant suspects was a long-haul trucker named Royal Russell Long, and in my conversations with people, his name popped up a lot, and he was considered a suspect, but he wasn't the only suspect, and authorities have not released where the names of those suspects are, where they are currently within the investigation, but it is ongoing.”

Royal Russell Long was actually arrested for kidnapping two teenage girls and taking them home to his house in Evansville, and sexually assaulting them. Long ultimately served time in a Wyoming prison for kidnapping and assault, dying of a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 58. He was never officially named as a suspect in the Rawlins Rodeo Murders. 

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To clear the way for a Montana logging project, the Trump administration wants to redefine secure grizzly habitat from 2,500 acres to 1 acre. Cowboy State Daily’s Mark Heinz reports that opponents say it will get bears killed but a retired Wyoming forester says logging is good for grizzlies.

“Some people really strongly oppose that, and say that that's just not enough protected or undisturbed habitat for bears, and also that putting roads into those areas can make it easier for people who want to illegally shoot bears to do so. But I also talked to a retired forester, and he told me that, that really, in a lot of ways, bears can thrive in areas that have been logged, because it might promote more of a rodent population, it might promote the growth of berry bushes and things that bears like to eat.”

At issue is the proposed Larabee Hat project in Powell County, Montana; between the Continental Divide headwaters of the Little Blackfoot River and Highway 12 near the town of Elliston. Over the next 15 to 20 years, the project would entail building 16.8 miles of new roads and 17,696 acres of logging.

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A woman who has made it her mission to document the last remaining pay phones in Yellowstone has bad news. The last working pay phone in the park appears to be dead. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that the phone was still working last summer but when photographer Kim Bird checked it days ago, there was no dial tone.

“The last one that people knew of that was still connected anywhere was at the Norris campground, which has been closed since the pandemic, and somebody went out there recently, said they picked up the phone and didn't hear a dial tone, so that's pretty conclusive evidence that that pay phone is defunct, which makes sense because the Norris Campground itself is defunct, and the park doesn't have any - it's the park hasn't expressed any interest or desire to reopen that campground anytime soon. It's possible it may never reopen, so it makes sense that the only paid phone there would no longer be working as well.”

 in modern society, but they still had an important place in remote areas like Yellowstone. Still, nothing lasts forever.

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Counterfeit $100 bills are passing throughout Wyoming and store clerks say iodine counterfeit detector pens won't detect the fake bills. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that one store manager says “The counterfeit pens are garbage.” 

“It was printed on real money paper, they used a dot, like $1 bill, bleached it out, and then printed a 100 on top of it, and so those normal counterfeiting pins aren't going to detect that, and the way those work, they have iodine in them, and when iodine contacts with wood pulp that you know the common ordinary everyday paper is made out of, it'll fade, it'll kind of turn brown, and so if the ink stays black, it, you know, it's not common everyday wood pulp paper, right.”

According to the Federal Reserve, counterfeit paper currency costs the U.S. public and organizations between $30 million and $200 million in actual circulation at any given time. However, when taking into account the broader counterfeit goods industry (such as fake designer clothes, electronics, and pirated merchandise), the total economic loss to U.S. businesses exceeds $220 billion annually.

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I’ll have more news from Cowboy State Daily right after this.

Cowboy State Daily News continues now….

A Kemmerer couple is on medical leave taking care of a newborn and their 7-year-old son who has a rare genetic condition that took his eyesight. Cowboy State Daily’s Dale Killingebeck reports that all the little boy wanted to do was go hunting this year, instead he's fighting for his life.

“There's a seven year old from Evanston that his parents noticed that he was having some issues. And they thought they were dealing with ADHD. They send them to school the next day, and they get a call that he was having a problem navigating stairs. So, their pediatrician told him to take him to the EED in our emergency department in Salt Lake City at the Children's Hospital there. They did that, and  testing showed that he had this rare genetic disease that basically, as it takes over the sheath around nerves in his brain, and his brain can't communicate with the rest of the body like it should, and so now he's in the hospital.”

Christopher Culler, 38, and wife Bailey Bowen, 30, are now on a mission that has them on family leave from their jobs at Rocky Mountain Power and praying for a boy who seemed normal and active until a little more than a year ago.

A family in Laramie County was trying to fix their well when they discovered a half-buried cannonball in their yard. Cowboy State Daily’s Andrew Rossi reports that  after being told it was non-explosive by a bomb squad, the mother decided to give it away, much to the dismay of her son.

“A lot of people think of cannonballs as being just solid objects, solid metal objects, and that's not untrue. But a lot of cannonballs during the Civil War-era did have explosives and black powder in them, and they had complex triggers that were designed to be waterproof, so in theory you could find a cannonball that was triggered to explode, and it still could explode. So, when this Laramie County family found a cannonball as they were trying to fix their well, they did what they needed to do. They contacted the Laramie County Sheriff's Office, who sent their bomb disposal team out there to evaluate it, and they ultimately determined that there was nothing explosive about it. It was just a giant metal ball in the middle of nowhere.”

Whenever there’s a suspicious and possibly explosive item discovered, law enforcement agencies don’t take any chances.  They deploy whatever and whoever’s needed to assess the situation and safely dispose of the object, whether it’s 

an unexpectedly excavated training device

“Outriding the Devil,” is the title of a Wyoming-made film that shows the brutal side of “real” rodeo. Cowboy State Daily’s Renee Jean reports that the new film earned major praise from national outlets like Sports Illustrated. 

“This is the Angela Ganter story. Angela Ganter had a stunning career, and then she ran into a cancer diagnosis, stage-four breast cancer. The doctors told her, "Hey, we're sorry, you know, but we don't think you're going to live, much less ride in the rodeos ever again. But she didn't give up. The reason for the film's name ‘Outride the Devil,’ the kind of chemotherapy they gave her is called the Red Devil, because it's so hard on your body. She fought her way back from death's door to eventually another championship barrel race in Canada, Calgary, so you know it's a great comeback story.”

The film, directed by Raen LeVell, has enjoyed a multi-week run as the No. 1-ranked Western documentary on IMDb.

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When Laramie County Sheriff Brian Kozak wanted a new design for the newest SUV in the fleet, he asked a local artist to create a “Clint Eastwood High Plains Drifter” look. Cowboy State Daily’s Kolby Fedore reports that the sheriff says he’s received nothing but compliments on the new wrap. 

“The rap was designed by artist Jordan Dean. He's also the one who painted the wild horses on the city of Cheyenne's water tanks. Kozak really wanted something that was going to draw the eye. This is a recruiting vehicle, so they pulled out all the stops. They've got video games in the backseat for kids to play. They can jump in the cruiser and check out the coolest police car, in Kozak’s words, around town. Something that was really meant to get people to check it out and help recruit officers.”

The cruiser's first major public appearance in Cheyenne was Saturday during a downtown summer event, where families were able to climb inside, check out the lights and meet members of the sheriff's office.

And that’s today’s news. Get your free digital subscription to Wyoming's only statewide newspaper by hitting the Daily Newsletter button on 

 - and you can watch this newscast every day by clicking Subscribe on our 

 channel, or listen to us on your favorite podcast app.  Thanks for watching - I’m Mac Watson, for Cowboy State Daily.

News image 6 8 26

<title>Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, June 8, 2026 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Monday's headlines include:
* The Rawlins Rodeo Murders
* Worry That Logging OK Will Kill Grizzlies
* RIP: The Last Working Pay Phone In Yellowstone

Cowboy State Daily Video Newscast: Monday, June 8, 2026

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Wyoming Life

Around Wyoming

A Laramie County family has recovered from the shellshock of finding a cannonball buried in their backyard.

There was a leak in the well on the Johnsons’ property in Laramie County. As the contractor they hired to fix it was digging into the ground, Shamayam Coleman noticed something odd half-buried nearby.

“It was sticking out of the ground on the path leading to my mother’s house,” she told Cowboy State Daily. “I didn't know what it was, but it looked like it could have been an ordinance.”

[{"type":"text","text":"When Coleman told her mother, Nina Johnson, she “freaked out.”"}]

“I googled pictures of cannonballs, and it looked like a cannonball to me, so I called the Laramie County Sheriff’s Department,” Johnson said.

Members of the Cheyenne Police Bomb Squad/ Laramie County Sheriff’s Office joint explosive ordinance disposal unit (EOD) came ready to dispose of the ordinance. Fortunately, their full skills weren’t needed.

“It was solid inside, so they decided not to detonate it,” Johnson said.

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Whenever there’s a suspicious and possibly explosive item discovered, law enforcement agencies don’t take any chances. 

They deploy whatever and whoever’s needed to assess the situation and safely dispose of the object, whether it’s 

Cannonballs might seem inert, but they can still be deadly after centuries underground. In 2006, a Virginia man was killed by a 75-pound Civil War-era naval cannonball.

That’s one of the hits Johnson found when she searched for cannonballs online. Recognizing the potential danger, she didn’t take any chances.

“I don’t want a cannonball,” she said. “I found the number, and the Laramie County Sheriff’s Office responded.”

First, the deputies used a bomb-sniffing canine to assess the situation. 

The canine would alert them if there was any gunpowder or chemicals, indicating that the cannonball might be explosive.

Most people think of cannonballs as solid projectiles, but some Civil War-era round shot was designed to carry explosive charges with complex fuses. 

Naval ordinance was designed to be waterproof, so it could theoretically still explode after being buried underground for a century.

Cheyenne isn’t a naval hub, but it does have a military history going back to the mid-1800s. However, Johnson and Coleman still don’t have an explanation for why there was a cannonball on their land.

“I don’t think this was a location, historically, for the kind of cannonballs that had explosives in them,” Coleman said. “Some people think it was like a steel mill ball or railroad bearing, but I'm not an expert in that.”

Johnson said the EOD team told her the cannonball was the type used for “destroying buildings or walls,” but didn’t have an explanation for why it was buried on her property.

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After the bomb-sniffing canine made a pass at the cannonball, the EOD team used a machine to X-ray it. They discovered there was nothing to be concerned about.

“They determined that it was solid on the inside, and therefore it wouldn't detonate it or anything like that,” Johnson said.

So, the EOD team dug up the cannonball, and that was that. Johnson let them take it as a strange souvenir.

“They wanted it, and it’s in their line of work, so I let them take it with them,” she said. “I couldn’t imagine what my daughter was going to do with a cannonball.”

Coleman wished her mother had consulted with her before giving the cannonball away.

“I wanted the cannonball, so my friends told me I should get a metal detector and start finding things,” she said. “We haven’t lived here very long, so who knows what else we’ll find.”

Contact Andrew Rossi at andrew@cowboystatedaily.com

Cannonball and sign 6 7 26

<title>Laramie County Family Finds Half-Buried Cannonball In Their Yard, Mom Gives It Away | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A family in Laramie County was trying to fix their well when they discovered a half-buried cannonball in their yard. After being told it was non-explosive by a bomb squad, the mother decided to give it away, much to the dismay of her son.

Laramie County Family Finds Half-Buried Cannonball In Their Yard, Mom Gives It Away

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Bessemer Bend, a true Wyoming ghost town, has been claimed back by nature and alfalfa fields. 

Before its demise, Bessemer was where Wyoming’s oldest cabin was built by desperate fur traders with the Pacific Fur Co. 

Decades later, Bessemer became part of the Oregon, California, Mormon, Pony Express, and Overland trails that all crossed at Red Buttes/Bessemer Bend.

Later, the famous Goose Egg was built on the spot. This extravagant stone mansion is said by some say to have inspired scenes in Owen Wister’s “The Virginian.” 

Today, Bessemer Bend is a broad loop of the North Platte River southwest of Casper that shows no signs of the failed city. 

The landscape is dominated by irrigated fields, ranchland, cottonwoods along the river, and the red hills and buttes that explorers and Oregon Trail emigrants knew as Red Buttes. 

The town of Bessemer, now long gone, had gained a reputation as the “Queen City of the Plains.” Her founders believed that their city would one day be the grandest in Wyoming. 

Their hopes were dashed by a rigged election and the railroad. 

Ultimately, Casper “stole” the honor from them when it became the seat of Natrona County instead and, one by one, the residents of Bessemer hauled their homes over to Casper.  

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Bessemer first appeared in written record in the 1812 diary of fur trader Robert Stuart. 

Stuart had been hired in 1810 by John Jacob Astor to work for the Pacific Fur Co. and was on the company ship, the Tonquin, when he became marooned at Fort Astoria.  

The crew had sailed first to the Falkland Islands and then around Cape Horn and up the western coast of North America, reaching what is now Astoria, Oregon in May 1811. There, they established Fort Astoria.

When the crew sailed farther north, to Vancouver Island, an interaction with Native Americans resulted in many deaths and the destruction of the ship. 

It was left to Stuart and a small group of men to return eastward overland. The party left Astoria on June 29, 1812, bound for St. Louis. With Stuart were Ramsay Crooks, John Day, Benjamin Jones, François LeClerc, Robert McClellan, and André Vallé.

They started up the Columbia River in canoes. Before they were out many days,  John Day became “demented" and was sent back to Astoria in the care of some friendly Indians. 

In a few days, they came across some men who had been separated from another party and gave them provisions. 

A man named Miller joined Stuart in Day's place according to Molker. 

The group headed east, through what is now Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Wyoming, traveling on what would later become the Oregon Trail. 

Highlights of their journey that Stuart detailed in his diary included paddling down the Snake River, crossing Teton Pass and seeing Jackson Hole, and discovering the South Pass.

By the time they reached Bessemer, the seven men were starving and weak, desperate to rest. 

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Described as “footsore, hungry, and utterly weary,” fur trader Robert Stuart wrote in his diary that he and his six companions had been following a river (the North Platte) for two days but had to find a place to stop and recuperate. 

The cabin they were soon to build would become the oldest recorded cabin in Wyoming. 

It was November 1812 when Stuart described how they had found a low point of land on a bend in the river and had selected it for their winter camp. 

There were cottonwoods and willows there for building materials and firewood and the area had plenty of wildlife to sustain them. 

The men had already seen the Grand Canyon and discovered the passage through South Pass. They had their horses stolen by the Crow and were on foot. 

Weakened by their trek, they had started missing shots and were starving when they had finally succeeded on killing an injured bull buffalo. 

Though tempted to eat the meat raw, Stuart had fed the men broth to regain their strength. 

Stuart describes their cabin at Bessemer as eight feet wide and 18 feet long. The walls were six feet high and the whole was covered with buffalo skins. 

The fireplace was in the center and the smoke found its way out through a hole in the roof.

“As the slaughter of so many buffaloes had provided the party with beef for the winter, in case they met with no further supply, they now set to work, heart and hand, to build a comfortable wigwam,” Stuart wrote. “In a little while, the woody promontory rang with the unwonted sound of the axe.”

He said that by the second evening, the cabin was complete. 

They rested and recuperated from the exertion and hunger they had suffered. They had been in their little cabin for five weeks when a small band of Arapahoe Indians visited them for a few days. Although the Arapahos did not harm them, Stuart was concerned that they might return in “another mood.” 

He packed up his men and some provisions and moved on toward the east, leaving behind their home on Bessemer Bend. When Stuart’s party arrived at Saint Louis they had shortened the route of Lewis and Clark, had discovered the Sweetwater and North Platte rivers and had discovered the most important gateway through the Rockies, South Pass.

Mary Lou Pence and Lola Homsher in their book, “The Ghost Towns of Wyoming,” said that some pioneers claimed the cabin stood for many years while others said the Indians immediately swooped down and burned it. 

Whichever the case, the cabin has long been gone when the Oregon Trail followed part of the same route first made by the small party of fur traders. 

The Goose Egg, or the Searight House, was built on Bessemer Bend and by 1888, a town had been planned, adopting the name of Bessemer. 

The founders had high hopes of being a metropolis. A sawmill and brick plant were brought in and homes and businesses sprung up quickly. 

When a brewery and liquor house were brought in by Max Jaensch, the residents of Bessemer saw a bright future.

“For as one citizen put it,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “Here the consumption of distilled waters was far above the average in American communities.”

In 1888 to 1889, the town promoters laid out 49 blocks and reserved land for what they hoped would become Wyoming's future capitol building. Bessemer grew quickly and attracted settlers, ranchers, and businesses. 

As Wyoming was preparing for statehood, Bessemer entered the race to become the county seat of the proposed Natrona County.

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According to Pence and Homsher, just as Bessemerites were sitting back “gloating” over the meager 304 pollings cast in Casper as compared to their 667 count, it was announced that some “skullduggery” had been perpetrated. 

The investigators ruled that Bessemer had cheated and had more votes than residents. Their count was thrown out and Casper became the county seat in 1890. 

Residents of Bessemer were still angry when they spoke to historians Pence and Homsher in the 1950s. 

“They say we cheated and voted every man, woman and kid,” one old-timer told Pence and Homsher. “Well, I know one of their men who voted three times. But they don’t tell about that!” 

The following year, the printing press for the Bessemer Journal was seized and moved to Casper to become the Natrona Tribune. 

The railroad selected Casper as the regional rail terminal and the end of Bessemer was official.

Many of the buildings were moved to Casper until only the Goose Egg and a few others remained. Eventually, even the stone mansion was torn down and Bessemer quietly faded into the past. 

“When they said the Goose Egg was no more, you could hear that awesome hush,” Pence and Homsher wrote. “You could almost see Chalkeye and Fingers and Honey Wiggin and Baldy and Missou wipe away a tear.”

Bessemer is now returned to pasture and agricultural land. However, the memory of the ghost town and the first cabin from 1812 remain. 

“You can rip a house to pieces, ’til it ain’t no more, but you can’t tear up the things that happened there,” an old-timer told Pence and Homsher in remembrance of his beloved Bessemer and the people that once lived there.

Bessemer Bend and inset 6 7 26

<title>Wyoming History: Once A Bustling City On Oregon Trail, Bessemer Now A Ghost Town | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Bessemer Bend, now peaceful ranchland, was once a stop on the Oregon Trail and a bustling city known as the “Queen City of the Plains.” Now it’s a true Wyoming ghost town that disappeared when Casper was picked as the county seat. 

Wyoming History: Once A Bustling City On Oregon Trail, Bessemer Now A Ghost Town

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Growing up, the only mushrooms retired mycologist Jack States ever really noticed were puffballs. They were great targets for kicking down the street.

But eating them? Forget about it. That was the last thing on States’ mind.

Years later as a young graduate student, he had his heart set on being a plant ecologist.

Still, mushrooms didn’t figure in his plans at all.

Then one semester he found himself enrolled in a class with internationally acclaimed mycologist and microbial ecologist, the late Dr. Martha Christensen.

“She was one of the best instructors I think they ever had at the University of Wyoming,” States told Cowboy State Daily. “And she had me do a project on isolating molds from soil, which I thought was kind of ridiculous, but I thought I would be interested in knowing what kind of molds grew on herbivore dung.”

That led to a capstone field project collecting molds from elk, moose, deer, and rabbit droppings. 

Even though he thought at the time it was “ridiculous” to sift through rabbit dung to see what would grow, he had soon found a species of mold no one had ever documented. 

It was a discovery that would attract pharmaceutical money and pull him into a lifetime of chasing fungi from Wyoming to the far corners of the world. 

Along the way, he would identify a dozen new truffle species, reshape forest management in the Southwest United States, and change how scientists think about wildlife diseases and even the Red Desert’s shifting sands.

All of it started with the “ridiculous” student project and a legendary University of Wyoming mycologist pushing him into the strange, hidden world of fungi.

The mold he’d discovered would go on to produce not only a new moth insecticide, but also lysergic acid compounds used in LSD-related research.

Aspergillus leporis, as the mold would be named, is now famous in international mycology and pharmaceutical circles. 

At the time, what it meant for States was a research assistantship under Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company that supported his entire master’s program.

“Money was scarce in those days, and I wasn’t getting any offers from any other place,” said States, who’s now known as Lander’s Mushroom Man. “So that’s what I ended up doing. I isolated and worked on that new species of mold.”

Despite discovering an internationally famous mold, States wasn’t completely abandoning his first love — plants. Fungi just gave him a different perspective on plants.

“It turns out that the fungi are the major decomposer, we call them associates for plants,” he said. “That is, they cause most of the plant diseases, rather than bacteria, which causes the most diseases in animals. 

"Because of their strong relationship to plants, I just parlayed that into plant ecology.”

The underground world of plants — the mycorrhizal partnerships between tree roots and fungi — is still a vast and understudied universe. 

Diving into that allowed States to break lots of new ground over his career, including the discovery of 12 new species of truffles.

It’s also given him what he affectionately describes as the world’s largest collection of squirrel poop.

“All that craziness out there on the highway has paid off,” he said. “And I think (new discoveries) are what makes the career of a scientist so rewarding.”

Many of States’ discoveries have involved adventures to other countries with his wife, who studies both plants and birds. 

One of the most humorous adventures, though, didn’t happen in a remote jungle. It started in an ordinary university mailroom.

“Mushrooms were so popular then — even more so than today,” States said. “And in the Southwest, people automatically assumed I knew everything there was to know about mushrooms, and I didn’t.”

That led to occasional packages of mushrooms mailed to him for identification, including a particularly malodorous specimen called stinkhorn.

“Stinkhorns, when they produce their mature spore mass, the odor is like a rotting cadaver,” States said.

The smell was so bad that a couple of people from the campus post office delivered the package to States in person — along with a request.

“Whatever is in this package, don’t ever have anybody send it to you again,” he was told. “We’ve had to fumigate our entire post office.”

States counted himself lucky that the police didn’t show up to ask why people were mailing him dead bodies.

“So, I decided to write a book to protect myself,” he said. “I thought I’d write a book so they will read that and not send me anything else like that again.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Lessons In Root Beer"}]

Stinkhorns weren’t the only mycological misadventure in States’ career.

To feed his students’ huge and curious appetite — and to attract more students to his program — States looked for creative lesson plans that would draw people in.

At first, he settled on growing some psychedelic mushrooms. He was mindful that such mushrooms were only legally problematic at maturity, so he focused his lesson plans on immature mushrooms. But someone still broke into the building to clean out his entire growth chamber.

He needed a new lesson plan after that, so he switched to fermenting root beer in class using a special, French yeast. It was a big hit, but the students loved the root beer a little too much. They drank it down to the last drop — including the yeast sediment.

“It created almost instant diarrhea,” States recalled. “We had to put warning labels on the bottles after that. Just don’t drink the whole thing. Leave the sediment in the bottom.”

States himself had to learn the hard way that mushrooms are a strange world, with dangers that are not always completely predictable.

“There’s a mushroom that grows in Ponderosa pine forests in Arizona and New Mexico associated with Aspen trees,” he said. “And it produces a mushroom with very strong garlic flavor, which sheep herders in those areas have used for decades to flavor their dishes.”

One year, that was about the only mushroom he could find, so he decided to try it for himself and see if it really did taste like garlic.

“I had heard that some people have an allergic reaction to it, sort of like poisoning,” he said. “But since it just causes gastric upset, and obeying my rules — if you eat a mushroom for the first time, don’t eat more than a teaspoonful — I tried it.”

An hour later, States was doubled over in pain and violently vomiting, forcing him to go to the emergency room — even though his wife, who had also eaten some of the mushroom, had no reaction at all.

He was given painkillers to deaden muscle contractions and kept overnight for observation.

“I was laying there and had one last vomit,” he said. “Out came just a little, tiny piece of that mushroom. Once that came out, there were no more symptoms and I felt really great.”

States realized he must have had an allergic reaction to the mushroom, since his wife was not affected.

“Then the night nurse came in and asked me how I was feeling,” States said. “I said I was feeling great, because I’d gotten rid of that last piece of that mushroom.”

The nurse asked if it was one of those “wild” mushrooms and States admitted it was.

“Then she said, ‘You know, maybe you should leave the mushroom eating to the experts,’” States said with a chuckle.

She had no idea States had literally written the book on mushrooms.

States’ research hasn’t just expanded the catalog of weird fungi. It’s also changed how forests in the American Southwest are managed, and changed the understanding of certain wildlife diseases in Wyoming.

The work he’s proudest of is identifying a three-way symbiosis between truffle-producing fungi, squirrels, and ponderosa pine forests.

The truffle-producing fungi help roots absorb nutrients, while squirrels use the truffles as food, and help spread more fungal spores with their droppings.

A project digging through rabbit poop led mycologist Jack States — aka Lander's Mushroom Man — to discover a famous mold and 12 new species of truffles. His research has changed how scientists view wildlife diseases and has reshaped forest management.

Daily Smile: Friday, April 26, 2024

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