Great blue herons are the most widespread variety of heron in North America, and one of them has taken to frequenting the field around Mitchell cabin.

Great blue herons typically weigh 4.5 to 8 pounds and measure 36 to 55 inches from their heads to their tails. Their wing spans are huge, 5.5 to 6.5 feet. As birds go, their stride is also impressive, usually around nine inches in a straight line.

A Great blue heron and a Blacktail doe take a late-afternoon stroll together in my pasture.

Although herons do much of their hunting in shallow water, where they prey on small fish, crabs, shrimp, and insects, they also hunt in fields such as mine, where they dine on rodents, frogs, snakes, and even small birds. Great blues swallow their prey whole and have been known to choke on oversized morsels.

In other matters, if you have not yet seen the YouTube video of a “flash mob” in the Antwerp, Belgium, train station, you really ought to.

As people walk through the bustling station, a recording of Julie Andrews singing Do Re Me from The Sound of Music starts playing. Dancers young and old gradually emerge from the crowd until roughly 200 of them are prancing in the center of the lobby, much to the delight of onlookers.

Most of us know the song: “Do, a deer, a female deer; re, a drop of golden sun; mi, a name I call myself; fa, a long, long way to run…” The tune was running through my head yesterday, so I began singing it for my friend Lynn Axelrod.

When I came to “ti, a drink with jam and bread,” however, she was surprised. “I always thought it was ‘a drink with German bread,’ Lynn laughed. “Julie Andrews’ enunciation must not have been very good.”

I’d add that it’s just as easy to spot something else that probably contributed to Lynn’s misunderstanding. In the musical, Julie Andrews as a governess teaches the song to the von Trapp family children to mitigate the Austrian-military-style parenting of Capt. von Trapp.

As it happens, there is a word for mishearing a lyric the way Lynn did: mondegreen. It comes from people misunderstanding a line in an old Scottish ballad, “Thou hae slay the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green,” as “Thou hae slay the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen.”

Other notable mondegreens include a line from a hymn, “the cross I’d bear” being heard as “the cross-eyed” bear.” Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “There’s a bad moon on the right” has likewise been misheard as, “There’s a bathroom on the right.” (Please see the 1st and 3rd comments regarding this one.)

But my favorite mondegreen is confusion over a lyric from the Beatles’ song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. On occasion, “the girl with kaleidoscope eyes” has been been misheard as “the girl with colitis goes by.”

Western Africa. Ghana is in the center at the bottom of the map.

I used to wonder who the viewers are of all the beauty and wisdom this blog imparts each week, so I checked. Although numbers vary from day to day, the largest group of readers consistently comes from the United States, particularly California.

They’re followed (at the moment, which is fairly typical) by: Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, India, Australia, and Mexico. Somewhat to my surprise, however, were the many regular visits this blog has been receiving from the geographically small country of Ghana on the west coast of Africa.

Of the roughly 200 countries on earth, Ghana was recently 9th in visits, is currently 15th, and has consistently been in the top 25.

These are not the robotic visits of computers making contacts with this blog for only an instant. Typical visits last from 45 seconds to nine minutes, and often they come from people who have never visited this site before.

By African standards, Ghana with a population of 18 million is not unusually impoverished thanks to gold, oil, diamond, bauxite, and agricultural exports. Its literacy rate has been steadily improving, and if its residents keep getting information from this blog, it could become among the most-sophisticated countries in sub-Sahara Africa.

Before long, no Ghanaian will mishear the Beatles’s She’s Got a Ticket to Ride as “She’s got a chicken to ride.” (I suspect this mondegreen originated in the United States where some people have trouble understanding English accents.)

Planned Feralhood, which uses humane methods to keep the local feral cat population under control, needs financial help for the coming year. The organization’s Trap/Neuter/Return program has become a model for other communities, and it’s worthy of our support.

Planned Feralhood, which is headed by Kathy Runnion of Inverness Park, has been taking care of West Marin’s feral cats for eight years, and for the past four years, Kathy told me last year, no kittens have been born in the targeted areas. Colonies of feral cats that were exploding in size eight years ago are now stable and healthy, the cats living out their lives without reproducing, she said.

Kathy Runnion of Planned Feralhood feeds cats at their new shelter in a barn near Nicasio Reservoir.

Volunteer feeders help keep the colonies localized. Between these colonies and the cats in its shelter, Planned Feralhood has been taking care of an average of 75 cats a day, Kathy added.

When Planned Feralhood was faced with finding new quarters last year, donations made it possible. There are now two shelters for the cats: one at Kathy’s home and one in a well-maintained barn near Nicasio Reservoir. I urge readers to support them.

Checks should be made payable to ASCS. The Animal Sanctuary and Care Society is Planned Feralhood’s IRS 501C (3) fiscal sponsor. Please mail your tax-deductible contributions to Planned Feralhood, PO Box 502, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956.

West Marin’s Gray fox population is steadily growing. Nowadays they can be seen in places as public as downtown Point Reyes Station. A year ago, Kathy, who is also a postal clerk, spotted this pair out the back window of the post office and called me, so I hurried downtown and photographed them. The foxes were sunning themselves on the roof of a Toby’s Feed Barn lean-to that adjoins the Building Supply Center lumber yard.

At Mitchell cabin, as has been noted, two or three foxes show up most evenings. In years past, I’ve seen the number of foxes and raccoons in West Marin occasionally soar only to have epidemics of distemper or some other disease cause their populations to crash.

A curious family of raccoons steps inside to inspect my kitchen.

Obviously the more raccoons and foxes there are in a region, the easier it is for disease to spread from one to another. I just hope nothing like that happens anytime soon.

Eight deer and a cat in the field below Mitchell cabin.

Unlike foxes and raccoons, West Marin’s blacktail deer are able to live in large groups without spreading diseases among themselves. The only significant exception has been infrequent outbreaks of bluetongue, a viral disease spread by a small, biting insect called a midge.

Bluetongue gets its name from the fact that the lips and tongues of animals with the disease swell, giving a blue appearance to the mouths of some of them.

Western gray squirrels are also vulnerable to insect bites. In other parts of the West, epidemics of mange, which is spread by mites, is a major cause of death among gray squirrels. This squirrel at Mitchell cabin, however, is starting the new year looking healthy.

And may you too have a healthy, happy new year notwithstanding the squirrely folks you may run into.

When Sarah Palin said in a Nov. 24 radio interview, “Obviously, we gotta stand by our North Korean allies,” it was impossible to say who was more surprised: the US government, Korean War vets, South Korea, or…. North Korea?”

If General MacArthur were still alive, he’d be rolling over in his grave, so to speak.

This week, however, another politician surprised the world even more. At a fundraiser in St. Petersburg for children with eye diseases and cancer, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sang in English Fats Domino’s signature ditty Blueberry Hill.

If you haven’t watched Putin’s performance, I urge you to do so. It’s pure opera buffa. Although he pronounced it “Blueberry Heeel,” Putin managed to stay on key and delighted his audience, which included a host of Hollywood celebrities.

Meanwhile, my efforts to negotiate peace among this hill’s foxes and raccoons have run into a bit of a snag. Although there have been no outbreaks of hostility, each has taken to stealing the other’s food.

This initially caused me to leave bread for the foxes just inside my kitchen door, where the raccoons couldn’t see it, but the stratagem worked only briefly.

It didn’t take the raccoons long to figure out what was going on, and they began grabbing the bread before the foxes could get to it.

This left the foxes sadly contemplating the disappearance of their dinner.

Then I remembered what the late Jerry Friedman once demonstrated. Friedman, a Marin County planning commissioner, was also co-founder of the Environmental Action Committee of West Marin.

Back when I edited The Point Reyes Light, Friedman showed up one day with a photo, which we published, of his hand-feeding a fox that lived near him. If the EAC co-founder could hand food to a fox, I figured, I could too, thereby making sure the food was distributed evenly.

So far, Friedman’s system is working, and I’m feeding three foxes a night, along with three or four raccoons. The foxes and raccoons remain a bit wary of each other, and they all consider me as much a danger as a benefactor.

As for Putin, the US remains wary of him, but whether he constitutes a danger to this country is unclear. Also unclear is whether Palin is dumb like a fox or just plain dumb.

Point Reyes Station’s annual Path of Lights, which includes sidewalks decorated with luminaria and the lighting of the town Christmas tree (between Wells Fargo Bank and the Palace Market) will be held this Friday evening, Dec. 3.

The festivities will include contributors to the new issue of The West Marin Review (Volume 3) signing copies at Point Reyes Books from 5 to 7:30 p.m. More about that in a moment, but first a word from our sponsors.

A raccoon friend of mine for the past several seasons picks a slice of bread off my kitchen floor Monday.

Also on Monday, a blacktailed buck grazes just below my deck as a doe and a couple of fawns graze nearby.

Four roof rats show up on my deck Sunday to share in the birdseed I put out for my feathered friends.

One of the Point Reyes Arabians looks over my fence from beneath a persimmon tree Monday. In the upper left is a stockpond belonging to the Giacomini family.

Grey fox on my deck last week shows no reaction when I use a flash to photograph him through an open door.

Wild turkeys eating with a blacktail fawn. Perhaps “birds of a feather flock together,” but they also flock with other creatures, as seen Sunday out my kitchen window.

And now back to the news. As the West Marin Review website notes, “In [the new] volume are Jonathan Rowe’s provocative, urgent essay about the future of irreplaceable places and Elia Haworth’s sweeping history of the farmers who settled in the area.

“The beauty of West Marin is evoked in vivid, colored woodblock prints by Tom Killion, in line drawings, watercolor, and photographs, in precise rendition and in abstract design.

“Some of the poetry is site specific,” but The Review is not exclusive to West Marin. It seems that ‘place’, wherever it is, is always a source of creative inspiration. Many of the essays and poems refer back to earlier homes, earlier times and lives.

“Fiction pieces include The Miles Pilot by Cynthia Cady, funny and painful and wrenching at the same time, and The Cat Lover by Jody Farrell, where reality and fantasticality link arms.”

The list of contributors to The West Marin Review is generally impressive, and many of them will be on hand to sign copies at Point Reyes Books. Although not particularly impressive myself, I’ll be among those with pen in hand should anyone want my autograph.

This fall four foxes began showing up on my deck just after dark each evening, as has been previously reported. Although skittish, they take turns grabbing slices of bread from my hand. They eat peanuts off the deck even when the door is open and we are only three or four feet apart.

However, this is also what the local raccoons do, which has led to several encounters. On more than one occasion, a raccoon has given a fox the evil eye, causing the reynard to scamper off.

A year ago, I dealt with the same problem; only that time the adversaries were a possum and raccoon. It took a bit of planning, but their historic suspicions notwithstanding, I was able to work out a ceasefire.

To bring both sides to the negotiating table, I placed a couple of piles of peanuts on it. Over several nights, I brought the peanuts closer and closer together until possum and raccoon were finally eating nose to nose in peace.

A week ago I began trying the same strategy in fox-raccoon negotiations, starting with peanuts spread fairly far apart.

As the peanuts moved closer together over several nights, so did both animals. Mutual enmity may seem like part of their God-given nature, but as Bertolt Brecht so aptly observed, “Grub first, then ethics.”

Halloween, which will be celebrated Sunday, has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain. The name comes from an Old Irish word meaning summer’s end.

The ancient Celts of the Iron Age and Roman era believed the border between this world and the Otherworld was thin on Samhain, allowing both good and evil spirits to pass through. This, in turn, inspired the Celts to disguise themselves with masks and costumes to avoid the evil spirits.

With the Catholic celebration of All Hallows Even, the night before All Hallows (Saints) Day, falling at the same time of year, the two events came to be blended into Halloween. Trick-or-treating originated in the Middle Ages as a practice of poor people going door to door and receiving food in exchange for praying for the dead.

A great horned owl I photographed from my deck at twilight last week.

The symbols of Halloween eventually came to include, along with costumes and masks, jack-o-lanterns (which in the British Isles were originally carved from large turnips), black cats, bats, and owls.

Nor are owls, bats, and black cats the only spooky apparitions around my cabin this Halloween. A deck wraps around two sides of the cabin with steps leading down to the ground at both ends, and at 6:20 a.m. today I was awakened by the sound of footsteps scurrying past my bedroom window.

When I looked outside, I was amazed to see three foxes holding footraces back and forth around my home. Two of them were neck and neck with the other in a distant third place.

A winsome fox steps inside my kitchen.

As previously noted, three gray foxes have taken to dropping by each evening, hoping I will put out bread or peanuts for them.

For three or four years, I have periodically put out the same snacks for my raccoon neighbors, but now the raccoons must compete with the foxes.

They get along with each other fairly well, and I have seen a fox and raccoons eating peanuts nose to nose without conflict. Last night, however, my friend Lynn Axelrod saw one sly fox snatch a slice of bread from between the paws of a raccoon that was about to partake of it.

When the fox tried to do it a second time, however, Lynn cut loose with a Halloween-style “Boo!” and the fox ran off. From the raccoon’s perspective, Lynn had probably just fended off an evil reynard from the Otherworld.

The most recent wildlife adventures around my cabin began three weeks ago when I started down my driveway to pick up the morning Chronicle. There in the dirt at the edge of my parking area were several large paw prints, too large for the critters I usually see around here. Roughly 25 feet away, other tracks showed where a deer had kicked up dirt as it ran off.

A check of my tracking guide confirmed a mountain lion had probably been on my property the night before. That was an exciting but not altogether surprising discovery, for I’ve heard reports of mountain lion sightings along Tomasini Canyon Road, the next road to the north.

A gray fox eating bread on my deck.

With so much wildlife on this hill, my cabin has become a sort of blind for observing it.

In the past week, up to three foxes at a time have shown up on my deck. I sometimes feed them a few pieces of bread or a few peanuts, but judging from their scat, with which they mark my property (including the roof of my car), their main diet these days is blackberries.

On several occasions, I’ve watched encounters on my deck between raccoons and a fox. Neither seemed overly alarmed by the other, and at times the fox approached a raccoon within a few feet.

This is not to say that no other wildlife alarms raccoons. One kit sprang onto a post of the deck railing tonight and was about to climb to the top when suddenly it froze and flattened itself against the lattice.

For half a minute it hung there with only its head peeking over the top. Eventually the kit climbed on top of the railing, paced back and forth, but went nowhere. About this time, a couple of deer walked by just beyond the railing. Only when they were gone did the kit feel free to resume its meandering.

The foxes, however, seem not to be alarmed by any creature around my cabin. Sunday night when I scattered some tortilla chips on the deck and left the door open, this fox was curious enough about my kitchen to look inside before chowing down on the chips.

The foxes are usually skittish enough to run off a few feet when I open the kitchen door, but they quickly return.

And twice when my friend Lynn Axelrod stuck a piece of bread out the door, a fox took it from her hand.

Three, four, and even five raccoons have shown up simultaneously on my deck in the last week. They too enjoy snacking on bread, but except for one older male, they enjoy peanuts even more.

I occasionally put out a few handfuls of honey-roasted peanuts for their dessert, and I’ve had raccoon kits so enthusiastic that on occasion they grabbed my hand with their paws before I was done. Very odd to shake hands with a raccoon. Thank God they grabbed with their paws and not their teeth.

Because raccoons use their paws in eating, they wash them in my birdbath afterward, as well as take long drinks, no doubt thirsty from the salty peanuts.

Also taking advantage of my birdbath is this pine siskin.

A pine siskin swoops down to join five other siskins eating birdseed on the railing of my deck.

Pine siskins are an irruptive species, meaning that their populations can increase rapidly and irregularly. A type of finch, they are particularly plentiful this year because their main source of food, seeds, is also plentiful.

Also enjoying birdseed on my deck are roof rats, which on some evenings show up even before the birds leave.

There are noticeable variations in coloring among roof rats, with the one on the right demonstrating why they’re sometimes called black rats. I’ve written quite a bit about roof rats previously, and I won’t repeat it all here.

Canada geese fly over my cabin almost every evening. I always know by their honking when they’re coming. Some evenings several flocks in a row will head west overhead. Naturally a migratory bird, the geese used to only winter here, but in recent years West Marin has developed a large year-round population.

Also announcing themselves around my cabin these nights (in fact, I hear their yips and howls right now) are a number of coyotes. Like the gray foxes, coyotes are members of the dog family, canidae. However, unlike gray foxes, they can’t climb trees, which is a blessing for us all.

Coyotes began howling not far from my cabin just before dark tonight. For me it’s a thrill to hear and occasionally see them, but I’m no sheepman.

For 40 years, there were no coyotes in West Marin because of poisoning by sheep ranchers. However, coyotes never disappeared from northern Sonoma County, and after the federal government banned the poisoning, they spread south and began showing up here again in 1983. Since then coyotes have put more than half the sheep ranches in West Marin and southern Sonoma County out of business.

There are also more bobcats around these days, and some Point Reyes Station residents believe that many of them had been living in the pasture of the Giacomini dairy ranch before the Park Service bought the land and in 2007 flooded it. For residents raising chickens or other fowl, the forced relocation of bobcats has been a serious problem, and a number of them have been shot.

But for the rest of us, spotting bobcats is exciting. I occasionally see them around my cabin, and for the second time in a year, nature photographer Sue Van Der Wal of Inverness saw a bobcat at her house on July 23, as she told me with delight.

Also intrigued by bobcats is professor Michael Scriven of Inverness Park. Michael, who has taught at universities in the US and abroad, as well as written numerous books and articles, last month penned a light-hearted “memento of a recent visitor” and sent it to me.

Here is his poem titled Bobcat: “On my deck, spots and pads whisper past,/ The stride of a cheetah,/ The mien of an eater,/ Chipmunks chatter their ire,/ Doves flee from a flyer,/ The Prince of the Felids has passed.”

A roof rat eating birdseed off my deck last week. I enjoy watching roof rats but had to spend time and money last year cleaning their droppings out of my basement, sealing off walls they had chewed through, and repairing an electrical line on which they’d been gnawing.

Roof rats are also plentiful at the moment. In June, I found one that had been run over on block-long Campolindo Road, not exactly a high-speed thoroughfare. And during a dinner party in Stinson Beach last month, I spotted a roof rat at a neighboring house scurrying across (appropriately enough) the roof.

Some people have nothing good to say about roof rats. Along with getting into basements and attics, they are especially fond of chewing through the drain hoses of dishwashers.

In addition, many people are aware of the roof rat’s role in the Black Plague. In the 1340s, their fleas spread the plague around Europe, killing off half the population in some places.

Roof rats originated in tropical Asia and made it across the Near East in Roman times before reaching Europe by the 6th century AD. As the influence of European countries spread around the world, so did roof rats, arriving in the New World on the ships of European explorers. Not surprisingly, another name for roof rats is ship rats.

Roof rats are smaller than the inaccurately named Norwegian rats, which are actually from North China. An easy way to tell the two apart is that the tails of roof rats are longer than their bodies. The tails of Norwegian rats (also called sewer rats) are not.

All this raises the question: is there anything good that can be said about rats other than that they’re cute, at least to some of us. Apparently there is. The 2006 Children’s Choices Award went to a book by Barbara Wersba about a rat named Walter.

I haven’t read Walter, but Publishers Weekly reports: “Wersba’s brief tale of a blossoming friendship introduces a literate rat, who ‘christen[ed] himself Walter’ after reading works by Sir Walter Scott and [by] the children’s book author whose home he inhabits.

“The rat hero, who lives under the floorboards of a house owned by Miss Pomeroy, makes a discovery in her library one day. Not only has she written a children’s book series about a secret-agent mouse, but he discovers many other authors who have also written about mice (‘There was a whole flock of little books by a woman named Potter, which dealt obsessively with mice,’ he observes disdainfully)….

“Walter begins communicating with Miss Pomeroy through notes, and he questions why authors never write about rats. In the satisfyingly sentimental finale, the author leaves for Walter a singular Christmas gift and the two finally meet.”

Somewhat surprising for a children’s book are Walter’s reported allusions to The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, and The Maltese Falcon. These “will appeal more to older readers,” Publishers Weekly wryly observes.

Walter is appropriate for readers 8 and up, the review says. So if you’re 8 or older or have a child that is, you may want to pick up a copy of the book in order to keep rats in perspective. In the course of their lives, most people encounter far more rats than bobcats or coyotes.

A mother raccoon guards her two kits while they eat peanuts (cacahuates) off my deck.

My former wife Ana Carolina in Guatemala refers to raccoons as “mapaches,” which is the name the Spanish colonists gave them.

The word was taken from the Nahuati word “mapachitli,” meaning “one who takes everything in its hands.” Nahua was the language of the ancient Aztecs and is still spoken in Central Mexico.

The mother raccoon (right rear) comes to my kitchen door each evening and stands on her hind legs so I will see her and put out food. But when I open the door to do so, she quickly backs away and begins a low growl. Her message is obvious: “Make sure you don’t get too close to my kits!”

The English word “raccoon” comes from the Virginia Algonquian word “aroughcun,” which is also spelled “arathkone.” The language, a subgroup of the Algonquian language, died out in the 1790s.

The kits are are far less skittish around me than their mother is unless I make a quick movement.

Historical curiosity: The first written description of raccoons was made by Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 discovered them on his expedition to the New World.

Many fledglings after first leaving the nest want to be fed as if they were still in it. On the railing of my deck, this young crow (“cuervo” en español) caws incessantly and holds its mouth open in hopes the parent will feed it birdseed, even though the youngster is standing in birdseed.

Crows are smaller than ravens although at a distance it’s hard to gauge their sizes. The most obvious difference is in their tails when the birds are in flight. The tail feathers of a raven form a wedge shape while the tail feathers of a crow are almost straight across.

Young bucks sparring next to my cabin. These young blacktails are not trying to hurt each other but to establish dominance. Does prefer to mate with the stronger buck. From an evolutionary standpoint, this passes along the genes of the hardier deer (“venado” en español), which helps ensure the survival of the species.

í que ahora ustedes tiene la lección de esta semana sobre los mapaches, cuervos, venados y la lengua española. Estudien mucho y no gasten dinero en Arizona.

As I drove down Campolindo Drive Tuesday morning, I spotted a gray fox ducking into a culvert under neighbors George and Earlene Grimm’s driveway.

A week ago, I spotted a fox, possibly the same one, sitting in a field next to my cabin and being dive bombed by a couple of crows. The crows have a nest high in a nearby pine tree, but I doubt the fox could ever climb up to the chicks.

All the same, it was yet another sign that young animals are everywhere around here at this time of year.

A female raccoon shows up on my deck almost every night, hoping I’ll put out bread or peanuts for her. Some of the raccoons on this hill are comfortable around me, but she isn’t and runs off a short distance whenever I open the kitchen door. Nonetheless, she chases off the raccoons that feel more at home at my place.

Last night she surprised me by showing up with two kits, which were even more skittish than she. Both spent much of their time hiding behind my woodbox, watching their mother dine in the open.

Raccoon kits are not always so timid. More than once I’ve had kits walk right into my kitchen when I left the door open.

Raccoons breed from late fall into early spring, with females sometimes having more than one short-term mate. The gestation period lasts about two months, and litters typically range from two to seven kits. Kits are born deaf and blind. They do not open their eyes for about three weeks, a couple of days after their ear canals open.

Raccoons around water often appear to wash their food. In Europe, where they have been introduced, the Germans call them “Waschbären,” meaning “wash bears.” However, researchers now believe they are not actually washing their food but their paws.

Just above their claws are stiff hairs called vibrissae, which have sensory cells associated with them. The vibrissae allow raccoons to identify objects before touching them with their paws. Washing keeps the hairs clean and sensitive.

A blacktail buck beside my cabin last Thursday. If you’ve every wondered about the difference between a “buck” and a “stag,” the word “stag” refers to the male red deer of Europe, which is also called a “hart” when mature.

In the past few weeks, I’ve also spotted a blacktail fawn on this hill, sometimes with its mother. Usually blacktail does have two fawns, but a couple of weeks ago, I saw a fawn, which had been killed by a car, lying beside Highway 1 near Campolindo Drive. I fear the worst.

A blacktail doe at my back fence Sunday. Does give birth from late spring to early summer. “Hind,” as in the Golden Hinde Resort, is another word for “doe.” The resort in Inverness is, of course, named after Sir Francis Drake’s ship, which was named after the deer, and the name of the ship is sometimes spelled “Hinde,” as in London’s Golden Hinde Museum.

Blacktails in the wild have typical lifespans of seven to 10 years while in suburban habitat where they feast on gardens, they can live for 17 to 20 years if cars or dogs don’t get them.

“All three major deer species native to North America (blacktail, whitetail, and mule) trace their ancestry back to a primordial, rabbit-size Odocoileus, which had fangs and no antlers and lived around the Arctic Circle some 10 million years ago,” Bay Nature reported five years ago,

Based on DNA tests, the magazine added, “researchers theorized that whitetails (Odocoileus viginianus) emerged as a separate species on the East Coast about 3.5 million years ago.

“They apparently expanded their range down the East Coast and then westward across the continent until reaching the Pacific Ocean in what is now California some 1.5 million years ago. Moving north up the coast, they evolved into blacktails.

“Columbian blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) are the subspecies of blacktails native to the Bay Area. According to the California Department of Fish and Game, there are now approximately 560,000 deer in all California, about 320,000 of which are Columbian blacktails.

“Near the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,000 years ago, as the glacial ice receded from the Sierra passes, blacktails moving east from their traditional homes in the coastal valleys of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia began to encounter a second wave of whitetails expanding their range westward across the Great Plains, Bay Nature added.

“It is now believed that subsequent back-and-forth crossbreeding resulted in the various strains of mule deer scattered across California and the western United States.”

Interestingly, Coastal blacktails and mule deer differ from whitetails in the way they run. As Mother Earth News has pointed out, “While the whitetail runs by pushing off alternately with its front and rear legs in long, graceful bounds, blacktails and mule deer typically launch themselves with all four legs at once in bouncing, pogo-stick jumps that verge on the comical, boing, boing, each bound gaining as much altitude as forward distance.”

At this time of year when there’s so many uncomprehending fawns boing boing-ing around West Marin, I urge drivers to slow down at night and use their high beams whenever possible. Hitting a deer is hard on your emotions, not to mention your car. I know; last winter I hit a young buck that jumped out in front of me on Lucas Valley Road.