Trinity County

This next one, not as local, but still in Texas.

It's in Trinity County, which is just north of Houston.

You've got a sheriff's deputy.

He's doing a routine roadside check at night, and he sees a deer lying on the road.

Also, new data shows extreme heat is especially dangerous for people experiencing homelessness.

And the federal government is suing a Trinity County utility over the 2020 hobo fire.

Those stories are just ahead.

But first, Shasta County's voter-approved election overhaul will remain on hold.

That means existing election rules remain in place for the November midterms.

In Chico, I'm Andre Bayek.

In Trinity County, the U.S. government is suing the local public utilities district over the 2020 Hobo Fire.

The Justice Department announced the lawsuit Wednesday.

Moving to the state's homelessness crisis, counties up and down the state are reporting decreases in their populations of people experiencing homelessness.

That includes a twenty-six percent drop last year in Colusa, Glen, and Trinity Counties combined.

CalMatters reporter Marisa Kendall says it's the second year in a row we're seeing these figures go down.

This year, as we're starting to see some of the preliminary results from the twenty twenty-six homeless point-in-time counts, uh, many California counties are again reporting progress.

the snow wassit on the most northern logging camps of canada we hear of the snow wassit this is surely an animal of the boreal zone it is a migratory animal wintering in the lumbering region between the great lakes and hudson bay and spending its summers far north in labrador and the barren grounds unlike most wild creatures of the north the wassit is said to hibernate during only the warmest weather when its hair turns green and it curls up a cranberry marsh during the summer it has rudimentary legs which enable it to creep slowly around and remain in the shade after the first howling snow-storm the wassit sheds its legs and starts south dipping about in the snow it soon attains remarkable skill in this method of travel which enables it to surprise burrowing grouse crouching rabbits and skulking varmints of many kinds later in the winter when food becomes scarce and more difficult to obtain even wolves are seized from below and dragged howling and kicking into the snowdrifts according to woodsmen the tragedies of the far north are more numerous beneath the crusted snow than above it there is no telling how many creatures are pulled down and eaten by the wassit for this animal has a voracious appetite comparable only to that of the wolverine but since it is four times as big and forty times as active as the wolverine it must eat correspondingly more the only specimen of this beast ever examined by white men was an imperfect one on james bay where a party of surveyors found an indian in a peculiar canoe which upon examination was shown to be made from one wasset hide greatly stretched there being no leg-holes in the white winter pelt it is peculiarly adapted to the making of shapely one-man canoes which are said to be used also as sleds by the indians a whole battery of dead-falls are believed to be used in trapping a wassit since it is impossible to tell in what direction the animal's body may extend the trigger is set so that a dozen logs fall in from all sides toward the bait pinning the animal under the snow wherever he may be part sixteen part seventeen of fearsome creatures of the lumber woods by w t cox the central american wind-tosser cephalovertens semperambulatus in the spring of nineteen hundred and six there appeared suddenly in the coast ranges of california an uncanny animal from the region of the isthmus it is not a large beast but what it lacks in size it makes up in meanness of disposition none of the lumberjacks who have met a wind tosser on trail or tote road care to have the experience repeated the central american wind tosser is always looking for trouble or making it in fact the beast seems to be constructed for the purpose of passing through unusual experiences its head is fastened to its body by a swivel neck so is its short tapering tail and both can be spun around at the rate of a hundred revolutions a minute the body is long and triangular with three complete sets of legs this is a great convenience in an earthquake country since the animal is not disturbed by any convulsions of the earth if the floor suddenly becomes the ceiling it does not matter for the wind tosser is always there with the legs its hair is bristly and all slants forward at a sharp angle it has been found that a cat's nine lives are as nothing to the one possessed by a wind tosser this animal may be shot clubbed or strung on a pike-pole without stopping the wriggling whirling motions or the screams of rage The only successful way of killing the beast is to poke it into a flume pipe, so that all its feet strike the surface, when it immediately starts to walk in three different directions at once, and tears itself all apart.

John Gray of Anadar, Trinity County, California, knows where a pair of wintosses live, in some broken-up country along Mad River.

Part 18 of Fearsome Creatures of the Lumberwoods by W. T. Cox the bildad salty piscata falcorostratus if you have ever paddled around a boundary pond in north-west maine at night you have probably heard from out the black depths of a cove a spat like a paddle striking the water it may have been a paddle but the chances are ten to one that it was a bildad fishing this animal occurs only on this one pond in hurricane township it is about the size of a beaver but has long kangaroo-like hind legs short front legs webbed feet and a heavy hawk-like bill its mode of fishing is to crouch on a grassy point overlooking the water and when a trout rises for a bug to leap with amazing swiftness just past the fish bringing its heavy flat tail down with a resounding smack over him this stuns the fish which is immediately picked up and eaten by the bildad it has been reported that sixty yards is an average jump for an adult male up to three years ago the opinion was current among lumber-jacks that the bildad was fine eating but since the beasts are exceedingly shy and hard to catch no one was able to remember having tasted the meat that fall one was killed on boundary pond and brought into the great northern paper company's camp on hurricane lake where the cook made a most savoury slum gullion of it the first and only man to taste it was bill murphy a tote road swamper from amber after the first mouthful his body stiffened his eyes glazed and his hands clutched the table edge with a wild yell he rushed out of the cook-house down to the lake and leapt clear out fifty yards coming down in a sitting posture exactly like a bildad catching a fish off course he sank like a stone since then not a lumber-jack in maine will touch bildad meat not even with a pike pole part nineteen of fearsome creatures of the lumber woods by w t cox the tripodero collapsofameris geocatapeltes the chaparral and foothill forests of california contain many queer freaks of one kind and another one of the strangest and least known is the tripodero an animal with two contractile or telescopic legs and a tail like a kangaroo's this peculiarity and structure enables the animal to elevate itself at will so that it may tower above the chaparral or if it chooses to pull in its legs and present a compact form for crowding through the brush the tripodero's body is not large but is solidly built and its head is nearly all snout the value of which is seen in the method by which food is obtained as the animal travels through the brush-covered country it elongates its legs from time to time thus shoving itself up above the brush for purposes of observation if it sights game within a range of ten rods it takes aim with its snout and tilts itself until the right elevation is obtained then with astounding force blows a sundried quid of clay knocking its victim senseless A supply of these quids is always carried in the left jaw.

The tripodero then contracts its legs and bores its way through the bush to its victim, where it stays until the last bone is cracked and eaten.