Wednesday, August 25, 2004

Hey Dick, please go back to your undisclosed location

Bunker down somewhere that you won't disturb the wildlife.

E.A. Torriero writes in the Chicago Tribune from Jackson Hole, Wyo., that the locals who live near Cheney's Snake River getaway are getting increasingly angry about all the noisy flyovers.

"Sometimes residents are awakened in the middle of the night by the drone of an AWACS plane, they say, and sometimes helicopters drown out residents' voices when the choppers fly above. . . .

"Still, nothing quite prepared people for the brazen invasion earlier this month atop the normally bucolic Snake River in Grand Teton National Park. In full view of rafters, tourists and residents, two Black Hawk helicopters skimmed the river.

"Angry river users shook their fists. Wildlife tumbled over from the choppers' downdraft, witnesses said. Plants were rippling in the high winds, they said.

"'They were at tree-top levels,' said Martin Hagen, a captain who navigates the river for a rafting company. 'Here you go out for a quiet day along the river and suddenly comes this great noise. It was a big, big disturbance.'

"Another boat captain, Reed Finley, had just dropped passengers ashore when the choppers buzzed three times.

"'They sent an osprey into a tailspin, flipping it over,' he said. 'It was obnoxious.'"

Will Roberts writes in the Jackson Hole News & Guide: "Derek Horejs, an employee with Barker-Ewing Whitewater, said he saw the Blackhawks while at Dead Man's Bar on the Snake. He said the helicopters were close enough that he could see the face of one of the passengers in the cargo space.

"'He was smiling, waving to us,' Horejs said. 'We were obviously upset and weren't waving back.'"

Conspiracy theorists take note: Roberts writes that "According to a spokeswoman with Fort Carson in Colorado where the helicopters are based, the pilots were undergoing a medical evacuation training procedure."

Here's a story by Bill Curran of the Jackson Hole paper last year about the time when Cheney's Blackhawks landed on the Puzzleface Ranch in an area protected by a conservation easement, home to nesting osprey and trumpeter swans.

Seems there was also a time that Secret Service agents on horseback clomped through a closed bald eagle nesting area in Grand Teton while Cheney fished the Snake.
  WaPO article

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

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