In our willingness to do anything to get a photograph, we wildlife photographers, like paparazzi, sometimes seem to have no shame. If you’d seen me on my deck in my shorts Friday snapping pictures of a coyote, I’m sure you would agree.

As it happened, I’d spent the afternoon using a Weed Wacker to cut back grass along both sides of my driveway, which is about a tenth of a mile long. Needing to wash up after the work, I had taken a shower and was just starting to get dressed when I looked out my bedroom window and spotted a large coyote in the field below.

Without pausing to pull on a shirt or trousers, I grabbed my camera and hurried outside as quietly as I could so as not to scare the critter away. By now, the coyote had crossed my field and was nosing around near my parked cars.

I wondered if it was sniffing around for this doe I’d spotted by my cars earlier.

The coyote stuck around long enough for me to take its picture before it disappeared into a clump of (appropriately enough) coyote brush. As soon as it did, I called my neighbor Jay Haas about the sighting, and from his vantage point, he managed to spot the coyote too.

A bobcat wanders around a car belonging to two guests.

I don’t know what it is about my parking area, but it attracts wildlife as if it were a watering hole in the Serengeti Plain.

I’ve been able to photograph both predators and prey hanging around my cars, coyotes and deer, bobcats and rabbits, as well as wild turkeys, great blue herons, and countless other birds.

A brush rabbit, also known as a cottontail.

Near the bottom of my driveway is the top of my neighbors Skip and Renée Shannon’s driveway, and they have their own ecosystem of squirrels, crows, hawks, and owls.

Fledgling great horned owl. Photo by Renée Shannon

Renée, who is the business manager and ad director for The Point Reyes Light, last month told me Skip had been outside when a young great-horned owl fluttered down from a pine tree and landed in the grass. Skip quickly called to Renée to get her camera, and she was able to photograph the bird before it managed to fly a short distance and land on a woodpile.

Renée then phoned ornithologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station, and he caught the fledging owl and took it with him to a Tomales Bay Watershed Council meeting in the National Seashore.

Someone at the meeting was on her way to San Rafael, so I gave the owl box to her, and she delivered it to Wildcare (Patient #488), Jules told me later. “Apparently it had a fairly common blood bacterium [found] in owls and hawks.” The “prognosis,” he added, was “not good.”

Mystery skulls. Photo by Linda Petersen

My story took an odd turn a week ago when Renées counterpart at The West Marin Citizen, Linda Petersen of Point Reyes Station, discovered two animal skulls on the ground between her garbage cans and back fence. The immediate question was: what kind of animal?

Linda checked skull photos online and decided they looked like pig skulls. I emailed photos of the skulls to Jules and to Chileno Valley rancher Mike Gale, and both agreed Linda was probably right. “They appear to be medium-size porkers,” Mike wrote back.

That, however, doesn’t explain how the skulls ended up on the ground between Linda’s garbage cans and back fence. Did someone hold a luau and chuck pig heads over her fence? “Pretty rude of someone to toss them into her yard, eh?’ Jules mused.

No score and seven years ago this Western Weekend, West Marin found itself on the alert for an intimidating presence it hadn’t faced since the time of the Civil War. On May 25, 2003, the first bear to roam these hills in more than 130 years was spotted at the hostel off Limantour Road in the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Awakened about 4:30 a.m., hostel manager Bob Baez and assistant manager Greg King found a medium-sized black bear rummaging through a compost bin and pulling trash out of a Dumpster. They watched for about five minutes until the bear wandered off into the brush.

Although Bear Valley in Olema took its name from the abundance of bears that once were found there, Marin County’s last black bears had been trapped and hunted to death by 1869.

In Occidental 40 miles to the north, however, a sloth of black bears had survived. (Odd as it sounds, ‘sloth’ really is the word for a group of bears.) National Seashore rangers assumed the bear at the hostel had wandered south from his sloth in Sonoma County.

This time of year is the mating season for bears, and rangers suspected he was a young male that had been forced to seek new territory when an older male drove him off.

Other reports came in of the bear raiding bird feeders and residential garbage bins around Inverness Park, but soon he headed south. On May 29 and 30, state park rangers spotted the bear on Mount Tamalpais.

He then showed up in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. On May 31, four campers at Kirby Cove near the Golden Gate Bridge watched as the bear rummaged through their campsite and dragged away food.

At 4:30 a.m. June 1, two long-time residents of the Zen Center in Muir Beach spotted the bear sitting atop a Dumpster. They hadn’t heard about the bear being in the area and could hardly believe what they were seeing.

Evidence of the bear was then found in Muir Woods National Monument, where a maintenance worker discovered several of the park’s 50-gallon garbage cans “destroyed beyond use,” the GGNRA reported.

Officials of the GGNRA, Marin Municipal Water District, and the California Department of Fish and Game began asking residents of areas where the bear had been spotted to store their garbage inside. If it became accustomed to foraging in household garbage, they warned, the bear could become dangerous and would have to be killed.

Fortunately, that did not happen. As mysteriously as it had arrived, the bear disappeared without a trace, and everyone agreed it had probably gone home to Occidental, which is known for hearty dining.

Black bears are fond of grasses, roots, berries, and insects. They also have an appetite for fish and mammals, including carrion, and are quick to develop a taste for human food and garbage. Or so say the experts.

Because few of us in Point Reyes Station have home delivery, the post office has long been the most popular meeting spot in town. On Monday, it was the scene of one of those happy little moments that make small towns great places.

As it happens, postal worker Erin Clark, who was helping out in Point Reyes Station for a day, is a volunteer with a wildlife-rescue group, Rancho Raccoon, headed by Megan Isadore of Forest Knolls.

About a week earlier, Rancho Raccoon received four newly born raccoons that were orphaned when a building was torn down in Oakland. Erin took over raising the newborns when they were less than a week old.

Like any mother, Erin has to periodically check on her young ones, so on Monday she brought them with her when she went to work. There was no risk of the baby raccoons getting into trouble at the post office where they spent the day sleeping in a back room. At 11 days old, their eyes had not yet opened nor were their ears fully developed.

Erin is the only mother the raccoons know, so whenever she picks one up, the baby tries to suckle on her fingers.

Equally picturesque but less cuddly were 15 western pond turtles I counted Monday on two logs in a pond off Cypress Road. The small pond at Anastacio and Sue Gonzalez’s home attracts a variety of wildlife, and on warm days, these turtles emerge to sun themselves.

California’s Department of Fish and Game has designated the western pond turtle a “species of special concern.” Because some pond turtles, especially fertile females, migrate, motor vehicles periodically kill a few. Pesticide runoff, loss of habitat, and introduced predators are also reducing their numbers. Around West Marin, a major threat is from non-native bullfrogs, which eat hatchling and juvenile turtles.

Western pond turtles can be found from the Canadian border to Baja California although in the state of Washington, they almost became extinct around 1990 because of an unidentified of disease. However, they are now making a recovery there thanks to government programs.

As I started down my front steps Monday en route to the post office, I startled a young buck that was lying down, chewing its cud. The deer jumped up and started to quickly walk away, but I began talking to it in a low voice, and it stopped to look at me.

When I stayed put and kept whispering soothingly, the buck relaxed and started scratching fleas. Before long it was grazing. Not wanting to disturb the deer, I had to wait about 10 minutes until it wandered off and I could get to my car and drive into town.

Italian thistles on my hill

On Sunday I completed a two-week assault on the thistles in my field. I even removed thistles on the edge of three neighbors’ fields since one neighbor’s thistle problem quickly becomes the neighborhood’s thistle problem.

As first described in this blog April 28, a fortnight spent pulling up and cutting down thistles was exhausting and sometimes painful. Several fingers sustained battle wounds, but I expect to fully recover. As of now, I’m storing enough thistles in plastic bags to keep my green-waste container full for another month of pickups.

Eliminating thistles is, of course, a bit like eliminating spiderwebs. Every time the light changes, you spot one you previously missed. All the same, I sort of felt a sense of satisfaction Sunday evening for having persevered in this unpleasant task for two weeks.

The cable guy, Jim Townsend of Horizon Cable

I would have felt even better were it not for one screwup. My cabin is connected to one of the oldest sections of the Horizon Cable system in Point Reyes Station. It’s so old that much of the cable was originally strung along this hill’s barbed-wire fences.

Ever since buying the old system, Horizon Cable has been upgrading it. However, at one corner of my fence, a short length of cable in relatively thin conduit still dangles beside the barbed wire. On Sunday while using loppers to cut down the largest thistles, I reached into a clump and instead cut the cable.

Immediately I alerted Horizon Cable, for although I didn’t much mind not having television, not having access to the Internet was a real drag. I felt cut off from friends and family in faraway places. I couldn’t get my nightly fix of al Jazeera.

Thankfully on Monday morning, Horizon technician Jim Townsend showed up and managed to get me back online despite having to dig up some old-style fittings for my old-style section of the system. I don’t mind being on an antiquated section with part of my cable running along a barbed-wire fence. To me it symbolizes the enduring rusticity of Point Reyes Station.

Spring began Saturday, and what a relief it was. Many of us could not have withstood another week of winter. Where I live, the wind was the problem, not the downpours. The rainstorms were, of course, badly needed by Marin County’s ranchers and water districts.

For the horses in the pasture next to mine, it was a time to be relieved of the blankets they wore all winter to stay warm, but which made it hard for them to scratch itches.

With their blankets gone, it was also time for a spring bath. A couple Arabians lay down in the Giacomini family’s stockpond while others showered by splashing themselves with water. Once out of the pond, several horses happily rolled around on their backs in the green grass of spring.

The wild turkeys on this hill pretty much ignore the horses, and the horses don’t mind having turkeys hunting and pecking around them.

Two young bucks by my front steps Sunday afternoon.

Two does groom each other outside my kitchen window. Researchers say this allogrooming, as it’s called, may be done for eliminating ticks or for establishing social relationships.

Four wary blackbirds waiting for a crow to leave before they can comfortably partake of birdseed I spread along the railing of my deck.

Possum in my kitchen leans outside to eat.

As pictured in a previous posting, a female possum that hangs around my cabin allows me to pet her like a dog and scratch her behind the ears whenever I put peanuts on my deck for her.

“Does the possum ever get in the house?” people frequently ask. The answer is yes, but it doesn’t happen quite the way one would expect. Twice I’ve opened the kitchen door to put out peanuts only to have the possum waddle into the kitchen and then lean back out the door to eat off my deck.

I suspect she does this to stay out of the way of passing raccoons.

It’s funny to watch, but at night the open door lets in cold air and bugs. The first time this happened I tried to gently push Ms. Possum’s tail out the door so I could shut it, but she instantly gave me a look that said she was offended. Now I’m not one to deliberately offend a possum, so I apologized instanter and proffered another handful of peanuts, which was accepted.

A Nov. 10 posting, “Progress in the backyard peace process,” described my getting an initially hostile raccoon and possum to peacefully coexist. I had brought them to the negotiating table by putting two piles of peanuts on it. Over the course of several nights, I moved the piles closer and closer together until they were eating side by side.

However, as the posting noted, I was continuing my shuttle diplomacy, for I’d taken to heart Henry Kissinger’s warning: “The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.”

Female possum out to dinner with a male raccoon.

A major breakthrough occurred Friday night when the two sides ended up so close together they occasionally rubbed noses as they dined on a single pile of peanuts. Both trod lightly around each other, but there was no snapping or growling.

In contrast, the same raccoon got into three fights with other raccoons the following evening, suffering a painful bite to a front paw during one brawl. I’m sure all this reveals something about the difference between inter-species and intra-species relations, but I don’t know what.

Turning to international diplomacy, a posting on Jan. 23, “Disconcerting standup reporting,” described al Jazeera correspondent Prerna Suri in New Delhi reporting on India and Bangladesh rekindling ties. The standup comes a short way into her report.

What makes her standup so disconcerting is that she appears to be in the middle of a New Delhi expressway with cars whizzing past her on both sides.

Commenting on the posting, professional cameraman Mark Allan of Inverness Park noted he had shot similar standups on a curb at Lombard Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. By shooting with a long lens, he said, the traffic seemed closer than it really was.

This past weekend, Prerna herself submitted a comment in which she explains how her report was actually shot. “This stand up in question was, as Mark rightly pointed out, done on a curb (not in the middle of an expressway like you mentioned),” she wrote. “It was right outside the India Gate.”

The capital’s 140-foot-high India Gate is a monument to the more than 80,000 Indian troops who were killed in World War I, fighting for the Allies.

Meanwhile, the posting on Prerna’s standup has drawn interest from around the world. In the past month, far more readers have reached this blog by Googling Bangladesh India standup report than any other topic.

Now for followup reports on the undiplomatic front. The Point Reyes-Petaluma Road saw two more instances of vehicles running off the road last weekend. In one case, a vehicle ran off Highway 1 just a few feet north of the two roads’ intersection.

Neither mishap was as dramatic as the one reported here a week ago when a Porsche on March 5 sailed off an embankment at the first curve immediately east of Point Reyes Station. The sportscar flew 50 feet through tree branches and dropped 25 feet to the ground. Driver Joshua Moore, 38, of San Rafael miraculously escaped without injuries when the car landed on its wheels.

In far less dramatic fashion, a black Toyota Corolla ran off the roadway at Four Corners (the intersection of the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road and Nicasio Valley Road) shortly before 6 p.m. this past Saturday.

The car came to rest against some willows in a gully southeast of the intersection, and neither of the two occupants was injured. However, the Highway Patrol arrested the driver, Arthur V. Gomez, 36, of Fairfield, for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol.

The next day, another vehicle ran into a ditch on the north side of Highway 1 at the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. A 25 mph sign was knocked down in the mishap, but no injuries were reported, and authorities were not notified. By Monday, the sign was back in place.

For the last three or so years, a feral cat has been hanging out on this part of the hill.

At first I wasn’t pleased to have him on the hill, fearing he would try to catch the birds around my cabin. My neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsman weren’t particularly happy to have the cat around either because it used to fight with their cats.

Over time, however, the cat began to fit into the neighborhood better, and the deer that also hang out on this hill were intrigued by it.

A doe watches the cat wash itself.

On Valentine’s Day, however, I noticed the cat lying in the grass outside my kitchen window. It was so motionless I thought it might be dead, but eventually it got up, shook itself, and walked off.

The next morning I was a bit surprised to see a buzzard sitting in a tree outside my living-room window. I had never seen a buzzard in the tree before. After looking around for a while, the buzzard flew off, but the following morning, it was back. Only this time it was on the ground eating the cat.

Not only was the scene disturbing, I found myself wondering what killed the cat. If the cat died as a result of eating a mouse or rat that had been poisoned, the buzzard could be poisoned too. The buzzard soon flew off, and I put the remains of the cat in the garbage to eliminate any further risk to buzzards.

However, as my friend Tony Ragona pointed out later in the day, cats die for many reasons, and for all I knew this one may well have died from kidney failure.

That made me feel a little better for the buzzard, but I still felt a bit shocked at having seen a housecat, albeit one that had gone feral, being eaten by a buzzard outside my window.

The cat’s grim departure seemed one more reason to periodically put your spare change in the Planned Feralhood cans on the checkout counters of several stores in Point Reyes Station.

The program is headed by Kathy Runnion of Nicasio, who works at the Point Reyes Station Post Office, and it has been successful at humanely limiting the number of feral cats around town.

Another surprise: Last week I was in my loft one midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious posting of forgotten lingo when suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my dormer window.

“Who could my visitor be?” I muttered. “Wind or prophet? Bird or devil? A raven on the window’s bevel?”

But ’twas no raven tapping on my dormer window. Two raccoons had climbed onto the eaves above my front door and were hunting moths attracted to the light coming through the glass.

When I used to cover Sheriff’s Calls for The Point Reyes Light, I’d periodically come across a dispatcher’s report that some resident home alone at night was alarmed at hearing a prowler outside the house, sometimes on the roof. Inevitably a deputy would investigate, find no prowler, and conclude the culprit must have been a raccoon.

The answer may not have satisfied the resident, but from what I’ve observed, most of the time it was probably correct.

As mentor to a female possum on my hill, I have been helping her find greater tranquility in life. Before we proceed with the story, however, here’s a quick summary of events up to now.

The first challenge was to overcome hostility between the possum and a raccoon that also likes to hang out around my cabin.

To do this, I brought them to the negotiating table by putting two handfuls of peanuts on it. Over the course of several nights, I moved the handfuls closer and closer together until they were contentedly eating nose to nose.

My next challenge was to teach the possum proper dining etiquette. That proved fairly easy.

This being Marin County, I’ve now begun encouraging Ms. Possum to become a bodhisattva and begin the path toward spiritual enlightenment. Fortunately, her curiosity has been piqued, and she’s giving it a try.

Resting from her sojourn, the bodhisattva achieves serenity among life’s blossoms.

Many possums never find tranquility. Here a male possum turns his head to show one of several bites he recently received from somebody — presumably another male.

As it happened, Linda Petersen, ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, and I were watching last week when he began making moves on Ms. Possum. At first she ignored him, but when he persisted, she hissed and bared her fangs, causing him to back off.

Although noticeably larger than Ms. Possum, the male is scared of me and skedaddles whenever I open a door onto my deck.

Ms. Possum and I, on the other hand, get along famously. She’s grateful for any peanuts I put out and has no problem with my petting her, as one would a dog, or scratching her behind the ears. Photo by Linda Petersen

From scratching her, I’ve seen for myself what excellent insulation Ms. Possum’s outer layer of fur provides. Even on cold, wet nights, her soft, inner layer remains warm and dry.

However, I should stress that Ms. Possum is unusual and that you shouldn’t try this at home. There were no possums to speak of in West Marin until 25 years ago (they’re native to the Deep South), so you wouldn’t be screwing up an established ecosystem by befriending one. But possums have sharp teeth, and you don’t want to end up like the male above with a bunch of puncture wounds.

The danger is not primarily rabies. The body temperature of possums is low enough they seldom get it. Nonetheless, they can carry H1N1 (swine flu), and I always wash my hands after petting with Ms. Possum.

Because they count rats and mice among their numbers, rodents often get a bad rap from humans. Yet rodents are part of a food chain that supports many of West Marin’s most colorful carnivores. With that thought in mind, here’s a gallery of rodents found around my cabin.

A brush rabbit, also known as a cottontail, near my woodshed. Along with mice (I’ve trapped a few but will spare you postmortem photos) rabbits have more predators than any other rodent-like creatures on this hill. (Scientifically speaking, rabbits are lagomorphs rather than rodents.)

They’re a main ingredient in fox diets. Hawks and owls eat them. So do bobcats and snakes, coyotes and cougars. Unfortunately for this hill’s rabbits, foxes and coyotes are becoming more common while a cougar has been seen more than once recently along nearby Tomasini Canyon Road.

Gophers, the bane of West Marin gardeners, in fact sustain a variety of predators. Having just caught a gopher outside my window, this bobcat, with the rodent in its jaws, trots off to dine. Also preying on gophers are creatures ranging from housecats, hawks and mountain lions to foxes and badgers.

A Sonoma chipmunk out my kitchen door. Also providing food for many of West Marin’s carnivores are chipmunks. Despite predation by bobcats, badgers, foxes, hawks and owls, chipmunks are rated a species of “least concern” on the Endangered Species List.

A roof rat eating birdseed on my deck. Roof rats can do damage, especially to dishwashers ,when they get into a house. They’re prey for hawks and owls but less vulnerable to predators on the ground because the rats like to travel along branches, utility lines, and fence tops.

Roof rats originated in tropical Asia but spread through the Near East during the days of ancient Rome. They reached Europe by the 6th Century, and in the late 1340s, their fleas carried the bubonic plague that killed off half the population in some areas. Roof rats arrived in North America with the first ships to visit the New World.

A Western gray squirrel out my upstairs window. From what I can see, the main cause of gray squirrel mortality in West Marin is the motor vehicle. Their primary predators are red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, foxes, coyotes, dogs and cats.

So there you have it. Despite what the pest-control people say, having a few rodents around your house or rabbits around your garden makes for a healthy ecosystem. But guard your dishwasher.

The end of one year and the start of the next is traditionally a time for the news media to compile retrospectives, and this blog is no exception. Here are some of my favorite wildlife photos from the past all shot around my cabin in Point Reyes Station.

An increasing number of bobcats have been showing up on this hill during the past two years. I shot this photo through my kitchen window.

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A mother badger (known as a ‘sow’) along with her cub (sometimes known as a ‘kit’) sunning herself last May on the mound of dirt around their burrow (known as a ‘sett’).

Adult badgers are remarkably efficient diggers thanks to long claws and short, strong legs. Although they can run up to 17 or 18 mph for short distances, they generally hunt by digging fast enough to pursue rodents into their burrows.

Like skunks, badgers have perineal glands that emit quite a stench. What with the stench, the claws, and extremely strong jaws, adult badgers can hold their own against any potential attackers, including bears and coyotes, although they’d rather hide.

And speaking of coyotes, they too are becoming increasingly common on my hill. There were no coyotes in West Marin for 40 years, but when the federal government made sheep ranchers stop poisoning them, they began showing up here again in 1983.

In the last 25 years, they have put more than half the sheep ranches in West Marin and southern Sonoma County out of business. Of course, if you’re not a sheepman, it’s fun to see them and hear them yip and howl at night.

Raccoons are jolly neighbors unless they’re knocking over your garbage can or sneaking through your cat door. My cabin doesn’t have a cat door, and my garbage can is secured; however, when a mother and four kits were crossing my deck and found my kitchen door open, they walked right in.

Possums are not native to California but to the South. In his book The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula, naturalist Jules Evens writes: “After the first known introduction into California at San Jose about 1900 (for meat, delicious with sweet potatoes), opossums spread rapidly southward.

“By 1931, they were common on the coastal slope from San Francisco Bay south to the Mexican border.” To the north, however, San Francisco Bay, along with the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, created a natural barrier, and they did not reach Point Reyes in any numbers until 1984, Evens notes.

Columbian blacktail deer. A young buck drowsily chews his cud outside my bedroom window.

A newly born fawn hides in tall grass less than a yard from my driveway. It remained motionless despite my standing overhead. Naturalist Evens speculated it probably thought it was invisible.

A wild turkey seen out my kitchen window. Like possums, wild turkeys are not native to California. In 1988, California’s Department of Fish and Game planted three toms and 11 hens for hunting at Loma Alta Ranch (on the ridge between Woodacre and Lucas Valley Road).

From there the turkeys spread to nearby Flander’s Ranch and the Spirit Rock property in Woodacre, and eventually to Nicasio, Olema, and even as far north as Tomales, where they have been known to intimidate small children and scratch the paint of cars on which they perch.

A Pacific gopher snake almost four feet long on Campolindo Road at the foot of my driveway.

“When disturbed, the gopher snake will rise to a striking position, flatten its head into a triangular shape, hiss loudly and shake its tail at the intruder,” the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum reports. “These defensive behaviors, along with its body markings, frequently cause the gopher snake to be mistaken for a rattlesnake.”

The gopher snake is actually a constrictor, and it plays an important role in keeping my hill’s rodent population under control. However, it can also climb trees, and it will eat birds and eggs when the opportunity arises.

A garter snake on my driveway. Garter snakes are the most-common genus of reptile in North America. Although they are venomous, their venom is too mild to harm humans. However, when they’re disturbed, garter snakes emit a foul-smelling secretion from a gland near their anus.

An arboreal salamander beside my front steps. Cold-blooded animals require much less energy to survive than do warm-blooded animals. In fact, many cold-blooded animals try to keep their body temperatures low when food is scarce.

Pacific tree frogs, such as this one on my deck, depend largely on camouflage to escape predators. Notice how the facial stripe hides this frog’s eyeball. In addition, the frog’s color changes as it moves around. But unlike the chameleon, which changes its color to match background colors, the Pacific tree frog’s color depends on how moist or dry its location is.

A buckeye butterfly atop a chrysanthemum blooming on my deck. Probably it’s just my zen-like psyche, but of all my nature photos, this is the one I like best.

Postal worker Kathy Runnion was sorting mail in the Point Reyes Station Post Office Thursday morning when she looked out a back window and saw something move on a roof at Toby’s Feed Barn next door.

Kathy in her off hours heads Planned Feralhood, which catches and spays or neuters Point Reyes Station’s feral cats. She tries to find a home for most of them; only those who have been wild too long to domesticate are returned to the street, at least unable to reproduce.

At first glance Kathy assumed what she was seeing was a feral cat that hangs out at Toby’s, but then she realized it was a gray fox. Fortunately she knew how to respond in situations such as this: she called me.

I rushed downtown with my camera and hustled into the post office. Just as Kathy was showing me where to look, a second fox appeared on the roof.

The roof is over a small wing of Toby’s that houses the garden room, and the foxes were roughly eight feet off the ground. Kathy had seen one fox hop onto the roof and told me it had first climbed through racks of pipe in the Building Supply Center lumberyard.

After casually looking around, the foxes in their winter coats curled up with each other apparently to warm themselves from the night.

This is hardly the first time foxes have taken an interest in downtown Point Reyes Station. In the early 1990s, there were so many foxes in town I’d see one trotting across a street around twilight every week or two.

Foxes frequented the gap between the Palace Market and the Building Supply Center. One evening in 1992 when I published The Point Reyes Light and Don Schinske was my partner, he was surprised to see a fox cross Mesa Road right in front of the office.

At my cabin, foxes would take shortcuts across the deck at night.

Unfortunately, outbreaks of canine distemper in 1994 and of an unidentified virus in 1996 killed off many of West Marin’s foxes and raccoons, and their populations remained low for the next few years.

By now, raccoons are back in full force, and it is not uncommon to see a fox along a West Marin road at night.

Foxes are again taking shortcuts across my deck, and last June I was lucky enough to photograph this one in his summer coat just outside the window.

What I fear is that fox and raccoon populations will again become so dense that distemper or something like it can easily spread among them, decimating their numbers.

Proliferation interrupted by periodic die-offs may be nature’s way of keeping the number of foxes and raccoons in check, but if so, it gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “vicious cycle.”