Inland Empire Update: Homemade Mining Operation Considered Harmful

Montclair gold hunter digs 60-foot-deep hole in front yard

MONTCLAIR, Calif. (AP) A homeowner digging for gold in his front yard said he got ``carried away'' and ended up with a 60-foot-deep hole, authorities said.

Henry Mora, 63, began digging two weeks ago after his gold detector picked up a signal near his front patio.

``I figured, well, maybe there's something down there you would logically conclude, right? So I started digging,'' the semiretired musician said Wednesday.

Mora said he only intended to go down 3 or 4 feet, but he started finding gold dust in the dirt and the detector kept hinting that he was getting closer.

``It was still beeping, and that just gave me the idea to keep digging,'' he said. ``I think it's a normal human reaction, especially when you think there might be gold down there.''

A neighbor who saw the mound of dirt growing on Mora's lawn became concerned and called authorities Tuesday. Fire officials responding to the home found two men inside the unreinforced hole, using a bucket and rope to remove dirt. Mora had hired the two men to help him.

``We told him, 'You're done,''' Montclair fire Capt. Rich Baldwin said. ``It's amazing no one got killed.''

Authorities fenced off Mora's property and ordered him to hire an engineer to safely pack the dirt back into the ground.

Mora acknowledged his search for buried treasure was getting ``totally out of hand.'' Yet when asked whether he regrets starting the dig, Mora was conflicted.

``In a way yes, and in a way no,'' Mora said, ``because I think there's still gold down there.''

THE SUGAR BEET HAS GONE INSANE

Rhizomania, also called “root madness" or "crazy root," has caused significant losses in root and sugar yield. [...] The most obvious symptom of rhizomania is a mass of fine, hairy secondary roots that consists of a mixture of dead and healthy roots. [...] The disease is so infectious that even a few grams of infected soil can eventually spread to infect entire fields.

A Scanner Dorkly

Another visit to the psychiatrist means another load of Drug Ad Scans. Two of these are actually not from a drug ad, but from an osteopathic college's fundraiser magazine. The other two are the standard brochureware. Below we'll learn why misshapen closeted animal trainers are humanitarian, why Bob shouldn't use the nail gun for a while, and the relationship between bipolar disease and endless green rolling hills.

( Siegfried, Roy, and a construction guy with issues )

The news

This morning my phonepagerthing beeped with a message from emergencyemail.org: Bird flu in Canada, second case. That seemed appropriate. Their mission is to send me things like fire and flood warnings, DHS freakouts, declarations of war, and other items of urgent and frightening interest, and I think bird flu on the same continent as me is a good call.

I then went to my email and saw a CNN News Alert in my inbox. I figured it was the same thing and clicked. Nope: Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger to be cited for failure to wear a helmet, not having a proper license at time of his June 12 accident.

I looked at CNN's home page. Nothing at all about bird flu there. I went to Google's News home page: nothing about bird flu on the home page. A search came up with ~130 stories, most of them about exactly what the emergency email people paged me with: two cases of bird flu in North America.

I wonder if there were actually direct threats from poultry producers to news organizations, or just the implied one of advertising loss? Because this kind of thing doesn't happen by accident.