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[{"type":"text","text":"Uh-oh, you forgot Valentine's Day. Don't worry, it's not too late....."}]

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

<title>Today In Relationships 2: Saturday, February 15, 2025 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Uh-oh, you forgot Valentine's Day. Don't worry, it's not too late.....

Today In Relationships 2: Saturday, February 15, 2025

 Uh-oh, you forgot Valentine's Day. Don't worry, it's not too late.....

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

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

One of the centerpiece exhibits at the Natural History Museum of London is Sophie, one of the most complete and well-preserved Stegosaurus specimens ever found.

When it was unveiled at the museum in December 2014, paleontologist Paul Barrett praised it as the best Stegosaurus anywhere in the world.

“This skeleton is very special, not just because it’s complete, but also because the bones have been preserved in three dimensions instead of being squashed over time, as happens with many other fossils,” he said. “We can get a very accurate view of how the whole body looked.”

That wasn’t news to Bob Simon and Robert Boscarelli. They were two of the three-man crew that found and excavated the stellar Stegosaurus near Shell in 2004.

“I didn’t know what happened to it once we got it out,” Boscarelli told Cowboy State Daily. “When my family went to London, we walked up the stairs into the museum, and there she was. It was incredible to see her mounted there.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Tail End"}]

Sophie, a Stegosaurus stenops, was found in 

 near Shell, dating to the Late Jurassic, around 150 million years ago. She escaped the prehistoric mudstone encasing her perfectly preserved fossils between 2003 and 2004.

Boscarelli got in on “the tail end” of the excavation. He spent the summer of 2004 excavating the 360 fossilized bones, teeth, plates, and spikes with Simon and Don Pfister.

[{"type":"text","text":"It remains one of the most fulfilling experiences of his life."}]

“When I was young in Cleveland, Ohio, I got an encyclopedia and read about paleontology and dinosaurs,” he said. “I never forgot it, and after getting out of the Marines and getting an anthropology degree from the University of Florida, I finally got an opportunity to get into it.”

Boscarelli had been traveling to Wyoming for years to dig dinosaurs when he reached out to Simon. He was looking for anyone interested in helping him excavate a promising spot near Shell.

“At the end of 2003, Bob told me that they did a big dig and saw some bones coming out of the side of the hill,” he said. “I knew that he had already found something that he thought was a stego. When I got there in 2004, that's when we started digging on it.”

The most distinctive parts of a Stegosaurus are the ornate plates on its back and the thagomizer, the paleontological term (co-opted from Gary Larson’s The Far Side) for the long spikes at the end of the tail.

Boscarelli had his camera ready when Sophie’s thagomizer saw sunlight for the first time in 146 million years. It was the tail-end of the dinosaur and the crowning moment of validation.

“That’s when we knew it was a Stegosaurus,” he said. “I was there for Sophie.”

The excavation revealed a nearly complete Stegosaurus skeleton, including articulated sections of the back, hips and tail, nearly articulated arms and legs, a significant portion of the skull, and most of the iconic back plates.

The fossils were also preserved three-dimensionally, meaning the weight and pressure of hundreds of millions of years hadn’t flattened them. It was, then and now, one of the most anatomically accurate and important Stegosaurus specimens ever found.

[{"type":"text","text":"“It was amazing. It was incredible. I loved it,” Boscarelli said."}]

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Following The Lost River"}]

Bob Simon is a legendary figure in the paleontological world. He has the distinction of finding some of the best skeletons ever found, and all from the same spot near Shell.

“I tell people that finding dinosaurs is 30% skill and 70% luck,” he told Cowboy State Daily.

Simon, who has a Master’s Degree in geology, worked for an oil company before founding DinoSafaris in the 1990s. After scouting out an optimal spot to dig on a private ranch, he got permission from the landowners to start excavating and went to work.

The key to a successful dinosaur dig, according to Simon, isn’t to go looking for dinosaurs. Instead, look for a river – or, at least, the evidence of a river that disappeared thousands of millennia ago.

“What I tell people is that to find dinosaur bones, first you look for evidence of water,” he said. “If you have water, you have plants. If you have plants, you have plant eaters. If you have plant eaters, you have meat eaters and then flooding events to cover things up.”

Simon picked the spot where Sophie would be found because the geology indicated it was an optimal place to look. Based on the rocks and depositional environment, Simon realized the spot was a large bend in a meandering river system during the lush, sub-tropical Late Jurassic period of Wyoming.

“The (dead dinosaurs) just stayed there, and they were covered quickly,” he said. “If the bones aren't covered quickly, they get destroyed by nature.”

Simon’s geological survey immediately struck gold. One of the first things he excavated was one of the best dinosaur specimens ever found: a massive Camarasaurus, over 60 feet long, with nearly every bone in its body preserved.

“We pulled up some toe bones with the bucket of a backhoe,” he said. “After that, we went sideways and took out part of a hill, and started to expose it, real careful.”

Simon’s Camarasaurus was as close to perfect as a paleontologist could get. He was able to follow the toes to the legs, and then found every bone in both directions, from the tip of the neck to the end of the tail.

The only thing missing was the ever-elusive skull, which wasn’t waiting at the end of the neck. Refusing to give up, Simon read the landscape once again.

“I went up 30 feet onto the hill, looked down, and could see the ancient motion of water,” he said. “I could see the way the bones had shifted a little bit, and I knew if the skull was still in existence, it was where I hadn't dug yet.”

Simon identified the spot where the skull should be. Sure enough, after a few days of digging, there it was.

“That was the moment where everything was right,” he said. “That's where you say, ‘OK, we're good. We've done our job.’”

That Camarasaurus is on display at the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Japan.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Emotions Of Excavation"}]

After finding the perfect Camarasaurus, a smaller and slightly less impressive Stegosaurus might seem underwhelming. Simon said he felt the same emotions when they uncovered Sophie: excitement and fear.

“People say, ‘Oh, it must have been amazing when you found it,’ but no, it wasn’t,” he said. “You know you have something that might be unique and important, but you don't know until you see it all. It was great that we were starting to find something, but until we could find all of it, it's always kind of a scary situation.”

Boscarelli, meanwhile, was jubilant from the get-go. As soon as Sophie’s thagomizer was found, he was having the time of his life.

“We had a lot of visitors come out to see the site,” he said. “Bob ran the system, and by the end of the season, we had uncovered about 80% of it.”

The only important part missing was, yet again, the skull. Boscarelli recalled following a crumb trail of fragments in the hope of finding the Stegosaurus skull.

“I traced a lot of bone fragments and shed teeth to a big boulder,” he said. “Bob's like, ‘Yeah, get that thing,’ and we got that thing out. It took a lot of work, but we found the skull under there.”

One highlight of the excavation for Boscarelli was meeting 

, the paleontology celebrity from the University of Chicago, who came out to Shell to see Sophie in situ.

Another notable visitor was Hans Jakob "Kirby" Siber, founder of 

the Aathal Dinosaur Museum in Switzerland

. That museum is filled with Late Jurassic dinosaurs that Siber and his crew found not far from where Simon was digging.

“I left before Kirby visited, but I’ve met him since,” Boscarelli said.

Simon, meanwhile, kept his emotions in check. As incredible as Sophie appeared in the ground, it was still a jumbled pile of bones that could ultimately be just as disappointing as they seemed extraordinary.

“You're always assessing how much you have, but it’s in the back of your mind,” he said. “You hope it doesn't stop, because that’s always a possibility. You hope it keeps going. You hope there’s a skull. That’s why it’s always a little scary.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"From Sarah To Sophie (?)"}]

While Simon and Boscarelli were excavating their stellar Stegosaurus, they named it Sarah after the landowners' daughter.

[{"type":"text","text":"“I got to meet her once,” Boscarelli said. “She was a nice girl.”"}]

When all of the fossils were excavated, the plaster jackets encasing them were shipped to Switzerland. Siber and his team at the Aathal Dinosaur Museum spent the next several years meticulously removing the rock and strengthening the fossils.

Sarah remained an open secret among paleontologists until 2013, when it was revealed that the Natural History Museum of London had acquired the specimen for its permanent paleontological collection. They got all 360 Stegosaurus bones, roughly 85% of the total skeleton.

That’s when Sarah became Sophie. It was a name honoring a different daughter, whose father’s donation made the acquisition possible.

Sophie finally got her moment in the 2015 paper, “The Postcranial Skeleton of an Exceptionally Complete Individual of the Plated Dinosaur Stegosaurus stenops (Dinosauria: Thyreophora) from the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Wyoming, U.S.A.”

In the study, Barrett and other paleontologists determined that the Stegosaurus wasn’t fully grown. It was either a young or sub-adult dinosaur when it died and was buried, entirely undisturbed, according to Simon.

“There was no evidence of scavenging on any of the bones, and (the bodies) weren't torn apart,” Simon said of Sophie, the Camarasaurus, and other dinosaurs found in that spot. “That led me to think that the scavengers couldn't get there. They couldn't cross the water to get to where the floods had piled up the dinosaur remains.”

Also, Sophie might not be a Sophie. Despite the name, there is no conclusive way, 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"'Wow, That’s Pretty Cool'"}]

Over 20 years after Sophie’s discovery, both Boscarelli and Simon are out of the dinosaur digging gig.

“As you get older, you miss it less and less,” Simon said. “It cost a lot of money to be out there and do what I was doing. It was a fantastic time. The rancher was fantastic. The land was fantastic. The community was great. I had a blast, and I miss it, but I don't think I could do it again.”

After leaving Shell in 2004, Boscarelli didn’t hear or see anything about Sophie until her glorious arrival in London. A few years later, when he was going on a family trip to Sicily, he decided to stop in London to see the fruits of his labor.

“They have an escalator going up to the dinosaur part of the museum, and Sophie’s right in front,” he said. “We uncovered most of it, but to actually go up there and see it was unbelievable.”

Today, Boscarelli, who lives in Soquel, California, has two cats he fondly named Sarah and Sophie. Finding the Stegosaurus was “the biggest moment” of his foray into paleontology, but he admitted he still has mixed feelings about where Sophie ended up.

“I still have my ‘Keep It in Wyoming’ shirt from the other digs I did with Bob Bakker at Como Bluff,” he said. “I'm not a big fan of the fossils going out of the country. When I met Dr. Barrett (in London), I told him, ‘You take a girl out of the country, you shouldn't change your name too.’”

That’s why Boscarelli was happy to hear the Wild West Dino Den in Shell, which recently unveiled 

a cast of the famous Allosaurus “Big Al,”

 intended to acquire a replica of Sophie for t

“It’s really amazing that their museum is coming to fruition,” he said. “I wanted Sophie to be there.”

Simon, who is in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, finally got his moment of vindication when he saw a fully mounted replica of Sophie. It was the moment he let himself be engulfed by the wave of emotions his spectacular Stegosaurus has and will continue to inspire in others.

“I was very fortunate that most of the dinosaurs that I found were very complete and are in museums,” he said. “When everything was found and prepared, and I saw a cast of (Sophie) on display, that’s when it really hit home. That's when you sit back and go, ‘Wow, that's pretty cool.’”

Contact Andrew Rossi at andrew@cowboystatedaily.com

Stegosaurus image1 8 8 26

<title>Sophie, The World's Most Complete Stegosaurus, Was Found In Shell, Wyoming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Stegosaurus discovered near Shell, Wyoming, is believed to be the most complete and well-preserved specimen ever found. When it was unveiled as the centerpiece exhibit at the Natural History Museum of London, paleontologists praised it as the best in the world.

Sophie, The World's Most Complete Stegosaurus, Was Found In Shell, Wyoming

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily reporter, Jackie Dorothy.

Jackie Dorothy

Outdoors

Jack Baird, who runs sheep and cattle on over 30,000 acres near Thermopolis, calls cheatgrass "a little thief" because it robs moisture from native grasses on the sections of land he uses for grazing.

Fellow rancher Chip Axtell of Hot Springs County estimates at least 20% of his own rangeland and farm have been taken over by cheatgrass, which is only green in the early spring and late fall. This limits where he can graze his cattle and is especially damaging during a drought.

“Cheatgrass grabs up all the moisture, so the native grasses get pushed out,” Axtell said. “If you keep stressing the land further with grazing or drought, it just becomes the predominant grass that's around.”

More than $32 million has been lost in agricultural land and wildlife habitat last year due to cheatgrass, a fast-growing invasive weed known. It is an ecological nightmare for wildlife and land managers.

estimate if cheatgrass continues to spread, annual losses could exceed $109.8 million.

Cheatgrass, also known as downy brome, literally creates a drought state on the landscape even when Wyoming is not in a drought. Since the 1800s, this invasive weed has been choking out native grasses and “cheating” them out of the nutrients and soil.

“It is actually a pretty pathetic grass with a minimal root system,” Nancy Fleming, the Wind River Bighorn Basin District's invasive annual grass coordinator, told Cowboy State Daily. “But it’s seed production is tremendous.”

One cheatgrass plant can produce 200 seeds viable for up to 11 years. Thousands will sit in a seed bank in the first few inches of soil, just waiting to germinate.

“The cheatgrass takeover has been going on for over a century,” Axtell said. “It grows wherever there's a disturbance in the ground such as a two-track, or any digging. The cheatgrass comes in because the seeds get started in that disturbed ground.”

 Axtell said he has been battling cheatgrass his entire life and tries not to graze all the grass in order to leave the native grass healthy and keep the cheatgrass at bay.

 “There's no silver bullet when it comes to invasive annual grasses, particularly cheat grass,” Fleming said. “Cheatgrass is something that we're managing. It's not something that we will eradicate.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Evil Enemy"}]

Cheatgrass is an invasive annual grass that's not native to North America. It came from Europe and Eurasia in the mid- to late 1800s as a contaminant in seed and straw, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

“It's been noted in every state in the lower 48 but it's causing more destruction in the Western States because of our climate,” Fleming said.

Cheatgrass grows in the winter and sprouts its roots under the snow. It is the first plant to green up in the spring. As an annual, it dies off each year and has a different growing cycle that Wyoming’s native perennial grass.

Cheatgrass’ sole purpose is to produce as much seed as possible before dying off every June. Then in becomes another type of menace: Fuel for fire. 

 “It takes one lightning strike to get a fire started,” Fleming said. “That fuel load created by dead cheatgrass helps spread the fire quickly through this country.”

 that cheatgrass has disrupted the fire cycle in sagebrush habitat and other western ecosystems, leading to more frequent and more intense burns. Those fires subsequently destroy native grasses and sage.

“Invasives come back the next year and so the fire doesn't affect them,” Fleming said. “As a result, we see this reoccurring, increased fire cycle that is not typical for this area.”

Fleming said fires typically burn every 30 years in grass and sage ecosystems, but thanks to cheatgrass they are occurring every five years or sooner.

 burned more than 126,000 acres outside of Thermopolis. Several organizations are monitoring the land to beat back the expected surge of cheatgrass. The fire started from a lightning strike on Axtell’s ranch and spread to neighboring ranches.

“Cheatgrass has the first opportunity to get the moisture and get started,” Axtell said. “With this fire, they're really watching to see where it's going to come back.”

Axtell said a grant for more than $8 million has been allocated to fight cheatgrass in the burn area. He is hopeful that by being proactive they will keep the cheatgrass to a minimum.   

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Benefits of Cheatgrass"}]

“When it's green, cheat grass actually has some decent protein and a forge quality to it,” Fleming said. “But it's only green from April to maybe June which is a very short window.”

Baird admits that because the cheat grass can be beneficial, he has mixed emotions about the expense of eradicating it.  

“If you get a good fall rain, it might stay green under the snow until December or January,” he said. “Those cows are getting green feed and getting protein naturally from the cheatgrass.”

Baird said cheatgrass can be up to 18% protein in the early season, but cattle will have little of the grass to graze. The good grass, according to Baird, might only be 6% protein in the winter, but even when it dries it still has good feed value. 

Cheatgrass, on the other hand, has no feed value once in dries in the spring.

 Although experts say they can only manage the weed, not eradicate it, they are seeing successes.  

“The best tools that we have for long-term management is herbicides,” Fleming said. “We have been using products like Rejuvra to treat invasive annual grasses on a large-landscape scale.”

The goal is to target seed sources. Plants would not only grow but viable seed would also be eliminated.

Baird had five acres sprayed with the herbicide and noticed the cheatgrass was not as productive. However, the herbicide's expense makes the treatment prohibitive on much of his 30,000 acres of grazing leases and private property. It is close to $50 an acre to treat, he said.

So far, Fleming said, studies have shown if an area is treated twice, much of the cheatgrass will be eliminated and native grasses can regain their lost foothold.

“What we're finding is that when you treat, your perennial grass production nearly doubles in the treated areas and your annual grass does nothing,” Fleming said.

 By eliminating cheatgrass, Fleming said studies show the perennial grass has access to nutrients and water.

“Our grass feels good again,” Fleming said. “It's not in a drought state anymore nor being suppressed. It's actually being vigorous, more productive.”

Fleming said that these more resilient, productive, perennial species would then be more competitive when cheatgrass re-enters the landscape.

 Landowners have access to the herbicide at local weed and pest offices and can apply for grants to apply the chemical.

“Rejuvra is fairly new, and it's kind of a proven chemical, so we probably will get on a program now,” Axtell said. “Before, there was no guarantee that what you were going to use with Plateau or other chemicals was really going to give you that great of control.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Work In Progress"}]

[{"type":"text","text":"Axtell said that as more people treat for cheatgrass, it will help."}]

“You would no longer have neighbors who aren't treating while you're still battling cheatgrass coming in from around you,” Axtell said. “It's helpful that the chemical is so good at what it does.”

For those who are concerned about using an herbicide, more labor-intensive options are available, although these techniques have not been as effective. Axtell said they have tried these techniques themselves but have seen little effect against cheatgrass.

“We try not to graze in the spring and graze in the fall and let those natives propagate and come back,” Axtell said. “We've tried grazing with goats. We've tried real early spring grazing with high intensity and then getting off to try to graze out the cheatgrass.

“It just seems like once it's there, it's really hard to re-establish some natives.”

Baird said current drought conditions have actually naturally helped in the battle against the cheatgrass.

“Down on my BLM allotment, where it was basically a monoculture of cheatgrass, there was absolutely nothing green there at all,” Baird said. “The cheatgrass didn't have the moisture, so the deep-rooted native grasses took hold before the cheatgrass even had a chance to germinate.”

Fleming said she has visited other states where the cheatgrass had destroyed wildlife habitats and agricultural lands, and said it was heartbreaking.

“I work really closely with the BLM, and every single year, we're spraying a large section of public land for invasive grasses,” Fleming said, “The idea is, hopefully, we can start connecting larger chunks of property together by working with private landowners on larger projects.”

Cheatgrass and fire Game and Fish 8 8 26

<title>Cheatgrass An Nightmare For Wyoming Rangeland, Costing $110 Million In Losses | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cheatgrass has become a nightmare for Wyoming ranchers, costing an estimated $110 million in annual losses. Hot Springs rancher Chip Axtell estimates 20% of his own rangeland has been taken over by cheatgrass. “It grabs up all the moisture," he said.

Cheatgrass An Nightmare For Wyoming Rangeland, Costing $110 Million In Losses

Wyoming Life

Food

If you find a giant puffball mushroom in Wyoming, you can slice and spice it up for a fungi feast. It's like a slice of bread, two feet across.

Tyler Sease was foraging near the Happy Jack Recreation Area near Laramie when he found the mother of all mushrooms. It was a western giant puffball about as big as two basketballs put together.

Sease could have made a great meal with that massive mushroom, but he probably needed to spice it up a bit. Puffballs cook nicely, but the flavor can leave something to be desired.

“They are edible, but I find them pretty bland,” said Jake States, a retired professor, Lander resident, and mushroom expert. “I sauté them with garlic.”

Western giant puffballs are one of the more common edible mushrooms in Wyoming. Anyone fancying a fungi feast can go out and find one – it might even be as big as Sease’s.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Western Flair"}]

Calvatia booniana, the western giant puffball, is common throughout the fields and forests of Wyoming.  According to States, the shape and size of Sease’s mushroom is enough to identify it.

“Although the puffballs in general have a rounded shape, these large ones are really unique,” he said. “The western giant puffball is irregularly shaped, whereas the eastern giant puffball is almost perfectly round.”

Based on the photo, States believed the mushroom Sease found might have been two fruiting bodies, called gastrocarps or “stomach bodies,” that grew together.

[{"type":"text","text":"That’s not uncommon for puffballs."}]

“The gastrocarps can fuse together, but on the other hand, it is characteristically irregularly rounded or blobby-shaped, and so it could be a single fruit body.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Fairy Rings"}]

States said the best places to find western giant puffballs are low-elevation grasslands or subalpine meadows. He’s found they’re common in sagebrush communities, growing together in what’s called a fairy ring.  

“Fairy rings are a circle of fruiting bodies,” he said. “They’re formed by underground mycelium, the feeding vegetative bodies of the fungus, that kill off the surface vegetation and produce reproductive structures in those circles. There are quite a number of mushrooms that form these rings.”

[{"type":"text","text":"“Fairy ring” comes from European folklore."}]

Many western European traditions ascribed the circular rings of mushrooms to the dancing of fairies, pixies, elves, or witches. The Dutch believe the rings marked the spot where the Devil placed his milk churn.

While that’s been debunked by science, there is something supernaturally frustrating about giant puffballs. According to States, they defy modernity.

“We have been unable to produce large puffballs in culture,” he said. “All these mushroom cultivators would dearly love to do so, but we haven't done it yet.”

Puffballs have historically been used to dress wounds, either sliced or powdered, by cultures around the world. They contain a styptic, a substance that stops bleeding and seals injured blood vessels.

“The genus Calvasia has a chemical compound called calvacin, a natural anti-tumor mucoprotein,” said States. “They’re trying to isolate that and get into the pharmaceutical entourage.”

Many scientists would love to further explore and reap the benefits of giant puffballs, but that has yet to be accomplished in a laboratory setting. It is stated that they have mycorrhiza, which means fungus-root associations, that aren’t fully understood.

Bioprospecting is the concept of developing new chemicals, inventions, and technologies by studying the natural adaptations of flora and fauna. It’s something States knows all about.

“I discovered the mold form of a mushroom called Aspergillus laporus,” he said. “That’s the one being studied so much now for its production of natural lysergic acid diethylamine, or LSD. Who knew?”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Death Or Delicacy?"}]

Giant puffballs, including the western giant puffball, are edible. However, nobody should take a bite without dissecting it first.

Giant puffballs can look similar to poisonous earthballs. Many species of the mushroom genus Amanita, including the deadly destroying angel, don’t grow as large as puffballs but can resemble them in their immature growth stages.

States said the easiest way to determine if your two-foot-wide mushroom is edible is to carve it up, which you’d probably do anyway.

“The tissues will be perfectly white as you cut through them,” he said. “As long as that tissue is white, it's edible.”

One group of puffballs has toxic spores, but they’re easy to identify by their purple color.

A safe, savory slice of western puffball mushroom will look like a slice of white bread, except that it’s two feet across. From there, it can be served however one would like.

Regardless, nobody who finds a western giant puffball should immediately pop a piece into their mouths. It’s always best to check and cook before consuming.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Common Craving"}]

If anyone wants a taste of western giant puffball, or maybe serve one for Thanksgiving in lieu of turkey, they’re not hard to find in Wyoming. States encounters them frequently while exploring Lander.

“I'm here in Sinks Canyon, in the transition zone of the sagebrush foothills into the conifer forest, so I find them regularly every season,” he said.

[{"type":"text","text":"There’s another thing to be wary of when eating giant puffballs."}]

Some people have reported the mushroom as having a laxative effect. Giant puffballs aren’t closely related to Asia’s shiitake mushrooms, but the end result might have a gastrointestinal impact worthy of the name.

Giant puffballs are edible, but there are tastier fungi to forage in Wyoming. That’s why States doesn’t have them on his menu.

“It has a mushroom-type flavor, but I find them bland,” States said. “Some people like anything that tastes fungusy, but I think there are so many more mushrooms that are much better, so I don't mess with (puffballs) at all.”

Happy Jack Reservoir puffball 2 8 8 216

<title>Wyoming Man Finds Mother Of All Puffball Mushrooms At Happy Jack — And It's Edible | Cowboy State Daily</title>

A Wyoming man found a giant puffball mushroom the size of two basketballs near the Happy Jack Recreation Area last week. Mushroom expert Jack States says the edible puffball is best when sautéd with garlic but cautions it could have a laxative effect.

Wyoming Man Finds Mother Of All Puffball Mushrooms At Happy Jack — And It's Edible

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."}]

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.

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