Weird Idaho

In the 1950s, parachuting beavers rained down from the skies of Idaho. Beavers play a crucial role in the management of flowing freshwater.  By creating pools and ponds the beavers hold water on site, leading to lusher habitats and fewer droughts.  In an attempt to redistribute beaver populations and rehabilitate the waters, the Idaho Fish and Game Department devised a program in which beavers were trapped from overcrowded locations and relocated by airplane. In this recently recovered footage from the department we can see the beavers parachuting, as well as vintage footage of Payette Lake in McCall, where Sharlie the water dragon is rumored to reside.

Lyda Southard (aka Lyda Trueblood, Lady Bluebeard) was America's second known female serial killer, a woman who called Twin Falls, Idaho her home and there committed her heinous deeds.  Lyda was born in the flatlands of central Missouri in 1892, where she grew and met one Robert Dooley, a local boy, and easily took his heart.  When she moved to Twin Falls, Idaho he followed after her, and the pair was married in 1912, Robert blissfully unaware of the fate that awaited him.  They settled on a ranch with her brother in law, Edward Dooley, and eventually Lyda gave birth to a daughter they called Lorraine.  In 1915, Lyda began collecting insurance policies.  In August her brother in law sickened and died, supposedly from ptomaine poisoning, and she shared the insurance payout with the brother's widow and her husband.  Only two months later her own husband came down with Typhoid fever and passed.  Lyda collected a total of $2,000 from both deat...

August 9th, 1928 was a hot, miserable day in the small valley town of Lewiston, Idaho. The snake river lolled lazily through town as the Sells-Floto Circus arrived for their summer tour.  The elephant's werethirsty in the heat but the elephant handlers had not provided them any water, and were beginning to have difficulty controlling the animals.  One elephant named Mary went mad from the thirst and broke away from her trainers, running down the man street of the town in search of water. Mary, desperate from thirst, became confused by the plate glass windows of the shops and smashed them with her trunk, mistaking them for water.  Finally she caught scent of the water flowing from the local carwash and trampled through the streets to get to it. Mary was not the first Sells-Floto elephant to trample, and these abused animals had caused deaths and horrible injuries in other towns.  The mayor of Lewiston at the time was Dr. Braddock, an accomplished ma...