Monday morning I was watching several Juncos and Bushtits in the grass outside my kitchen window when I noticed some other little creatures scurrying around among them. At least three or four gophers were having a field day.

The fields around Mitchell cabin are honeycombed with gopher tunnels, but I seldom get to photograph the inhabitants.

While it’s fun to watch gophers pop out of the ground, dart around like field mice, and then dive back down their holes, they can be a nuisance. For a couple of years I tried to cultivate a vegetable garden, and while I could keep the deer out, the gophers were unstoppable. More than once I noticed a carrot top shaking inexplicably only to then be pulled underground root first.

In February 2009, rainwater flowing downhill through a gopher tunnel near my cabin created this artesian well where it surfaced.

For me, gophers are merely an annoyance, but for West Marin ranchers, gopher tunnels are a major problem. Tomales rancher John Jensen this week told me that according to agricultural authorities, there are 50 to 250 gophers per acre around here.

The problem is that in heavy rains, hillsides riddled with gopher tunnels act like sponges, which can result in mudslides. In January 1995, gopher tunnels triggered a huge slide on Gary Thornton’s ranch in Tomales.

So I wasn’t at all upset by this bobcat’s hunting gophers outside my window three years ago.

While I watched, the bobcat pounced and caught one as it emerged from its burrow. With the gopher in its teeth, the bobcat trotted uphill to dine in a patch of coyote brush.

In other wildlife news, the raccoon family which showed up on my deck in late July have now become nightly visitors. When the mother raccoon first brought the kits onto my deck (above), the youngsters had very little fear of me but kept looking around in puzzlement as to why they were there.

Mrs. Raccoon, of course, knew that my deck provides good hunting for bread and peanuts. Momma likes both, and the kits immediately took to honey-roasted peanuts. For awhile, however, the young showed no interest in bread, which was unfortunate because white bread is much cheaper than honey-roasted peanuts.

Eventually my girlfriend Lynn figured out the problem. The kits didn’t know how to eat a full slice of bread. Without picking up the bread on the deck, they would try to gnaw at it but would get nowhere. Lynn eventually started tearing the slices into small pieces, and the problem was solved. Their biggest problem now is getting our attention. Here Mrs. Raccoon and her three kits stand on a woodbox outside my dining-room window, hoping we will see them and put out food.

And what if Lynn and I are not to be seen when the raccoons look in the downstairs windows? Some of them have learned to climb onto the roof and peer in an upstairs window, much to the amusement of Lynn.

Several of my cat-owning friends have found gophers in their homes brought in as feline presents. Unpleasant but not worrisome. Other people I know have come home to discover a raccoon has found a way inside, typically through a cat door, and left their kitchens in shambles. More of a problem.

But I don’t know anyone who has ever found a bobcat in their house. In their hen house, yes, but not their own house. If you or anyone you know has had experience with Lynx rufus in your domicile, please send in a comment and tell us about it. It should make for a good story.

Afterward: As it turned out, two readers did have fascinating stories to tell about about bobcats, one in a house and one in a truck. The stories can be found by clicking on the comments section above.

In researching his 2008 book Vital Diversities: Balancing The Protection of Nature and Culture, Inverness writer Mark Dowie later recounted in the West Marin Review, “A Yupik native scientist [in Alaska] told me, ‘We have no word for ‘wilderness.’ What you call wilderness, we call our backyard.'”

This mother raccoon brought her three kits to my deck for the first time a week ago.

The Yurik concept of wilderness makes perfect sense to me. My backyard, even my deck, could easily be called “wilderness.”

My wilderness includes deer in my fields on a daily basis. On rare occasions I’ve seen coyotes, bobcats, and badgers, and every night a group of smaller animals shows up on my deck.

The critters at night are usually foxes, raccoons, and possums looking for bread or peanuts.

It’s often easy to hear the call of the wild in my backyard. Some alpha males, especially among red-winged blackbirds and raccoons, seem more intent on driving other males away from food than with getting some for themselves.

The second time the three kits showed up (right), their mother was not with them.

Before long, an adult raccoon began growling at them, and they took refuge in a narrow gap between my woodbox and the wall of my cabin. When the adult stuck around, they were too frightened to leave, so I finally went outside. This caused the adult to run off a short distance and provided the kits with a chance to escape.

After all, someone has to keep order on my deck, and it’s fallen to me to enforce the law of the wild.

The foxes get along with each other better than the raccoons do, and because they’re not intra-species rivals, the raccoons will often eat side by side with foxes when I put out peanuts. I’ve even had a possum join in, creating an ecumenical dinner for local wildlife.

Red-winged blackbirds look over my deck prior to landing on it.

Every day in the late afternoon I put out birdseed, which attracts pigeons, doves, quail and juncos, but most of all it brings in bluejays, towhees and red-winged blackbirds.

The birdseed also attracts roof rats. These cute little critters with long tails are amazingly good at climbing walls and railings, jumping onto the picnic table, and squeezing through tiny openings.

A fortnight ago, Linda Petersen of Inverness, ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, took a week’s vacation and left her Havanese dog Eli in the care of my girlfriend Lynn and me.

Late one afternoon, he, Lynn and I were sitting on my deck at sunset when Eli spotted one of the roof rats, which spotted Eli at the same time. I grow flowers on my deck in wine-barrel halves, and the rat scurried under one of the barrels. Immediately Eli was sniffing under the barrels, barking and growling.

It was pandemonium. While Eli would try to drive a rat out from under one barrel, another rat would pop out from under a nearby barrel and dash across my deck to safety. Before he was done, Eli had flushed seven roof rats. It was an exciting drama, but it made me glad that, at least for the moment, I’ve been able to seal off my basement against the rats. For now, they show up only when the birdseed is first scattered.

Quietly watching the drama but staying out of it was this Western fence lizard on my wall. It moved very little, depending on its coloring for camouflage. Fence lizards, I should note, are often dark when they first get up in the morning and become lighter as the day grows warmer. Kind of like the rest of us.

This week I’m reprinting a magazine article by award-winning guitarist and composer Moro Buddy Bohn, who lives in the hamlet of Salmon Creek just north of the town of Bodega Bay.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with him, Moro in 1963 recorded his first album, Buddy Bohn, Folksinger. In 1965, he performed on the Andy Williams Show, and in 1967, he toured with the New Christy Minstrels as a guest guitarist. From 1968 to 1970, Moro played at a private club, the Factory, which Paul Newman owned in Los Angeles.

In 1970, he recorded his second album, Places, and in 1972, he recorded his third album, A Drop in the Ocean, performing with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. One of Moro’s compositions, Vermouth Rondo from A Drop in the Ocean, became an international hit, and Moro used the royalties to build his home and recording studio at Salmon Creek.

An online biography notes he performed for King Fredrick IX of Denmark, Maharaja and Maharani of Gwalior, Queens Sirikit and Elizabeth II, Duchess Francesca in Granada, shaikh of Hofuf, King Bhumibol of Siam, His Highness, Shaikh Shakhbut II bin Sultan Al Nahyan, ruler of Abu Dhabi, for some friendly Bedouin champagne smugglers (while crossing the Arabian Desert as guest of their camel caravan), for the Maharaja of Sandur, Baron and Baroness Peiris of Sri Lanka, the International Council of Europe, and more.

Approximately 40 years later, Moro is now trying to get California State Parks to deal with a man-made threat to his home.

Moro Buddy Bohn on the beach near his Salmon Creek home. (Photo by Mary Barnett)

By Moro Buddy Bohn, Reprinted from Ocean magazine http://www.oceanmagazine.org/

A sand dune tsunami is swallowing our little beach forest at Salmon Creek Beach near Bodega Bay.

In the early 1980s, heavy equipment uprooted vegetation in a section of coastal dunes. With ground cover gone in this area, sand began drifting through the gap and creating this dune, which is now crossing public land and will soon reach private land. Plants and a small forest are being buried by the advancing dune.

Unfortunately, the forest’s trees, shrubs, and grasses, which were planted here by California State Parks, are what park ecologists now call non-native exotics. Here’s what has happened.

By the 1950s, human encroachment had destroyed the native dune grasses that stabilized Salmon Creek Beach for centuries. Unstable sand was burying plants and threatening the remaining plants, homes, roads, and even Bodega Bay’s fishing industry. According to US Department of Agriculture figures, drifting sand had created 1,000 acres of desert around Bodega Bay. To save the harbor, repeated dredging was necessary.

Attempts to re-stabilize the dunes with native grasses were unsuccessful, so the USDA imported the deep-rooting European dune grass, which had proven durable, even with human abuse, along the Mediterranean coast.

Beginning in 1952 under the leadership of the Gold Ridge Soil Conservation District, individual farmers, Bodega Bay Grange, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, Sonoma County supervisors, the State Division of Soil Conservation, and the State Division of Beaches and Parks, European grasses were planted around Bodega Bay with resounding success.

With the sand stabilized, it was possible to beautify our vast beach by planting a forest on it. So State Parks rangers brought in and planted, right in the sand, the most beautiful and hardy specie of tree they could find.

An archway in the forest. (Photo by Moro Buddy Bohn)

State Parks chose the Monterey cypress, which had proven itself along the Central California Coast, and brought in a few Monterey pines as well. Among the trees, they planted lupine with its fragrant yellow blossoms, myoporum, flowering iceplant, and other shrubs including rosemary bushes.

The beachfront paradise attracted an array of wildlife from near and far. By the early 1980s the beach forest’s aromas from flower blossoms, rosemary, and pine cones mingled with the fresh, salty air. Birds sang to the accompaniment of surf. Passageways formed through the tree branches, leading to quiet sanctuaries where the quail, rabbits, deer, and birds stopped to rest and munch on seeds or delicate, succulent blossoms.

For part of the year, Salmon Creek’s lagoon is cut off from the ocean by a seasonal sandbar. (Photo by Moro Buddy Bohn)

But it was too good to last. During the early 1980s a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers vessel got beached here in a winter storm. Heavy equipment was brought in to float the ship, and a section of the European grass was uprooted.

The Army Corps offered to replace the European grass. But by then nativism had taken possession of ecological thought, and replanting of “alien invader” grass was unthinkable to State Parks.

The denuded sand became a moving dune, a mass of windblown sand 40 feet high, covering the forest and its bird and animal habitat, approaching our roads and homes. Strong onshore afternoon winds continually pile up more sand. Only a small section of the forest still survives.

State Parks has placed an ecologist in charge. He says the forest is “alien, non-native, exotic, invasive” tree, shrub, and grass species that have no place on the Sonoma Coast, even though the forest was created by State Parks.

State measurements confirm that as a result of human activity a buildup of sand is steadily smothering this forest. Beachgoers, heavy equipment, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles, horses, and the dragging of driftwood logs to build fires have destroyed native plants, which had stabilized the dunes. Ironically, the state has refused to let humans, including the Army Corps of Engineers, undo the damage caused by humans. (Photo by Moro Buddy Bohn)

The state ecologist hopes the beach will run out of sand with which to supply the dune before it reaches our homes. He says he’ll bring in a bulldozer to save the homes if needed. At that point the forest will be gone, and along with it a large variety of nesting birds and other animals.

Today’s ecologists with whom I’ve spoken seem pleased with the dune’s progress because they’re anxious to be rid of any “invading” Monterey cypress trees.

For 28 years I’ve watched as the dune has gained size and groundspeed, measured by our ecologist each year since 2003. Its average annual movement these last eight years is more than 12 feet, about 3 inches per week.

The trees slowly suffocate, at 3 inches per week. Macabre. Trees sense their environment and communicate with each other in various ways. One is with pheromones. These trees are being buried alive. Meanwhile, swallowed, they stabilize the dune, strengthening it.

The dune’s cutting edge will begin swallowing the last vestige of forest within two years and arrive at private property in four to five years.

The runaway dune near the center of this photo is advancing on homes in the hamlet of Salmon Creek at the rate of about three inches per week. A parking lot for beachgoers is to its right. The creek itself is at the far right. Moro would like to see the state use a bulldozer to flatten part of the dune so that any of a number of groundcover plants can be mechanically planted to stabilize the sand and stop the dune’s advance. There are several native plants that could do the job, if the state were just willing to do its job. (Google satellite photo)

My girlfriend Lynn Axelrod owns a cottage in the woods near Forestville, and her tenant of two and a half years just moved out. As a result, she and I have been making repeated trips to her cottage during the past few weeks in order to get the property ready to be rented out again.

The cottage is completely ringed by tall redwoods, and I spent most of one day with a rake and pressure washer merely removing all the redwood needles that had accumulated on the roof.

A Western Pond Turtle sunning himself Tuesday at a pond next to Anastacio and Sue Gonzalez’s home in Point Reyes Station.

Last Friday, Lynn and I were on the Freestone-Valley Ford Road driving back to Point Reyes Station from Forestville when I spotted a Western Pond Turtle walking along the edge of the northbound lane. So I turned the car around and drove back to the turtle. Lynn got out, picked it up, and carried it to a rancher’s driveway where I had had room to pull off the road and park.

For a couple of minutes, we looked around trying to find a creek or pond where the turtle would be safe from traffic. Eventually we noticed a small pond beside the rancher’s long driveway. I could see the rancher standing outside his house, so I went through his gate and started up the driveway, and he walked down to meet me.

“We found this turtle on the road,” I told him. “Would it be all right if we put it in your pond?”

“That turtle must be trying to commit suicide,” replied the rancher. “You’re the fourth people to rescue him this week.” He gave us permission to put the turtle in the pond.

All this raises the question: why did that turtle persist in trying to walk along the edge of the pavement? Adult males have a larger home range (up to 2.4 acres) than females have (0.62 acres), so perhaps it was a male moving between wetlands.

Earlier this month, a Marin Municipal Water District aquatic biologist reported finding that an adult male pond turtle, which he had previously marked, had traveled from Phoenix Lake in Ross to Papermill Creek in Point Reyes Station. The 18-mile journey took two years and would have required the turtle to climb some steep hills and get around a number of dams.

Nonetheless, the turtle we found may well have been a female. June is the peak of the nesting season for northwestern pond turtles (the subspecies we have around here), and northwestern females have been known to crawl as far as 1.2 miles along a waterway to find a suitable nesting site.

Basking western pond turtles, such as these at the Gonzalezes’ pond in May 2010, can be aggressive in making sure they have enough room. Usually this consists of biting and ramming other turtles to push them off their perch. Luckily, such aggression is usually over by noon, which leaves the afternoon free for sunning. Or so I read.

Western pond turtle “populations are declining in southern California and over most of their northern range,” according to a study by Jeff Lovich of the US Geological Survey. “Habitat destruction seems to be the major cause of the decline. Today only northern California and southern Oregon support extensive populations.”

Well, if they’d just stop walking in the road….

This is the 300th posting on SparselySageAndTimely.com, and my friend Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles has urged me to write something commemorating the occasion.

The first posting went online back on Nov. 28, 2006, and at least one per week has followed ever since.

Usually it’s been fun although on a few slow weeks I’ve felt like The Desperate Man (at right), a self-portrait by Gustave Corbet (1819-1877).

As was explained in the first posting, keeping a log on the web (i.e. a blog) is a bit like keeping a log on a ship. It includes both a journal of one’s trip through life and reports on significant events along the way. How a web log came to be called a blog, by the way, reflects the whimsy that has long characterized those who gambol on the World Wide Web of the Internet.

A blogger named Jorn Barger coined the term in a Dec. 17, 1997, entry on his site, jokingly turning “web log” into “we blog.” And who is Jorn Barger? Wikipedia reports he is editor of “Robot Wisdom,” has taught at Northwestern, and once lived at The Farm (Stephen Gaskin’s commune in Tennessee).

Some weeks my topics were obvious: major storms, the November 2007 oil spill along the coast, community celebrations, and the deaths of prominent people. Some postings, such as those recounting West Marin history, required a bit of research.

West Marin’s animal life, both wild and domestic, has been a constant of this blog. Here two horses in a field next to mine enjoyed a sunny day last weekend.

Naturally, so to speak, some wildlife adventures chronicled here probably aren’t as fascinating to all readers as they are to me. This past week I’ve been delighted that a new possum (seen here) has begun visiting my cabin in the evening. It’s younger than the one that had been coming around, and both are more skittish than the possum a couple of years ago that would let me pet her as she snacked on peanuts.

Regular readers know I am particularly intrigued when seemingly unrelated events turn out to be connected. My favorite such posting told how a grim, 1909 Hungarian play called Lliom led to the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, which in 1963 led to Gerry and the Pacemakers’ rhythmic recording of You’ll Never Walk Alone, with that rendition then becoming a worldwide professional soccer anthem.

Readers too seem to like following these connections.

My April 19 posting What does the Easter Bunny have to do with Jesus’ resurrection? drew readers by the hundreds.

The posting told how Gregory the Great (at right), who was pope from 590 to 604, unintentionally brought about the Easter Bunny’s becoming associated with Jesus’ resurrection.

Some 877 people dropped by here this past Easter, 308 on Easter Day alone, to read the story. I was struck by the fact that 270 of those visitors found their way here via Google.

While we’re on the topic of Google, are any of you old enough to remember the 1923 hit tune Barney Google? “Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google had a wife three times his size./ She sued Barney for divorce/ Now he’s living with his horse.

“Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google, has a girl that loves the guys./ Only friends can get a squeeze./ That girl has no enemies./ Barney Google, with his googley eyes.”

Nor should we forget the comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, which is still going strong after 92 years.

Doesn’t all this make you wonder about the origin of the corporate name Google? In fact, it comes from a misspelling of “googol,” which refers to the number one followed by 100 zeros. Nonetheless, the verb “to google” (use the Google search engine) is now included in major dictionaries. But I digress….

This being spring (witness the iris on my deck), I’ll end with a poem composed for this commemorative posting.

With thanks to T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Frost for their contributions:

West of Eden

The hollow men/ Headpiece filled with straw./ Starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.

Who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world./ Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward,/ All in the valley of Death/ Rode the six hundred./ To die, to sleep.

Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light./ I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep.

“What do you think of that Osama deal?” a guy passing through Point Reyes Station asked a couple of us in the barbershop Tuesday. I was a bit surprised by how he phrased the question but said the death of Osama bin Laden should over time make the world a safer place.

“It might have been a big deal if it had happened in 2002 or 2003,” the traveler said. “Now it’s a matter of: ‘So bin Laden’s dead, how ’bout those Giants?'”

The other two of us saw the death as more momentous, insisting that bin Laden (at left) was a ruthless fanatic who would have continued to order terrorist attacks were he still around to lead al Qaeda.

However, neither of us thought bin Laden’s death would put an end to all terrorism.

Probably most Americans are relieved that the mastermind of 9/11 has finally been brought to justice. Governments of several Muslim countries have also expressed approval of the raid that killed him. The the man on the street in much of the Muslim world, however, is as indifferent as the traveler in the barbershop to bin Laden’s demise.

In the Middle East, bin Laden and al Qaeda have been overshadowed by rebellions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. Bin Laden had become a relic from a bygone era.

So the stranger was unquestionably right about one thing: during the 40 minutes that justice was catching up with Osama bin Laden, billions of other people were going about their lives as always. To most people, change is inevitable except from a vending machine.

On my hillside, Sunday was the start of the thistle-pulling season, but thanks to a fortnight of prickly eradication a year ago, there are far fewer thistles in my field this year. Little did my girlfriend Lynn and I know that as we labored, President Obama was preparing to announce that the biggest prick of all had been eradicated halfway around the world in an Abbottabad, Pakistan, mansion.

He was a meglomaniac who liked to blow things up and who had inherited millions of dollars by the time he was 14. Despite advocating asceticism for others, Osama bin Laden was found living in luxury with three wives, a stash of pornographic magazines and videos in his bedroom, and hundreds of marijuana plants growing in rows among cabbages and potatoes just outside his walls.

He died when shot in the eye and chest during an incredibly precise, 40-minute raid by Navy SEALs. (If you’ve ever wondered about the acronym, it stands for Sea, Air, and Land Navy Special Warfare Unit.)

When I published The Point Reyes Light, I editorialized in favor of the US going after bin Laden in Afghanistan and against our going after Saddam Hussein in Iraq. During the buildup to the Iraq War, I tried to warn then-President George W. Bush, but did he listen? Noooo. Presidents are notorious for ignoring small-town editors, and as I predicted, we ended up in a war from which we still cannot extricate ourselves.

“You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.” Winston Churchill

Eradicating thistles was a bit tricky Sunday because many were hidden by unusually tall grass, the result of a wet winter. Here a fawn and a doe are barely visible as they graze below my deck.

Far from the turmoil in the Middle East, evenings around my cabin are still filled with foxes, raccoons, and the occasional possum. Here a gray fox carefully approaches a raccoon eating peanuts outside my kitchen door. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

“I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn’t it.” Groucho Marx

The raccoon isn’t happy to have the fox share its dinner, but it would rather go on eating than waste time fighting over the bounty. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Watching two competing species learn to accommodate each other started me musing. Bin Laden with all his money and religious fanaticism was less civilized than a pair of wild animals. Merely attending a mosque hadn’t made him a true Muslim any more than standing in a garage would have made him a car.

The possum at right, like all the other animals in this posting, were photographed around my cabin during the past week.

Caught by surprise in Inverness Park. On Monday I stopped by Perry’s Delicatessen to buy a couple of pouches of Captain Black pipe tobacco.

“I always buy it here rather than over the hill because I want to patronize a local merchant,” I told owner Dan Thompson, only to have him correct my pronunciation. “You pat-row-nize merchants,” he said. “You don’t pay-trow-nize them.”

Regularly buying from a merchant is obviously different from condescending to him, but it had never before occurred to me that the pronunciation changed with the meaning. Might the difference be a matter of British versus American English? One point for the deli owner, as well as West Marin wildlife. Zero for bin Laden, as well as thistles.

One of the great pleasures of living in West Marin is the variety of wildlife I see around my cabin every day. Here is a sampling of the creatures I saw last Friday, beginning with a salamander. These amphibians have more of a history than one might think.

The second salamander I found on  firewood in one week. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

As someone who heats his cabin with a woodstove, I go out of my way to insure no bugs are sent to a fiery death in the inferno. I’ve gone so far as to dislodge a hibernating yellow jacket before sticking its log in the fire.

A week ago, I was about to toss a piece of firewood into my woodstove when I spotted a salamander hiding in one of the log’s cracks. Much relieved that I had discovered the hapless amphibian in time, I naturally put it back outdoors.

Many ancient Greeks and Romans believed that salamanders are born in fire. Some salamanders inhabit rotting logs, and when the logs were put in a fire, the salamanders would try to escape, leading people to believe that salamanders were created by the flames.

Salamander in my hand. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Finding a salamander in my firewood a week ago made me doubly alert for others, and on Friday I found a second.

I placed the second salamander among some flowers growing in a wine barrel on my deck, only to have a woodrat jump out of the barrel the moment I did so.

Immediately I worried that I had saved the salamander from fire only to feed it to a woodrat. The salamander, however, quickly crawled out of sight, and there was nothing to be done.

A woodrat on the leg of my picnic table last Friday.

A gray  fox on the railing of my deck Friday night. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Foxes and raccoons have become regular nighttime visitors on my deck, as has been noted in several postings.

Also on the railing Friday night was this raccoon.

The two are not fond of each other, but after I spent several weeks conditioning them, they learned to get along in order to share in the peanuts I scattered outside my kitchen door. My technique was one I’d previously used in convincing a possum and raccoon to dine together.

Initially I put out two piles of peanuts several feet apart, one for each species, and over the course of several nights moved the piles closer together until the critters were eating nose to nose.

A possum, fox, and raccoon share a nighttime snack.

On Friday night, this conditioning reached new heights when a possum, fox, and raccoon all showed up. By placing peanuts fairly close together, I was able to get all three critters to eat nose to nose without squabbling.

Afterward I wondered if they were as amazed as I at what had just occurred. It was the perfect culmination of a single day spent watching my smaller neighbors.

The ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, Linda Petersen, a week ago asked Lynn and me to take care of her Havanese dog Eli for three days while she was away. Lynn and I had done so before, and since Eli is a fun dog, we readily agreed to take him again.

Eli is always happy to see me and often hops into my lap when I sit down, perhaps because I give him an excessive amount of petting and scratching. Eli reciprocates by frequently cleaning my beard. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Although he’s almost always inside the house when foxes arrive on the deck each evening, for three days Eli managed to drive them off with his barking. The raccoons, however, were more nonchalant and stood outside the kitchen’s glass door looking him in the face.

Eli’s big adventure of the weekend occurred after I had let go of his leash and he discovered a flock of wild turkeys in my pasture. Barking as he ran, Eli scattered the flock. Most of the turkeys flew across a small canyon while several others flew to the top of a fairly tall pine tree. I had never before seen a turkey on the wing make such a steep climb.

Once Eli was gone, the foxes felt safe in returning. Ironically, eating nose to nose on my deck with one or more raccoons bothered them less than being on the deck when Eli was inside this glass door.

Most wild animals on this hill act as if my cabin were my cage. The moment I get out of it, they get skittish, the foxes more than the deer, as can be seen.

When I’m inside, however, foxes feel comfortable coming up to the door even when it’s open.

A fox sits on a woodbox outside my dining-room window and surveys the dinner table.

The raccoons around my cabin often do the same thing. (Photo by Linda Petersen)

Is a fox shy or fierce?

It’s ironic that we tend to think of foxes as shy. Their reputation was much fiercer in the past. There is a legend about a hungry boy in ancient Sparta who stole a fox he intended to eat.

When the boy encountered some soldiers, he hid the stolen fox under his tunic and answered their questions. Although the fox was chewing into his stomach, the boy endured the pain without flinching to avoid being exposed as a thief.

Sparta, of course, had its own code of conduct. In Greek legend, the boy was not dishonorable for stealing the fox but admirable for his stoicism.

Unlike Eli, I’m on generally good terms with the foxes. I can hand feed them slices of bread, but I’m not about to scratch their bellies or let them clean my beard.

The Age of Revolution once referred to the years from 1775 to 1848 when absolutist monarchies were forcibly replaced by republics or constitutionalist states. These upheavals included the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and revolutions throughout Latin America.

After World War II, a second Age of Revolution occurred in Africa as colonies freed themselves from their European masters. Most of these revolts were in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.

Twenty-six wild turkeys two weeks ago marched for food in Point Reyes Station.

Now a third Age of Revolution is sweeping the world. It all began last month when street protesters in Tunisia toppled the 23-year regime of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. That, of course, helped inspire street protests which earlier this month led to the resignation of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after a 29-year rule. An estimated 365 protesters had been killed by the time he left office.

Immediately protesters in Yemen demanded that President Ali Abdullah Saleh resign after 32 years in office. Saleh has said he won’t seek reelection in 2013, but protesters want him out now. Nine protesters have been killed so far.

Street protests also spread to Bahrain where seven people have been killed in demonstrations against the prime minister, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman al Khalifa, over economic problems in the island kingdom.

Other street protests in the region are occurring in Libya (1,000 or more protesters killed), Morocco (five killed), Algeria (two killed), Kuwait (some reportedly tortured), and Jordan (eight injured).

Elsewhere street protests have been cropping up against authoritarian regimes in China, Russia, and…. Wisconsin?

A fox on my deck last week looking for bread.

The street protesters in Wisconsin, who are upset with their anti-union governor, Republican Scott Walker, are reminiscent of women strikers in Lawrence, Massachusetts, a century ago. Their demands back then? “We want bread and roses too.”

Nor is the fox alone in its desire for more bread, along with roses. Three raccoons showed up tonight to join in the demonstration.

Even a possum waddled onto my deck to take part.

The fox, the raccoons, and the possum all want bread but prefer peanuts. By offering them a few goobers, I was able to convince them to pose with a rose for these portraits.

No doubt authoritarian potentates from Vladimir Putin to Moammar Khadafy to Gov. Walker wish their problems could be solved for peanuts. But they can’t, which is why they find common people around the globe to be revolting.

Valentine’s Day will be Monday, and here are some thoughts for the occasion. The first is from Kaiser Permanente, which sent out a mass mailing this week noting that dark chocolate is good for your heart and that “some say it even mimics the feeling of being in love.”

While on the topic of hearts, here is my annual Valentine’s Day greeting from a flock of Canada geese flying over Inverness Ridge, as seen from my deck.

Romantically inclined gentlemen have traditionally given their ladies flowers for Valentine’s Day. Here Mrs. Raccoon, who works part time at Flower Power in Point Reyes Station, shows off a particularly nice bouquet.

How men respond to feminine beauty is to some degree, of course, a matter of culture, as we could see when an attractive young woman dropped what she was carrying during the G8 countries’ summit in Canada last June.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was too preoccupied with his own appearance to notice, and President Barack Obama remained all business while French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi admired her comely derriére.

By now Valentine’s Day is often associated with greeting cards called Valentines, which are typically printed with saccharin
messages or a bit of doggerel: “The rose is red./ The violet’s blue./ The honey’s sweet,/ and so are you.”

The origin of that line, by the way, can be found 420 years ago in Edmund Spenser’s poem The Faerie Queen: “She bath’d with roses red, and violets blew,/ And all the sweetest flowres, that in the forrest grew.”

By the early 1800s, Valentine’s cards were being assembled in factories, and with the development of modern printing in the years that followed, printed messages replaced handwritten notes. The woman holding this large, pink Valentine was photographed about 1910.

There must be something trippy about this time of year. If you’ve never experienced an acid trip, the following kenesthetic hallucination will give you an idea of what it’s like.

Here’s what to do: click on the link at the end of this posting, then “click me to get trippy,” then stare at the center of the screen for a full 30 seconds, then look at your hand holding the mouse without moving it away from the mouse. You’ll be amazed at the result: Happy Valentine’s Day!