Wild West Festival: Hotel California, Mahan
Category: Local
Friday’s official rainfall less than reports from west side of Hays
By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Friday morning’s rain deluge in Hays came in on the west side of town where there were several unofficial reports of more than four and up to five inches of rain. A Flash Flood Warning issued by the National Weather Service in Dodge City was in effect from 9:40 a.m. until 12:45 p.m.
The official rainfall amount recorded at the K-State Agricultural Research Center south of town was 3.11 inches. The Eagle Media Center, 2300 Hall, received 3.60 inches.
Short-lived flooding occurred on west 27th Street and north to the Thunderbird Drive area. Streets in downtown Hays and near Fort Hays State University, located in the flood plain, were also flooded.
Several vehicles were disabled, basements in south Hays were flooded and some residents had to be rescued from their homes.
Adding Friday’s downpour to several small rainfalls earlier last week has brought the July rainfall total to 3.49 inches.
Hays has received 13.38 inches of moisture for the year-to-date.
Inauguration set for Sept. 14 for FHSU’s Dr. Tisa Mason
FHSU University Relations
Events across four days will celebrate the inauguration of the 10th president of Fort Hays State University, Dr. Tisa A. Mason, who will be installed in a ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday, Sept. 14, in the university’s Gross Memorial Coliseum.
The public is invited.
“Dr. Mason’s inauguration is a celebration of Fort Hays State University’s accomplishments as well as the anticipation of future opportunities for our students, faculty and staff,” said Janette Meis, chair of the Inauguration Committee and event planner for the Office of the President.
“We are very excited to have alumni, community members, donors and other supporters on campus to experience this significant event,” she said.
After the inaugural ceremony, a celebration on the Quad is scheduled from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Specifics are tentative for other inaugural events that week, which include: a special exhibit of letters and certificates of congratulation opening in Forsyth Library; a dedicated worship service hosted by Celebration Community Church on Friday morning before the ceremony; and a community service event – Swipe Out Hunger, sponsored by the Global Leadership Project – for Saturday.
The football game Saturday night against the Washburn Ichabods will feature halftime music from the university’s marching band selected especially for President Mason: “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”
President Mason and her husband, Bill, will arrive by motorcycle to present the game ball.
A more detailed schedule of events will be announced later.
Ellis Co. Commission continues budget work; to consider equipment purchases
By JONATHAN ZWEYGARDT
Hays Post
The Ellis County Commission will look over the 2019 budget one more time before it is sent out for publication at Monday’s commission meeting.
According to information presented to the commission, the budget does not call for an increase in the countywide mill levy or the mill levy for Fire District #1. That sets the property taxes levied at $14,410,402 for the county’s general fund and $535,787 for the fire district.
General fund expenditures are budgeted at $22,376,201 for 2019. Fire District #1 expenditures for 2019 at budgeted at $633,346.
The commission will consider making any more changes at Monday’s meeting.
The commission will also receive the 2017 audit, discuss two purchases for the Ellis County Fire Department and consider a lease agreement with High Plains Mental Health.
Monday’s Public Building Commission meeting is scheduled for 5 p.m. with the regular commission meeting to follow at the County Administrative Center at 718 Main.
Exploring Kansas Outdoors: Tweety Bird the Catbird
The man on the phone identified himself as Don Paulson from north of Hutchinson, he reads my column regularly and he told me “I have something I think you’d like to see.” It seems he had a wild catbird that would take mealworms from his hand. Before I had made a commitment to go see him, he called back and said he also had a bunch of purple martins in his houses that were busy getting their young to fly and that they might add to the show.
The next morning I arrived at Don’s just after 7 AM. Don and his family own and operate Nickerson sand and Gravel Inc. at Nickerson, Kansas, and his house and property are truly befitting of someone in the business of quarrying rock, gravel and sand. Uniquely shaped boulders the size of refrigerators dotted the property both along the driveway and beside a beautiful backyard pond, and the front of the house is built from stone hauled a truck load at a time from an Ellsworth county pasture. Hibiscus and sunflowers beamed at me from various small gardens and patches all around.
Don talked at length how he had grown up farming, been in the military, graduated from Kansas State with a degree in economics, married his sweetheart and gone to work, fresh out of college for her father-in-law, JE Steele, owner and operator of JE Steele Sand and Gravel in Hutchinson. JE Steele supplied all the sand to build the famous mile-long grain elevator on the south-eastern corner of Hutchinson. After a couple years Paulson rented a sand and gravel business for a time at Nickerson and in the late 1960’s bought what is now Nickerson Sand and Gravel Inc.
Paulson’s love of birds began some 25 years ago years ago when he began building and hanging bluebird houses around his acreage, one year he knows there were at least 30 young bluebirds fledged from those houses. He began buying mealworms to help feed the hungry younguns’ and found that by putting mealworms in a cup near one particular bluebird house, he could entice the adults to come get worms from the cup. He kept moving the cup closer to where he sat and over time got the birds to come within 4 feet of him to take worms. Three years ago as he sat at a metal patio table out in front of his garages feeding mealworms to the bluebirds, another bird strange to him darted in from out of nowhere, snagged a mealworm from the driveway and flew off.
After a time he was able to identify the cheeky bandit as a catbird. Gray Catbirds are robin-sized members of the mimic-thrush family and are named for the “mewing” sound they occasionally make that’s reminiscent of a cat. They are a bit more slender than a robin and are a slate-gray color with a black cap and reddish colored rump. Although my Kansas bird book tells me catbirds do not repeat phrases like mockingbirds and thrashers, they are known to copy sounds of other birds and string them together to create their own repertoire. As Paulson told me the many stories of his catbird, I asked him if he had her named. He replied with a smirk “What do you name a bird; I just call her Tweety-Bird.”
Out in his workshop, Paulson showed me the mealworms he feeds to his hungry birds. He keeps them in long plastic containers with lids and feeds them wheat bran, newspaper and vegetable peelings, much like fishermen feed to night crawlers. Last year he bought and fed 3,000 of them to his hungry bluebirds and to Tweety Bird and her mate for their chicks. After gathering a few worms in a small plastic container, we sat down at a metal patio table on the concrete drive in front of his 3 garages. Purple Martens by the dozens filled the air around 4 big marten houses sitting along his vegetable garden as they tried to entice young fledglings to hop off the small porches of their houses and begin their flying lessons. Once we were seated, Paulson tapped the worm container loudly on the table a few times to let Tweety Bird know he was there with snacks.
Paulson believes a predator got Tweety’s mate this spring, as he found a handful of grey feathers on the ground near a water hole, and know she only appears alone. When she didn’t show for awhile, we went and fed the Koi and catfish in the pond, then returned to the table. Every few minutes Paulson tapped the container on the table, and after awhile as we sat there talking, Tweety appeared and sat on the table. He held out a worm in his fingers and she hopped toward him, but I think the strange sound made by my phone camera spooked her and she flew to a nearby perch. In less than a minute she was back on the table, but would not take the worm from his hand, so he tossed it on the concrete just a few feet away, where she grabbed it, plucked off its head and chugged it down in one gulp. That was the last we saw of Tweety Bird that morning, but Paulson said when she was feeding her own hungry brood earlier in the spring, she would gulp 3 worms every trip, often from his fingers and returned numerous times at each setting.
During my short visit with Don Paulson he told me more stories about his interesting life than I can remember. Like how he, his wife and 4 young kids put a few belongings in a homemade trailer and drove an old Ford station wagon 4000 miles in the 1960’s to live in Alaska for 6 months with his sister, and how his pond was dug so he could supply a particular kind of clay soil for the building of the skating rink on Lorraine Street back in the day. And then there was Tweety Bird’s appearance to highlight the morning …Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors!
Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].
Monkeying around at the Phillipsburg rodeo
Cowboy monkeys to entertain at Kansas Biggest Rodeo
PHILLIPSBURG — Phillipsburg rodeo fans, get out your cell phone cameras for this!
Tim “Wild Thang” Lepard and Team Ghostriders will bring three monkeys, riding three border collies, to Phillipsburg August 2-3-4 for rodeo entertainment!
Lepard dresses his Capuchin monkeys in vests, chaps and cowboy hats, and they sit in saddles on the border collies while the dogs round up sheep in the arena.
It’s an amazing act that fans love to see, and Lepard and the cowboy monkeys have entertained at NFL games (including the Denver Broncos, the Cincinnati Bengals, and the New York Giants) and at NBA and NHL games.
Tim, who grew up in Pontotoc, Miss., started his rodeo career as a bull rider and a saddle bronc rider. But after a bad wreck with a bull, he switched over to bullfighting. That’s when he got the nickname “Wild Thang.” “I was wild and I had no fear,” Lepard said. But he didn’t want the nickname. “I go to church,” he said, and the last thing I want to do is to pull up to church with ‘wild thing’ on my truck and my mama sees it.”
In 1988, his career changed course again. A friend, Jimmy Anderson, encouraged him to switch to comedy and specialty acts. “He said,” Tim recounted, “you can go to a rodeo and find 150 macho guys who think they’re bullfighters. But you’ll only find one act, and that’s you. Get an act,” Jimmy told him. “You’ll go a lot farther.” Lepard had always wanted a monkey, so he got one, and tried to train it to ride a Shetland.
But as soon as the monkey climbed up the neck of the Shetland, the Shetland shook its head and the monkey fell off. So Lepard tried border collies. They were a perfect fit, especially with their determination and try.
He has five monkeys, ranging from Sam, the oldest, at 23 years, to Happy, who was born last year. Lepard calls Sam “the duke of the monkeys,” for the way Sam looks with a cowboy hat on. “He has it cocked over sideways, like John Wayne did.” Meglynn is a sweetheart who is named in honor of Lepard’s daughter Lakelynn, because she was born around Lakelynn’s birthday. Little E, the lover of the bunch, is six years old and sometimes Lepard dresses him up like Elvis. Bubba rounds out the bunch.
Because of USDA regulations, Lepard stays current on all the health papers he needs for his monkeys. He has several three-ring notebooks full of documentation, and he’s proud of the care he gives them. He loves his monkeys, “with everything in my heart. I carry it on my sleeve,” he said.
Throughout his thirty-year career, Lepard has worked the halftime show for six NFL games, 220 MLB games, and appeared on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show, America’s Got Talent, and E60.
Lepard and his monkey cowboys, Team Ghostriders, will entertain during all three nights of Kansas Biggest Rodeo in Phillipsburg. The rodeo begins at 8 pm each night, August 2-3-4. Tickets are available at Heritage Insurance in Phillipsburg and at the gate and are $11-$14 for children ages 12 and under and $15-$18 for adults. For more information, visit the rodeo’s website at www.KansasBiggestRodeo.com.
MADORIN: Moms are moms no matter the species
Each spring’s cycle of birth and renewal reminds me all mothers are essentially alike. One look at a momma cow with her calf tells you don’t want to mess with her baby.
Over decades, my students wrote many essays detailing the results of interfering with young animals. Mothers aren’t only tender. They’re tough when necessary. Just a few days ago, a family of fledgling wrens reminded me how mommas fuss over their babies and that I should stay out of their business.
After a recent rain, I explored my yard to see how plants were growing under the unusual wet conditions. Until the downpour, our section of the creek had gone dry, and our buffalo grass couldn’t have been more dormant. An old grape vine growing creek-side particularly interested me.
While I counted clusters and imagined future jars filled with wild grape jelly, a rising crescendo disturbed my reverie. Since we have a wren family living off the back porch, I recognized the “shirring” sounds. However, I had never heard so many little birds in an uproar at one time.
Evidently, I had interrupted a mother and her fledglings as she taught them to find their own insect dinners. Not six feet behind me was a rotten log loaded with morsels to feed her and her babies. I interfered not only with her lesson, but also with quality dining.
Not meaning to threaten them, I quietly turned to watch this wary protectress with her offspring. Apparently, my statue-like presence created a menace because she admonished even more intently. Like children I’ve seen at the grocery store’s candy counter turning their backs to ignore scolding parents, these juvenile wrens did exactly that. They looked at mom and at me. Then they returned to devouring crunchy bugs.
This drove Mrs. Wren nuts. She dramatically flitted back and forth. If wrens can fling heads and wings, she did. With each dart, her tone intensified an octave. I’m not of her species, but I clearly understood her meaning. Finally, all but one of the babies reluctantly left the dinner table to fly to shelter. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear mom and fledglings’ raucous comments. Nobody in that tree was happy.
That left one little wren at the log. Like most families that have one child who marches to its own drummer, this fellow wasn’t a bit concerned at momma’s and siblings’ fussing. Despite louder warnings, the youngster didn’t give its guardian a second look.
I know how Momma Wren felt since we also have fledged offspring. As our daughters moved into adulthood, I found myself apologizing to my mother as well as thanking her for her patience and care. It’s no easy task letting children go, especially those with independent spirits.
Finally, my heart couldn’t take that mother’s frantic cries any longer. Since her baby refused to respond, I left, removing her imagined peril. As I walked away, I recalled my own mom’s wish for me and thought I hope that baby wren has a young one just like it.
Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.
🎥 City commission gets first look at 2019 budget
By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Hays city commissioners got their first look at the 2019 draft budget during a work session Thursday night.
City Manager Toby Dougherty reviewed highlights of the $39,466,072 proposal, noting the mill levy will remain unchanged at 25 mills.
A new pay plan for all city employees is included, while the amount budgeted per employee for health insurance has increased from $9,500 to $11,000.
Mayor James Meier praised city staff for their work on the budget.
“Valuation is down a half percent, and we’re budgeting down one percent on sales tax, and yet providing more benefits to our employees,” Meier said.
“It’s a balanced budget and the mill levy is the same. I know sometimes we get wrapped up in discussions in other smaller items in the budget but I think that’s the main message we should always be sending.”
The city commission asked for a few revisions and additional information which will be presented at the July 19 work session.
Senior Eagles win Wild West Fest Tournament
HAYS, Kan. – The Hays Eagles Senior American Legion won four straight games Sunday to capture the Wild West Fest Tournament title. The Eagles dropped their 8am game to the Northern Colorado 17U Roughnecks 9-6 but came back to beat the Great Bend Chiefs, the Northern Colorado 18U team then the 17U Roughnecks.
They capped the day with a 10-0 run-rule win over McCook in the finals.
The Eagles broke that game open with a seven run fifth inning.
Jamison Martin pitched five shutout innings for the win, striking out seven and walking only one.
Cole Murphy drove in three and Dawson Harman had two RBIs as the Eagles to 7-1 in the tournament and improve to 28-4-1 overall.
The Hays Monarchs finished 2-2 in the tournament and were eliminated in a 6-0 loss to Buhler Saturday night.
Sunny, hot Monday
Today Sunny, with a high near 94. South wind 6 to 9 mph.
Tonight Clear, with a low around 67. Southeast wind 5 to 9 mph becoming light and variable after midnight.
Tuesday Sunny, with a high near 94. South southeast wind 5 to 10 mph.
Tuesday NightMostly clear, with a low around 70. South southeast wind 7 to 11 mph.
Wednesday Sunny, with a high near 95. South wind 7 to 14 mph.
Wednesday Night Mostly clear, with a low around 72.
Thursday Sunny, with a high near 96.
Thursday NightMostly clear, with a low around 72.
Friday Sunny, with a high near 97.
Portion of Washington Street in Ellis will be closed for maintenance
ELLIS — Beginning Monday, crews from Ellis County Public Works and the city of Ellis will begin working on a cold in place asphalt recycling project on a portion of Washington Street in Ellis.
According to Ellis County Public Works, at 7 a.m. on Monday, crews will begin working north of the Big Creek Bridge and continue north to the intersection of Third and Washington.
The area will be closed during construction work, and streets approaching Washington will also be closed. Work is expected to take two to three days to complete.
Motorists in the areas should use alternate routes during construction.
Ellis native is part of ESU theatre production
ESU
EMPORIA– Drew Keller of Ellis, Kansas, is part of the cast and crew presenting “Suite Surrender” by Michael McKeever.
It is 1942 and two of Hollywood’s biggest divas have descended upon the luxurious Palm Beach Royale Hotel – with entourages, luggage and legendary feud in tow. Everything seems to be in order for their wartime performance … that is, until they are somehow assigned to the same suite. Mistaken identities, overblown egos and a lap dog named Mr. Boodles round out this love note to the classic farces of the ’30s and ’40s.
Keller, a freshman theatre major, plays Otis and the bellhop.
The show is under the direction of Bob Hart. Chris Lohkamp is the set designer and technical director. Amanda Dura is the costume designer.
“Suite Surrender” runs July 11-14 at 7:30 p.m. in the Karl C. Bruder Theatre in King Hall at Emporia State University.
Tickets cost $12 for adults, $10 for seniors and $5 for students. For tickets, visit the Memorial Union Ticket Office or call 620-341-6378. Tickets are also available online at tickets.emporia.edu or by calling 620-341-6378.
NW Kan. woman, 2 children hospitalized after rear-end crash
SHERMAN COUNTY — Three people were injured in an accident just after 6:30 Saturday in Sherman County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2013 Chrysler 300 driven by Elizabeth A. Culwell, 21, St. Francis, was northbound on Kansas 27 six miles north of Interstate 70.
The Chrysler rear-ended a 2008 Hyundai Elantra driven by Sanford N. Putman, 72, Las Vegas, Nevada.The collision pushed the Hyundai in the west ditch.
Culwell and two children, ages 9 and 1, in the Chrysler were transported to the hospital in Goodland. Putnam was not injured. All four were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.