Deer-crossing signs are headed for extinction because deer are everywhere — a danger to drivers now so ubiquitous that in his State of the State address this year, Gov. Pawlenty put “trading real-life stories of how almost every one of us has hit a deer with our car” on his list of Minnesota’s “simple pleasures.” Pawlenty was taking poetic license: Deer crashes are down, though (human) fatalities are up.

Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

EVELETH: Iron Range panel rejoices over unallotment reprieve. Pawlenty’s cuts spared the Iron Range Resources Board, which includes several DFLers said to be vying for his office. [Mesabi Daily News]

MANKATO: Big day for welfare-seeking. Officials believe the 28 applications for aid they received on June 2 set a single-day record for Blue Earth County; layoffs and migrants don’t explain away the trend of increasing need. [Mankato Free Press]

BENSON: Private prison chafes at tax valuation. Swift County and Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) are $20 million apart on the value of CCA’s for-profit Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton and are likely headed for court. [West Central Tribune]

WINONA: Seminary’s ordinations illegitimate, Vatican says. Thirteen will be ordained today at St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary, part of an ultraconservative order that’s on the outs with Rome — although Pope Benedict lifted a ban on its bishops, including a Holocaust-denier who taught in Winona for 15 years. [Associated Press]

ELK RIVER: Bank robber tried two-wheeled getaway, police say. His face was wrapped in bandages because he’d been in a car crash, the robber told bank staff; cops nabbed a man on a bike not far away. [St. Cloud Times]

MINNEAPOLIS: Elmer L. Andersen had short term, long shadow. The late Republican who declined to drag out the 1962 recount for governor after serving only two years in the office nonetheless had a great influence on Minnesota and is the subject of a 100th-birthday celebration and exhibit. [Burnsville This Week]