You can bet that it's been a long week for some long-haul truckers. With motorists never sure if Interstate 80 will be Wyoming's version of the Autobahn one day or morph into Los Angeles-style gridlock because of the wonderful breezes that blow gale-force this time of year, many of these truckers - presumably hauling everything from Super Bowl snacks, back-ordered copies of Barack Obama's "The Audacity of Hope: Primary Edition" tome and supplies of antacids for people suffering indigestion from indulging in both - had to sit and watch as thousands of mice received a first-class ticket out of Wyoming.

The (Rock Springs) Daily Rocket-Miner reported in its Jan. 31 edition of a truck hauling lab mice that was involved in an accident on Tuesday. The paper reported that the mice were on a cross-country trip from Maine to California when the accident occurred.

Realizing these mice and their value - $6.3 million, according to the paper - it was important to get the mice to their destination, airport manager Gary Valentine noted.

So Valentine and his staff did the next sensible thing: They packed up the 7,000 mice, each valued at $900 apiece, 20 to a box, and loaded them into three Lear jets.

Yep. Mice. In jets. Mighty Mouse could fly, but not like this.

Valentine told the paper that at first, he couldn't believe the cost of the mice.

The people on the plane apparently couldn't believe the trip, either, the paper reported.

After talking to pilots, Valentine said that a few of them haul mice on regular occasions, and that they have to wear oxygen masks aboard to do so because of the smell.

Look out, Punxsutawney Phil

Groundhog Day, for sure.

Yes, the much celebrated rodent from Pennsylvania has been showered with media attention and even gotten a movie named for it.

And when the national media reported that Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow on Feb. 2, the nation knew that meant six more weeks of winter.

Leave it to Lander Lil to set Phil straight.

Long-time Wyomingites know Phil's sister. Lander Lil, has got it down. The Lander Journal reported in its Feb. 3 edition that while the rest of the country might be huddled under blankets for a while, we in Wyoming will be basking in summer soon.

That's because Lander Lil failed to see her shadow on the same day Phil saw his.

The one that got away

While his friends while away the winter, cramming their augers into foot-thick ice in search for the perfect trout or walleye, Meldon McCullough will be wondering about the one that got away. With his ice-fishing gear, that is.

On Jan. 26, McCullough's truck was parked outside Powell's Skyline Cafe, his ice-fishing equipment set out in the back, the Feb. 5 edition of the Powell Tribune reported.

"It's a shame that stuff like that goes on," McCullough told the paper. "I wouldn't even have dreamed someone would go by and take that stuff out of the parking lot."

Seems McCullough was simply at the cafe, drinking coffee and waiting for a buddy to go ice fishing when this occurred.

He lost an auger, jigs lures, poles and a sled his children used when they were little.

"A lot of that stuff I've had a long time," McCullough told the paper. "I can get new stuff, but it won't be like the stuff I had."

Double feature

If a car crashes into a (nearly) empty theater, does it make a sound?

That's what two souls at the lonely Rawlins Movies 3 theater have to wonder after a truck hit the building and gouged a hole in the facility.

And the movie played on, and the women stayed, the Rawlins Daily Times reported in its Feb. 8 edition.

The women were watching the female buddy movie "Mad Money" when the truck backed into the theater on Feb. 5.

"They said they were startled," Rose Cain, owner of the theater, told the paper. "They didn't know whether to finish the movie or get up and tell us."

The ladies stayed, even though they could see light peering through a crack in the damaged wall, the paper reported.

"It's funny, but not funny," Cain told the paper. "Every time I look that hole, I start laughing. It couldn't have happened on purpose."

This guy's got issues

It was a rough night at the Campbell County Jail on Feb. 5 for one of the inmates, the Gillette News-Record reported. A 41-year-old inmate plugged his sink in his cell, and called a police officer over, the paper reported. When the officer came to observe, he told the inmate to turn off the water. The inmate refused - and then lunged at two officers when the first one called for backup, the paper reported. The inmate then placed one officer in a headlock, before he himself was punched by officers.

The inmate, Campbell County Undersheriff Scott Matheny told the paper, apparently has a "stack of rule violations" against him. What's one more?

Got an item or tip for this column? Contact night editor David Mirhadi at (307) 266-0616 or david.mirhadi@trib.com.