You are not where you belong, Billy. Credit: Wendy/Jeff Sparks/Torquemada/ Getty Images
You are not where you belong, Billy.
You are not where you belong, Billy. Wendy/Jeff Sparks/Torquemada/ Getty Images

Get the mountain goats to the chopper! There’s an operation underway to airlift a whole bunch of mountain goats from Olympic National Park to the North Cascades. Crews have to wrangle, tranquilize, and airlift about 725 of the goats since they aren’t native to the Olympic Peninsula. It’s all part of the National Park Service’s mountain goat management plan, obviously.

Apparently 17 people have been killed by trains this year and I’m only just finding out: Yesterday afternoon, a man walking across the train tracks near South Spokane Street was struck and killed by a freight train. Trains were stopped and impacted hundreds of commuters. This article really glosses over the whole “17 people have died from trains in 2018” thing. That feels like a lot.

Mount Vernon High School teacher named Washington’s teacher of the year: Robert Hand is a family and consumer sciences teacher. Hand has been a hugely positive influence on his students, especially those who didn’t speak English, according to his students. Now, Hand will vie for the national teacher of the year title. Imagine if that was something like Miss America. What would the rounds look like?

Update on the teacher strike: Centralia has reached a tentative agreement but school will still be closed today. Meanwhile, Tacoma and Tumwater are still striking.

Australian firefighters shot at by hunters while firefighting in Washington: Maybe. Australian firefighters were fighting a fire near the White Pass ski area in August when they were pursued by two hunters. They were chased across a ridge and shot at. This is what an Australian paper has reported. Law enforcement in the U.S. says this didn’t happen. Apparently, there were two hunters hunting bears in the area. They fired shots and missed but weren’t shooting at anyone. Except this is weird because there was supposedly a fire going on. Why would anyone be out hunting in a fire?

What gives, Bumbershoot? We wanted to know what the attendance numbers were and Bumbershoot was super weird about it. The festival was noticeably smaller this year to those of us who attended. Bumbershoot said they don’t give out numbers. They’ve given out numbers multiple times in the past. We’ll wait.

I’m ready for moisture: Will the weather give it to us? Hard to say. I have no clue where my rain jacket is, though. I think I lost it moving houses. Give me a little more time until you actually bust out the wet weather, Mother Nature, I gotta find this.

Happy 9/11, the U.S. has spent $1.5 trillion on war since the attacks: Ah, 17 years and trillions of dollars, what a milestone. The wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria have racked up quite the bill in U.S. dollars spent. The humanitarian bill is pretty steep, too. Imagine how many innocent people were killed with that amount of money.

Donald Trump headed to 9/11 memorial services in Pennsylvania: This would be a fun caption contest. Mine is: “Pic of me if I’d been on Flight 93.”

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Florence is a mean lookin’ gal: She also could be a public health nightmare. North Carolina has a lot of manure from the hog and poultry industry. That could seep into waterways when Florence hits. There’s also a coal-ash plant that hasn’t been cleaned up. Florence is looking like the biggest hurricane to hit the Carolinas in 30 years. It could be a rough ride over there.

Wales develops drug that regrows insulin: They’re calling the drug groundbreaking. Two patients with diabetes have undergone testing with the drug. So far there have been no side effects. Scientists are looking for eight people with diabetes to take part in a wider-range of trials, according to the BBC.

More on that Dallas cop who shot a man inside his own apartment: You know the story by now — white female cop enters apartment assuming it’s her own, it’s not, she shoots the man inside. An affidavit was released Monday and seemed to be entirely based on the officer’s statement, discounting witness statements. According to the affidavit, the police officer issued verbal commands which the victim didn’t comply with and that’s when she shot him. Witnesses, on the other hand heard “ a woman’s voice saying, ‘Let me in! Let me in!’ Then they heard gunshots, after which one witness said she heard a man’s voice say, ‘Oh my God! Why did you do that?’” according to the Associated Press.

Headline of the week: Mega-rich family behind opioid crisis has second, secret opioid company

Abandon all hope ye who enter here: A poll surveying 77,000 Americans found that the country’s favorite Mexican restaurant is — can we get a drum roll? — Taco Bell.

Tonight’s best Seattle entertainment options include: An anarchic 1970s punk throwback with the Vibrators, the Lucky Boys, and Tough Times, the opening of the Broadway musical adaptation of that movie about pie, Waitress, and An Evening with Jane Fonda in support of One Fair Wage, a campaign to set restaurant pay at standard minimum wage.

Reminder! Send me your breakfasts tomorrow morning!

Nathalie Graham covers anything she finds fun, weird, or interesting. You can find a lot of that in her column, Play Date. Her work has also appeared around town in The Seattle Times, GeekWire, and the...