Think you know your Missoula City Council peeps?

Well, you may know which ones will babble about the budget and sing about sidewalks.

But wanna guess who's eaten fried bumblebees? Flipped a $600,000 coin? How about which ones have used their wheels as homes? (Yep, that's more than one.) Care to name the councilman who almost became a minister?

"My interest in philosophy, in religious studies has been a lifelong passion and rooted in just personal interest about how we inhabit this planet that we live on," said ... guess who?

If you said Dave Strohmaier, you're right. Strohmaier is running for re-election in Ward 1, and his campaign Web site notes he holds a master's degree in religion from Yale Divinity School. He toyed with the idea of going into the ministry, and he still thinks about spirituality.

"I still very much have an interest in thinking critically about those very deep beliefs and values that we all share," Strohmaier said.

So maybe you disagree with his stance on issues, or another candidate's gastronomic choices. ("They tasted like potato chips. ... No, they didn't taste like chicken.") But there's no denying that among the candidates lining up for a turn on the Missoula City Council, there's smarts (Yale!), the spirit of adventure, a bit of scrappiness, a well of empathy, and respect for the land and Montana traditions.

Last week, tech savvy Marilyn Marler used her BlackBerry to e-mail tidbits from the Mint Bar and Grill in Lewistown. She'd been antelope hunting in Jordan, and was heading to Montague for pheasant hunting.

The most dangerous thing the Ward 6 councilwoman has ever done?

"I used to eat a lot of fatty foods before I found out I have high cholesterol," wrote Marler. And she added this public service announcement: "Get your cholesterol checked because heart disease is the silent killer."

So fatty foods are out, but antelope is in. The best meal she ever ate was an antelope and mashed potato bagel sandwich her husband made her for lunch one day.

"I ate it on the side of Mount Sentinel during a physically grueling workday," wrote Marler. "It was perfect."

And speaking of fatty foods and perfect meals, it's Ryan Morton who tossed those fried bumblebees down the hatch. Morton, a candidate in Ward 1, once taught English in other countries. He declined dog soup in Korea, but the bees? Taiwan's fault.

"It was my favorite dish at the table. I ate almost all of them," Morton said. Many, many meals later, he still salivates at the thought of the bugs gone crispy. "I miss it. And every time I see bees, I'm like, ummm."

John Quandt is another one for far-flung adventure. He and his sweetie spent their fifth wedding anniversary on Isla Mujeres off the Yucatan Peninsula. Perhaps not incidentally, it's a place where the Mayans used to worship women.

Sounds like easy living, but Quandt is also one of the candidates who has lived out of his truck in rougher times. And back to the tropics ...

Quandt, whose grandma is from Mexico, said the small island isn't a tourist trap, but a slice of old Mexico. Shark sightings? No, gracias. Scooters? Lost salt shakers? Por supuesto!

"It's just one of those places where you listen to Jimmy Buffett's 'Margaritaville,' and you think, this is it," said Quandt, a Ward 3 candidate. "This is what he was singing about."

Higher up in a colder region, Roy Houseman has stood awash in blood, water and salmon juices. For six seasons, he worked at the E.C. Phillips and Son cannery in Ketchikan, Alaska.

"I used to head fish for four hours at a time," Houseman said.

The cannery processed anywhere from 100,000 to 300,000 pounds of wild salmon every day, a trove of fish heads. By the time the Ward 2 candidate's third season rolled around, he supervised a crew of 60 people and was just 20 years old.

Some old cannery workers can't stand to be in the same grocery store aisle with a can of salmon, but Houseman said he can eat the fish just fine, though he's particular about the type. Likes: sockeye, king and silver or coho.

That's a tale of hard work, and there are stories of hard living, too. Kathy Greathouse, a candidate in Ward 6, said she's grown to be an empathetic person because of difficulties in her own past.

"I grew up in a lot of different foster homes, with parents with drinking issues," Greathouse said. "And I broke the cycle."

So Watson Children's Shelter has a big space in her heart, and anything she can do to help raise money for them, she does. Watson Children's Shelter calls itself "a safe haven for children in crisis."

"I would put them on a pedestal, because they weren't around when I was little," said Greathouse, a successful builder.

So the homes of councilors and council hopefuls come in all shapes and sizes. Take Councilman Bob Jaffe's first digs in the Garden City.

"I first came to Missoula living in a school bus," Jaffe said, a 1952 GMC. "One of those dirty hippies living in their bus."

He's got a more traditional home now, but the Ward 3 councilor still has an affinity for those buses. He and his wife had a school bus on some land they own outside Missoula, and one of their sons was born there. The Black Mountain fire destroyed that part-time home, and they replaced it with another bus. Yet another Jaffe school bus serves as his wife's art studio.

"They just make wonderful spaces if you're short," said Jaffe, who doesn't tower over too many adults, at least physically. "If you're more than 5-foot-6, they don't work anymore."

Sometimes, there's just no elegant way to broach a subject. Mike O'Herron? He speaks sign language, studied American Sign Language for roughly three years, and was a beginning interpreter.

"I didn't stay with it long enough to get really good," said O'Herron, candidate in Ward 5.

He came by it because he had a friend who was deaf, and that person introduced him to other friends who were deaf, and soon enough, he was learning the language. It's been years since he's spoken it, but he has favorite phrases.

"I'm on the fence." (The phrase isn't a reflection of how he'll behave when it comes time to vote on the council, should he be elected.)

"It's like a little person on a fence leaning back and forth," O'Herron said. "It's hard to describe in words. It's definitely a visual concept."

Here's another one: "Oh, I see."

"It's a facial expression," O'Herron said. "Believe it or not, it's the letter Y that you shake up and down."

You have to be there for that one, but not for the disaster Jon Wilkins caused in San Diego a long, long time ago. Hopefully, long enough any statutes of limitation are expired.

When his children were young, the family took a Chevy van with captain seats and a carrier on top on a road trip. In San Diego, his wife got sick, and he hauled the children off to a restaurant. On the way back, a problem arose in the underground garage.

"There was this pipe hanging down that I didn't notice, and I hit it," Wilkins said. "It was the main water pipe to the hotel."

A sign said the pipe hung higher than it actually did, said the Ward 4 councilman. So he performed perhaps the only act bordering on criminal - "a little deceitful" - in his entire life.

"We went in and told the front desk they had a leak in the garage. And me and my son took the van outside, parked it, and wiped it down with paper towels."

They departed, and he swore his children to silence. Four hundred miles north of the hotel, he finally told his wife. Wilkins is running unopposed, but he isn't sharing any more stories, either.

Speaking of sharing, though, Councilman Dick Haines once made a fellow marathon runner's day. He planned to run the Governor's Cup in Helena, and Haines knew the water supply along the route would be "pretty meager."

The day before, he stocked little juice jars at strategic intervals along the run, some with water, some with Gatorade.

As he ran and chatted with other runners the day of the race, a fellow marathoner remarked that she was thirsty.

"I said, would you like water or Gatorade?" said Haines, of Ward 5. "She looked at me like I was nuts."

Sure enough, though, Haines was coming up on one of his stashes in the weeds. The marathoner found his thirst quenchers, and offered his temporary running partner her choice of drinks.

"She drained the water, and I drained the Gatorade."

She found him after the race to tell him the drink was a life saver.

So that's sharing, and there's shenanigans, too. That's John Hendrickson's department, and it's more like teasing.

The Ward 2 councilman is a collector, and he used to be a coin buyer. At an auction in Los Angeles, Hendrickson was grading coins for a sale from the Johns Hopkins collection.

At one point, the director of the auction presented him with a rare Brasher Doubloon. Hendrickson said it wasn't a pristine coin because it's been around since the 1700s. It was worth some $600,000, but Hendrickson had handled many spendy coins.

"He showed me the coin, and I flipped it ... much to his horror," Hendrickson said.

Yes, he caught it. Had he dropped it, it would have had a soft landing anyway, he said. The director, a friend, just looked at him and said nothing.

"I did it for a goof," Hendrickson said.

Reporter Keila Szpaller can be reached at 523-5262, keila.szpaller@missoulian.com or on MissoulaRedTape.com.