Sometime next year I’ll get around to blogging about our wonderful recent vacation to the Olympic Peninsula and Seattle – one of the most fun things was dropping in on my friend Seattle Tammy at her store, Books on 7th, in Hoquiam Washington.

You can even BUY BOOKS FROM THEIR ONLINE STORE, and I happen to know they just got in a big consignment of old cookery books…

Turns out Hoquiam is now famous after a recent incident with a deceased member of the Family Mustelidae put them on the international news wires, and LOLmarten images went viral.

“We’re not all running around here with weasels,” the mayor of Hoquiam, Jack Durney, insists.

His tone is genial, but he admits to a level of frustration as today the Google alerts for “Hoquiam” pile up from national sources, most containing an explanation of the distinction between a marten and a weasel.

“A marten is a member of the weasel family,” helpfully concludes the ur-AP story on the assault by a man also carrying a dead marten.

What Durney wishes national media would ask him about is Governor Gregoire awarding Hoquiam a Smart Communities Award for the third year in a row. Hoquiam’s downtown revitalization campaign won under the “Development Project to Implement a Plan” category. Radio station KBKW reports:

The ongoing project has focused on public improvements to downtown including new ADA accessible sidewalks, street trees, decorative lamp posts and a new riverfront walkway. Hoquiam has seen a burst in new business activity and business improvements through the opening of Tully’s, Levee Feed and Pet Supply, Books on 7th, Pure Clothing, and the 8th Street Ale House to name a few.

via Beyond Dead Weasels, a New Hoquiam Emerges From the Trees | The SunBreak.

HEY YA!!! I was wondering why all the FUCK YOU!!! I’M A MARTEN! shirts suddenly appeared in Second Life (Tammy made some to give away to mutual friends), and I’d seen a few LOLmarten macros in my feed, too.

Only the other day I was commiserating with Tammy about business being slow and recommended she find herself some free publicity, and here she is in the news, sorta kinda, with dead martens asserting their martenhood all over town. Or possibly minkness, as Tammy notes:

The Dave Barry rule applies here: You just can’t make this stuff up. Hoquiam Police Chief Jeff Myers was contacted by the Game Department, as martens hadn’t been seen on the Harbor for 50 years. After seeing a photo, they replied “Never mind, it’s a mink.”

If you love books, Tammy’s shop in Hoquiam is a fun place to stop by – small enough to be cozy, big enough to have an interesting and eclectic selection. We also patronized the 8th Street Ale house for lunch, where she and I enjoyed our Hoppy Bitch Ales very much, thank you.

With all this world-wide attention focused on Hoquiam, it seems poised to make great strides as the center of all your marten-based small predator needs. It’s a cute town, aiming to get cuter with the planned walkway along the waterfront. Drop by sometime soon! If it turns out it really was a mink, that’s okay, too.