A gray wolf that migrated into Baker County from Wallowa County last month was just passing through.

The 2 1/2-year-old male wolf, which entered Baker County about Sept. 12, has since traversed Grant, Harney, Crook, Deschutes and, most recently, northern Lake County, according to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).

ODFW has designated the wolf as “OR-7” — meaning it’s the seventh Oregon wolf to be fitted with a tracking collar.

OR-7 was originally part of the Imnaha pack in Wallowa County.

ODFW biologists attached the GPS collar to the wolf on Feb. 25, 2011.

The collar records its location every six hours, and ODFW officials can get the information through the Internet (the data are not available to the general public).

A scarecrow greets visitors to the Tachenkos' corn maze near Keating.

By LISA BRITTON
For the Baker City Herald

We got lost in the maze.

Then again, I guess that’s the point of all the twists and turns and dead-ends — confuse you to the point that you have no idea if you’re coming or going.

In the words of my 4-year-old daughter: “Oh great, we’re lost!”

(At one point she proclaimed that we’d just have to live in the corn patch. Such drama.)

But Friday was a beautiful autumn day to be wandering in the six-acre corn field that Valerie and Rod Tachenko have turned into a maze.

Libby Rudolph, right, with her daughter, Jordan, 12, and son, Koby, 17. Libby was diagnosed with breast cancer last month.

By LISA BRITTON
For the Baker City Herald

Libby Rudolph admits she wasn’t as vigilant about mammograms as she should have been.

Her doctor recommended every two years.

Which should have been last year. She and a friend planned to go together.

“We never got around to it. Which is stupid,” says Rudolph, who just turned 47.

In early September of this year, she had her yearly exam, which included a clinical breast exam.

It was clean.

She went for a digital mammogram a few days later, on Sept. 12.

“That’s when they found the lump. It was deep,  near my chest wall,” she said, explaining why it wasn’t detected during the regular exam.

Mary Sue Rightmire, right, of Baker City, listens as Dave Felley of Energy Trust of Oregon suggests ways she can make her natural gas furnace run more efficiently — and cheaply.

By JAYSON JACOBY
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Dave Felley is creeping around Mary Sue Rightmire’s basement, peering into nooks, shining his tiny flashlight into crannies, and looking like nothing so much as a detective.

Which he is, basically.

Except Felley doesn’t carry a badge, and he isn’t looking for evidence of a crime.

Unless you consider wasting energy a crime, that is.

Rightmire invited Felley on Tuesday afternoon to scrutinize her Baker City home, from basement to attic, and tell her what’s wrong with it.

The Baker School Board will resume its discussion Tuesday regarding whether employees and members of the public should be allowed to bring guns or other dangerous or deadly weapons on school property or to school-sponsored events.

Board members are scheduled to discuss the issue during a work session starting at 5:30 p.m. at the District Office, 2090 Fourth St.

The regular board meeting starts at 6 p.m.

One of the five board members, Kyle Knight, adamantly opposes some language in an administrative rule that Superintendent Walt Wegener put into effect on Oct. 5.

Knight has submitted a revised version of the rule.

A new machine at the Baker County Jail takes fingerprints without messy ink.

By CHRIS COLLINS
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The job of fingerprinting inmates as they are booked into the Baker County Jail is not as messy — or as time consuming — as it used to be.

“Now we don’t have a lot of ink to clean up all over the place,” said Janice Clement, a corrections deputy who explained how the machine works at the jail Thursday.

That’s thanks to a $27,000 federal Criminal Justice grant that brought the process into the 21st century.

The grant was used to purchase an electronic scanner, which captures images of each prisoner’s fingerprints during booking.

Oregon voters might decide next year whether to ban studded tires, a common sight, and sound, on Baker County roads for more than 30 years.

A Portland man, Jeff Bernards, plans to collect 80,000 signatures needed to put a measure banning studded tires on the November 2012 ballot.

The Oregon Supreme Court this week approved the wording of Bernards’ proposed ballot measure.

It takes only 15 minutes for Rich Bergeman to turn a classroom into a camera — all he needs is black plastic, blue tape and a small hole cut into a pie pan.

Photography is magical, he tells the fifth-grade students at South Baker Intermediate School.

“It’s the only way to make a picture out of real life. It’s really a magical thing,” he said. “We’re going to see how magical it is by turning your classroom into a camera — a big one."

Baker County residents and businesses recycled a bit more than 7.5 million pounds of cardboard, paper, yard debris and other stuff in 2010.

Which is quite a bit.

And the county’s second-highest yearly total ever.

But it’s wasn’t as much as the year before.

The county set a record in 2009 by recycling 8.1 million pounds of material, according to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).