Years ago I read that more than half the citizens of Great Britain had spoken with Queen Elizabeth in their dreams. The only US leader I ever spoke with in mine was presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy, and that happened exactly once more than 40 years ago.

So I was quite surprised Friday morning when I awoke from a dream in which I’d been pleasantly chatting with Vladimir Putin.

Not only that, the Russian prime minister and I were bunking together in some sort of camp where he was receiving advanced training in providing his own security.

I have no recollection as to why I was there.

Putin asked my opinion regarding what type of crime he should be concerned about in the area around the camp, and I suggested muggings and the like.

In retrospect, it was an odd question coming from from a former KGB agent.

Odder yet were some of the measures Putin took to safeguard himself.

When we first moved into our quarters, he used a disinfectant to scrub down the entire bathroom we would share.

The dream prompted me to check some biographies of Putin, and one of the more striking discoveries I made is how little his look has changed since boyhood.

He had already developed his cold, half-lidded gaze before he was out of school.

Interesting aside: Although Putin’s father was active in the Communist Party and a devout atheist, Putin’s mother had him secretly christened in the Russian Orthodox Church and regularly slipped away with him to attend services. For much of his life, Putin has worn a cross around his neck.

None of this, however, explained what was going on in my life that caused me to encounter Putin in my dream. The only nighttime occurrence out of the ordinary had been coyotes howling outside my window every single night for several days. And then it occurred to me: that might be it.

When a coyote showed up in my field Saturday afternoon, I photographed it and immediately noticed how similar its gaze was to Putin’s.

As it happened, the Nov. 16 New Yorker carried a lengthy article on dreams and how to cure recurring nightmares. In England as late as the 19th century, nightmares were often considered demonic in one way or another, correspondent Margaret Talbot writes.

Many cultures have believed (several still do) that highly attractive demons can afflict sleeping people by engaging them in sex to the point of exhaustion. In the English-speaking world, a female demon who seduced a man in his sleep was a succubus while a male demon who seduced a woman in hers was an incubus.

“The image of the nightmare as an incubus [or succubus],  a demon hovering over, or straddling, a recumbent figure, invoked both the helplessness of the sleeper and his or her vulnerability to rapacious sex,” Talbot explains.

A few months ago I heard an old recording of Dancing in the Street by the Motown group Martha and the Vandellas.

Curious as to when the song was recorded, I went online and found it was 1964. More interesting, however, was the origin of the name Vandella.

It turns out Martha Reeves took the “Van” part from Van Dyke Street, which was in her Detroit neighborhood, and “della” from singer Della Reese, whom she admired. No doubt unknown to Martha at the time, it also turns out some people in Ethiopia to this very day worry about a type of succubi called vandella.

As for me, I’d rather have some beautiful demon than Vladimir Putin show up while I’m asleep, despite the risk of exhaustion.

On the other hand, I’d rather bunk with Putin than a coyote.

Marin Municipal Water District in 1961 built Seeger Dam on Nicasio Creek, creating Nicasio Reservoir. The reservoir covered the old Nicasio Valley Road (center), which was replaced by the new alignment at far left.

This year’s falling water level has revealed many sections of the old road, such as its bridge over Nicasio Creek (above).

Here and there the road’s centerline can again be seen.

On its west side, the reservoir covered the remains of James Black’s ranch house built in the 1840s.

Black, for whom Black Mountain is named, once owned the site of Point Reyes Station.

More significantly, the creation of Nicasio Reservoir inundated the Tomasini and McIsaac ranches while its dam put an end to salmon runs in Nicasio Creek.

Although the salmon are gone, large-mouth bass, crappie, catfish and carp normally thrive in the reservoir and draw numerous fishermen to its shores. This year’s receding water level, however, has left many fish trapped in shallow pools where they make easy pickings for a variety of predators. The shells of freshwater clams can also be seen everywhere.

Last Wednesday two houseguests, new-media consultants Janine Warner and Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles, and I walked across part of the reservoir’s dry bottom.

Our route took us along the old Nicasio Valley Road.

We had barely gotten started when I was surprised to see numerous dead carp lying on the dried mud of the reservoir’s bottom. Many were almost two feet long.

Even more surprising was finding five dead deer spread out along our route.

Some carcasses had obviously been there a while, but some still had a bit of meat on their bones.

None was close to the present Nicasio Valley Road, making me wonder how they had died.

At one point, Janine asked me to pose for a photograph beside a railing of the old bridge. As I walked toward it, however, I suddenly sank in mud up to my ankles.

Nor could I easily free myself. When I tried to step backward, one shoe came off in the mud.

Perhaps that’s what happened to some of these deer, I mused. Maybe they were being chased by a predator, such as a coyote, when they unluckily tried to cross deep mud and became bogged down.

On Sunday I mentioned this hypothesis to Kathy Runnion, who lives near the reservoir, and she told me a large number of coyotes are currently in the area. That doesn’t prove anything, of course, but as Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens commented, “It’s fun to speculate.”

The falling reservoir has not yet seemed to affect the flocks of Canada geese that feed there. The geese, however, require a certain amount of water, and if the reservoir were to go completely dry as it did in 1976-77, they’d have to take off.

The intersection of Nicasio Valley Road and the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road at the northeast corner of the reservoir is known as Four Corners. (A ranch road creates the fourth corner.)

Near Four Corners on a knoll overlooking the reservoir is a stand of cypress trees. They are all that remains of the schoolyard for the former Pacheco School. The one-room school was built in 1895 and closed in 1938.

Pacheo graduate Don McIsaac of Tocaloma five years ago recalled, “It had kids from first to eighth grades. The most students I can remember at a time was 14. The least I can remember was five: three Gallaghers and two McIsaacs.

“None of us can remember what happened to that school [building].”

As I walked along the old road Wednesday looking at Pacheco School’s cypress trees, I found myself thinking wistfully about all that’s been lost.

I realized that not many people these days know about the former school. The Tomasini and McIsaac families survived the loss of their ranches. Carp are considered “trash fish.” The clams are non-native. Deer regularly die in traffic around the reservoir anyway. And the water is needed by neighbors as close as the San Geronimo Valley.

Yet with so much loss thereabouts, both current and historic, it was probably inevitable that walking across the dry eastern reaches of Nicasio Reservoir last Wedneday afternoon felt like walking through a graveyard.

“The bear will be gentle/ And the wolf will be tame/ And the lion shall lie down by the lamb.” Peace in the Valley

Two young bucks sparring in my backyard on Sunday in preparation for bigger battles to come. (Deer photos by my houseguest Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com)

Every fall the young bucks on this hill lock antlers in practice fights that sometimes get too rough. It shouldn’t have to be this way.

Inevitably one buck gets the worst of it and runs off, which is usually the safest strategy. As the Greek orator Demosthenes remarked in 338 BC, “He who fights and runs away may live to fight another day.”

Nor are bucks the most aggressive adversaries on this hill. As noted here before, a possum and raccoon have had more than a few hostile encounters on my deck. Because their skirmishes destabilize the area, I decided a while back to bring both sides to the negotiating table.

I did this by putting some peanuts on the table. Both sides welcomed the gesture although the possum at first kept a wary eye on the raccoon.

Nor did the raccoon entirely trust the possum initially.

But over the course of several meetings that lasted well beyond midnight, the possum and raccoon found they could peacefully co-exist. It wasn’t exactly the lion lying down with the lamb, but it was a breakthrough in inter-species relations.

Negotiating a truce among the bucks in my pasture will, of course, take longer because because butting heads has been part of their culture for millenia.

In contrast, possums didn’t show up in West Marin until the late 1960s and weren’t here in numbers until the late 1980s. For that reason, it’s not too late to convince them and the long-resident raccoons of this ancient land to join paws in brotherhood.

And despite both sides now feeling less anxious around each other, I haven’t stopped my shuttle diplomacy, for I’ve taken to heart Henry Kissinger’s warning: “The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.”

From 1920 to 1991, The New York Daily News called itself “New York’s Picture Paper” because it used photographs with captions rather than articles to report a disproportionate amount of the news.

In that spirit, this blog will now try out a Point Reyes Station Picture Posting.

While carpenter Charlie Morgan was walking out my cabin’s basement door this morning, he spotted a small gopher snake slithering in. We grabbed it although it pretended it was a rattlesnake, flattening its head into a triangle and shaking its rattle-less tail. (Photo by Charlie Morgan)

The snake didn’t like being picked up and tried to wriggle free, but it didn’t strike. Its mouth was so small it probably couldn’t have even if it had wanted to. In any case, I soon released it.

Seeva Cherms, daughter of Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park, gave me this sign as a Christmas present two years ago.

As too many roadkills make evident, the possums of West Marin are in particular need of a safe preserve, so I’ve started one.

A continuing problem, however, is the ancient feud between my hill’s possums and raccoons. Tense encounters occur night after night, and I’ve photographed several, such as this confrontation on Sept. 12.

In an effort to end the inter-species unrest, I finally resorted to a two-millennia-old stratagem for keeping unruly masses complaisant. When anti-social disorder broke out again last night, I distracted the raccoon with bread and circuses, “panem et circenses” in the words of the Roman satirist Juvenal, who coined the phrase around 200 AD. The circus in those days was somewhat different, of course, although it did have lions.

Tonight I tried the same ploy with the possum, and it worked until the raccoon came over and stole the bread. Raccoons are like that, even among themselves. I’m tempted to send one in particular to Father Flanagan’s Home for Wayward Raccoons in Kits Town, Nebraska.

Meanwhile over in Inverness tonight, Linda Petersen, the injured ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, showed up after a Volunteer Fire Department meeting to thank firefighter Burton Eubank (right).

Burton was the first rescue worker on the scene when Linda fell asleep at the wheel June 13 near Motel Inverness and hit a utility pole.

Linda suffered 18 broken bones and a punctured lung in the crash.

Burton tonight noted the dispatcher originally said the crash had occurred just west of downtown Inverness not far from Vladimir’s Czechoslovakian Restaurant. As he rushed to the scene from Inverness Park, however, Burton discovered the wreck was actually east of town and radioed other members of the volunteer fire department to let them know.

Linda remembers almost nothing from the wreck, so Burton recounted how he evaluated her condition and what he and other firefighters did to remove her from the car without causing further injuries. As it turned out, Linda had two broken vertebrae, so the precautions were crucial.

Burton obviously hadn’t learned how to do all this in one training session, I quipped. “I’ve been a firefighter 24 years,” he replied, “ever since I was 18.” Burton said that some of the VFD’s traffic-accident calls are grim but responses such as Linda’s help balance that.

And put it on your calendar that a benefit to help pay Linda’s medical bills will be held from 4 to 6 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 18, at Toby’s Feed Barn. There will be entertainment by Johnny and June from El Radio Fantastique, Peter Asmus and Space Debris, and Matt Love’s band (sometimes called the Love Field Allstars). The initial, so to speak, entertainer will be Charlie, the carpenter. Charlie, who’s also a DJ at KWMR, will be MC.

Providing food will be Marin Sun Farms, the Station House Café, Olema Farmhouse, Café Reyes, the Tomales Deli, the Palace Market, the Marshall Store, and Mike and Sally Gale’s Chileno Valley Ranch. In addition, Anastacio Gonzalez will barbecue oysters with his “Famous BBQ Oyster Sauce.” The sauce is now being bottled, with retail sales having begun last July.

Four years ago while I still published The Point Reyes Light, readers on their own gave birth to a new genre of first-person writing, Tall Tales of Intelligent Dogs.

The genre faded shortly before the grand old newspaper changed ownership, but the tales have now inspired me to try replicating with wildlife around my cabin what West Marin residents had reported accomplishing with their pets.

Good table manners being a sine qua non for participating in polite society, last week I began teaching the local possum proper dining etiquette.

“I am teaching my dog to drive,” Ed Fielding of Bolinas wrote in a June 9, 2005, letter to the editor of The Light. “I am 81 years old, and my strength is ebbing, my reflexes are slowing, my vision is fading, and my hearing is deteriorating. The qualities I am losing my dog Juno possesses in superb degree. She is a 145-pound Rhodesian ridgeback, strong, quick, and very intelligent.

“I have made special metal cups and attached two of these to the steering wheel in the recommended “10-to-2″ position. The cups are well padded so that her front paws fit snugly, and she is able to steer the car with ease. I have also modified the accelerator and the brake pedal. With her long legs and great strength, she has no trouble operating these two mechanisms.”

It was an obvious spoof, but Fielding presented it with flair. “[Juno] just loves driving the car,” he wrote, “and the highlight of her day is when she gets behind the wheel and we go for a short spin. Of course, she drives with her head out the window, a habit I have been unable to break, but it seems to be no problem, and she handles the car with skill.

“If any readers of this letter have also taught their dogs to drive, I would appreciate hearing from you”

The Light never heard from anyone else teaching his dog to drive, but the next issue carried a letter from David Miller of Inverness Park, who wrote, “I was pleased to learn from Ed Fielding’s letter that there are others who are training their pets to handle moving vehicles. In my case, I have been training my dog Bela to ride a bicycle.

“It all started when I would ride my bike and Bela would run on the path beside me on a leash. So many times I would hear angry people telling me I should get off the bike and let Bela ride that I decided that if I trained Bela to ride, we could mountain bike together and avoid the scorn of passersby.

“Bela is still on training wheels, and I have had to address a few mechanical problems. For example, I had to deal with her tail. It was always getting caught in the spokes of the back wheel. I solved that problem by tying a string to her tail and connecting it to her collar. I had to make sleeves on the handlebars into which she could comfortably slide her front legs for steering. Bela uses her mouth to manipulate the hand brake.”

Miller went on to say that his “real problem” is the policy of local parks to prohibit mountain bikes on certain trails and dogs on others, leaving Bela with few choices. This letter writer too asked to hear from others in his situation.

No other owners of canine mountain bikers responded, but Robin Bradford of Bolinas on June 30 wrote, “For quite some time, Frank and Winston, my Yorkshire Terriers, have tried to convince me to allow them free access to our Toro gasoline-powered lawn mower. Naturally, I refused.

“Recently, Frank and Winston brought me the letters to the editor from The Point Reyes Light written by Ed Fielding and David Miller. I can tell you, some fairly biting accusations were hurled, [and] I finally acquiesced.

“Much to my surprise, Frank and Winston operated the Toro as though they’d been doing it for years, which it turned out they had been. My teenage son had been taking the credit (and the allowance) for the job for an extended period of time, but it was actually Winston at the steering wheel and Frank running ahead to ensure straight lines on the grass.”

Through no effort on its part, The Light had suddenly become a weekly publisher of tall tales of canine cunning, all written in the form of letters to the editor.

Carl Dern of Stinson Beach on July 14, 2005, wrote, “I taught my dog Billie to weld. I realized that she had a great interest in welding when she was a pup because she would hang around my studio watching me weld. I made her a self-darkening helmet and a small leather apron so she wouldn’t hurt her eyes or burn her fur. As time went by, I noticed that she would try to nudge me away from what I was welding and try to take the welding torch from me.

“I soon caught on that she wanted to do the welding. I made her some small, padded cups for her paws to hold the welding gun. She worked the controls with her mouth and right-rear leg. I soon found myself holding the work while she welded it with beautiful precision and skill.

“Billie died last winter at the age of 16 and a half, which is 115 years human. I have not had the courage to disclose this information until now because I was afraid that I would be accused of exploitation. In my own defense, I paid Billie minimum wage and registered her as a Democrat. She voted for Kerry and missed Clinton very much. Our grandchildren inherited her estate.”

Back in 2007, I myself taught a local raccoon to tend bar. Before long it could mix a margarita, Manhattan, or martini as fast as it could shake a tail. When government began enforcing a ban on smoking in bars, however, the raccoon quit to take an outdoor job.

As the parade of talented-dog stories continued, I was amazed not merely by the phenomena itself but also by their wit. “I think too many exceptional canines have gone unrecognized because the fear of low-cost dog labor is so prevalent,” Cory Griffith of Bolinas wrote on July 28.

“My confession was especially hard to make before now because it would have cost me my job. More accurately, my dog Rona’s job. I used to work as a dishwasher and occasional cook in an unnamed Stinson restaurant. Rona always liked to follow me around the kitchen and beg for treats.

“After we’d been together for a few years, something strange began to happen; I noticed she’d alert me with a bark whenever the water was about to boil. From there it was just a few months of practice until a dog who couldn’t crack an egg transformed into one who was putting a shrimp on the Barbie. She’d grab a whisk in her mouth, and a few hours later we’d have a beautiful cake with only a few dog hairs in the frosting.”

For the same edition, Hawk Weston of Bolinas sent in a photo of herself and her pug Scrunchie. While practicing her guitar, Weston wrote, she noticed that “Scrunchie was spending an inordinate amount of time watching my fingers, especially the left-hand chord positions.

“I decided to teach her to play folk music, figuring if I could play it, how hard could it be? Actually, it wasn’t hard at all, especially after she suggested that I lay the guitar flat on the floor so she could play it like a Dobro with a flat-pick held tightly between her tiny teeth. She also developed her signature “softer sound” by brushing across the strings gently with her little tail.”

Other tales came in from Kent Goodwin of New York City, who wrote that his yellow lab Trapper had developed expertise in corporate management while living in Stinson Beach. Scott Leslie of Point Reyes Station, however, growled, “Enough already.” He suggested that all the tales of canine accomplishments indicated a dog had taken over the editor’s desk.

But virtually all other letters were in the style of one by Inverness resident Laura Brainard of Planned Feralhood (the humane program for reducing the number of stray cats). Brainard on Aug. 4 wrote she’d read the letters aloud to cats in the program’s shelter to give them “inspiration.” The cats, however, “were not impressed,” she noted.

Cats, in fact, were beginning to creep into coverage that had been limited to a dog’s world. Sandra Wallace of Inverness on July 28 wrote, “I do hope someone is making a collection of the letters recounting the accomplishments of these exceptional dogs. One of my dogs, the one that reads, is fascinated and inspired by these accounts. The cats, however, remain incredulous.”

I would have been incredulous about all this too had I not seen it myself. In fact, now that I’ve tried it myself, civilizing the animal world doesn’t seem that difficult.

Editor’s note: The readers’ letters were previously summarized in my Aug. 8, 2005, Sparsely Sage and Timely column in The Light. The possum-and-table-setting photo was shot Wednesday.

“What sort of day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there.” That was Walter Cronkite’s weekly signoff in the 1950s when he hosted TV docu-dramas, You Are There, which reenacted historic events.

Here in no particular order are some of the events that altered and illuminated the past week or so in West Marin. And now, thanks to the wonders of photography and the Internet, you were there.

The little possum which almost every night drops by for a visit is often a bit intimidated by the larger raccoons which also show up. Last Wednesday the possum was particularly chagrined when a raccoon walked overhead on the railing of my deck en route to the birdbath.

A joyful Linda Petersen, the advertising manager of The West Marin Citizen, came home to Point Reyes Station Saturday after two and a half months of hospitalization.

Linda suffered 11 broken ribs, two broken vertebrae, two broken ankles, a broken leg, a broken kneecap, a broken arm, and a punctured lung when she fell asleep at the wheel June 13 and hit a utility pole in Inverness.

Linda’s left leg is still in a cast, and she continues to need a wheelchair to get around. However, she no longer wears casts on her right leg and left arm or the steel-and-carbon halo that had immobilized her head and neck for seven weeks.

Today she spent a few minutes in The Citizen office and expects to now spend a few hours at her desk most weekdays. Friends and West Marin Senior Services are providing her with meals until she can cook again.

Redwood Empire Disposal, which is franchised to pick up garbage throughout West Marin, this week held its “summer community cleanup.” It was a chance for us customers to stack up to 14 bags, boxes, or cans of bulky waste at curbside to be carted off.

On Campolindo Way, our friendly garbageman Victor showed up today to haul away the neighborhood’s junk. I had just spent two days cleaning out the basement in preparation for his arrival. Every time the garbage company holds these infrequent events, I scramble to collect half-forgotten stuff I’m finally ready to get rid of.

Here Victor uses neighbors Skip and Renée Shannon’s recycling bin to hoist their junk into the garbage truck.

Like many West Marin residents, I spend several days each summer trimming trees and brush to make my property safer from wildfires, and here too my personal schedule is regulated by Redwood Empire Disposal’s schedule. The garbage company picks up yard waste only every other week. That invariably leads to a lot of limb lopping just before each pickup.

Mornings have been foggy most days recently in West Marin with the fog (seen here over Inverness Ridge and along Papermill Creek) typically burning off before noon.

The view from my deck reminded me of the wildfires that have been burning elsewhere in California. But it was merely the sun setting behind a fog bank. Gracias a Dios por eso.

One of the joys of living in Point Reyes Station is the variety of wildlife that comes with it. To demonstrate my point here’s an assortment of photos from the past week.

After living on this hill for more than 30 years, I saw chipmunks on my property for the first time Sunday.

I knew there were chipmunks in the area, for I’d seen them in the Point Reyes National Seashore, and Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens writes about them in his Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula.

The species of chipmunks around here are Sonoma chipmunks. They can be found from San Francisco Bay to Siskiyou County. On the Endangered Species List, the Sonoma chipmunk is rated a species of “least concern.”

Various authorities suggest the name chipmunk comes from an Odawa or an Ojibwe word meaning red squirrel and may have originally been spelled in English as chitmunk. Others attribute the name to the noise they make, a chipping sound for an alarm with a harsher version for courtship.

The Sonoma chipmunk is a “common resident of open forests, chaparral, brushy clearings, and streamside thickets from sea level to 6,000 feet [in elevation],” the California Department of Fish and Game reports.

“They forage among small branches of bushes and on ground for acorns, fungi, and seeds of manzanita, ceanothus, and gooseberry.” The rodents, in turn, “may be preyed upon by long-tailed weasles, bobcats, badgers, gray foxes, and various hawks and owls.”

Sonoma chipmunks, Fish and Game notes, “breed from February to July [with] one litter per year of three to seven young.”

A key reason for the variety of wildlife on this hill are two stockponds where all manner of critters go for a drink. Sunday night, coyotes next to this pond entertained my neighbors and me with an extended chorus of yips and howls.

The ponds also attract Great blue herons (such as this one spotted Monday afternoon), along with egrets and ducks.

Monday morning I looked up from making breakfast to find this young buck staring in the kitchen window at me.

Raccoons are nightly visitors on my deck.

Their favorite food appears to be moths on my windows lured there by the light indoors. As happened last Wednesday, a raccoon will occasionally go to the effort of climbing onto my roof to pick moths off a dormer window.

Wild turkeys (seen here Monday) have become year-round residents on this hill.

The turkeys eat seeds, berries, acorns, and insects, along with small frogs and salamanders. Their hunting and pecking is often memorialized by pockmarked fields.

This young possum (seen Sunday) is a frequent visitor to my deck. He’s not fond of the raccoons, but he likes to drink from my birdbath.

Needing to get rid of some rancid peanuts a while back, I decided to leave them on my deck for whatever critter came along. Not realizing the possum was just outside my kitchen door, I opened it a crack and started to lay a handful down, only to have the possum suddenly emerge from the dark, stick its nose in my palm, and start nibbling on the nuts.

The possum made no attempt to bite me, but I quickly pulled my hand back lest I get nipped accidentally. It is rare for possums to carry rabies; their body temperature is too low, 94 to 97 degrees compared with 102.8 for raccoons and an average of 101 for domestic dogs. All the same, I highly recommend against hand feeding these cute little marsupials. You may have less luck than I did.

A female Anna’s hummingbird has taken to frequenting the flowers growing in wine-barrel tubs on my deck.

The website Hummingbirds in Motion reports, “The hummingbird (scientific family: trochilidae) does not fly in the same way other birds do. They can fly forward, backward, up, down, and even upside-down. The motion of their wings changes its angle with each flap. Unlike other birds, hummingbirds flap their wings horizontally in the shape of a figure 8. They also expand and contract their tail feathers, which allows them to hover in mid-air.”

This week I saw a wild turkey scare off a young deer on this hill by flapping its wings, and I’ve previously seen horses having fun chasing turkeys around in the Giacomini family’s pasture next to mine.

Wild turkeys are not native to West Marin but were introduced here for hunting. In 1988, wildlife biologists from the California Department of Fish and Game released a small flock on the Loma Alta Ranch overlooking the San Geronimo Valley. This original flock quickly grew, and many of the birds migrated first to the San Geronimo Valley and then to other parts of West Marin.

When a flock took up residence in a stand of eucalyptus trees west of Tomales in 2000, relations with townsfolk soon became strained. The turkeys tore up gardens, scratched parked cars by climbing over them, and threatened children walking along the street.

The menacing peaked in January 2001 when two tom turkeys lunged at a pair of schoolchildren riding scooters. The children escaped unharmed but had to abandon their scooters as they fled.

In March 2005, a low-flying turkey hit a power line over Highway 1 in Tomales, causing the line to slap against another line and blacking out the town. The turkey, which fell to the ground with some singed tail feathers, was initially dazed by the incident but then wandered off.

To enhance habitat for great blue herons at Bear Valley Ranch (Historic W Ranch), the Point Reyes National Seashore has torn down historic structures, built new ones, and restored the primeval parking lot on land the previous owner had treated as an open field.

With a typically inquisitive expression, possums are among the cutest of creatures, as I’m sure you would agree.

A possum admires its reflection in the glass of my kitchen door.

The “common opossum” is not native to California but rather the Deep South and was introduced into the San Jose area around 1900 “for meat, delicious with sweet potatoes,” Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens writes in The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula. By 1931, he notes, possums had spread as far south as the Mexican border but did not reach Point Reyes until 1968.

First an update on the condition of Linda Petersen since so many people have asked about her. As was reported here, she fell asleep at the wheel in Inverness a week ago and drove into a utility pole.

Linda, who is 61 and lives in Inverness, suffered multiple broken bones and a punctured lung. Her 16-year-old Havanese dog Sebastian, well known in Point Reyes Station for his sweet disposition, died in the crash.

Sebastian and a raccoon appear to be seated across the table from each other à la C.M. Coolidge’s series of paintings a century ago, Dogs Playing Poker. In fact, there was a window pane between these two.

I visited Linda today at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland where she has been transferred from Marin General Hospital.

Although she faces more surgery, Linda was in remarkably good spirits. She is, of course, the advertising manager for The West Marin Citizen, and while we were talking, she received a call on her cell phone from Citizen publisher Joel Hack. Suddenly Linda was back on the job from her hospital bed. “Check with Toby’s,” she told Joel. “Susan Hayes’ ad won’t be ready till Wednesday….”

Linda’s head and neck are immobilized by a medical “halo,” and she can raise only one arm. Nonetheless, she cracked jokes with Joel and later remarked that by staying involved in her work, she’s reducing the boredom of being stuck in a hospital. Now there’s a brave response to an awful predicament.

Now for an update on the wildlife around my cabin. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen as great a variety of critters on my deck at night as I normally see in a year. Here’s a gray fox that stopped by last week.

A raccoon finds its wandering obstructed by a possum on my deck.

When the possum didn’t leave, the raccoon took a run around it, giving the possum a wide berth. The possum hissed and bared its teeth but did nothing else. For several weeks, I’ve periodically seen this possum and raccoon warning off each other as they pass by on my deck. Sometimes, however, they ignore each other entirely.

A blacktail doe on this hill gave birth to a couple fawns roughly two months ago. Today they followed their mother around my pasture while a year-old buck grazed nearby.

The fawns appear healthy and are now old enough to enjoy bounding across my fields. I see them as a good omen for this summer.

My thrill at seeing a badger close to my cabin a couple of weeks ago was renewed Sunday when I saw two. A mother badger (known as a “sow”), along with her cub (sometimes known as a “kit”), was sunning herself on the mound of dirt around their burrow (known as a “sett”).

Adult badgers are similar to raccoons in length and weight but are noticeably shorter. Although badgers excavated a couple of setts in my pasture earlier this spring, the mound seen here is on the adjoining Giacomini family land. I’ve now shown this family to three of my neighbors, all of whom were surprised to learn there were badgers denning nearby.

Badgers live in burrows up to 30 feet long and 10 feet deep, for they 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.

It is not uncommon for badgers to take over the burrows of prey they’ve eaten, so the overabundance of gophers on this hill could explain all the setts.

Badgers belong to the Mustelidae family, which also includes wolverines, otters, and weasels. Like skunks, which once were considered part of that family, 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 while coyotes and badgers have been observed fighting over prey, they have also been observed “hunting together in a cooperative fashion,” Wikipedia reports, citing a 1950 article in The Journal of Mammalogy.

Although badgers are hunted in some parts of the United States and the rest of the world, in this state, the California Department of Fish and Game has protected them as a “species of special concern” for more than 30 years.

I’ve see badgers for sale as food in a Guangzhou, China, marketplace. And badgers were once a staple of the Native American, as well as colonial, diet. Even today they’re commonly eaten in France, Russia, and other European countries, as well as China.

Around here, however, the most-common form of badger consumption is as shaving brushes.

The badger’s stiff bristles have long been considered ideal for both shaving and paint brushes. These days most of the hair is imported from China.

“Badgers mate in late summer,” notes the Parks Canada website. “However, the fertilized egg does not implant into the uterus and begin to develop until February. This delayed implantation’ means that breeding can occur in the summer when the adults are most active, and young are born in the spring when food is abundant.

“Two to five furry blind kits are born around April. [ N.B. These dates apply in Canada, and judging from the size of the cub I saw, births may be somewhat earlier in West Marin.] They live off their mother’s milk until August when they strike off to establish their own home range.”

Leaving home is a hair-raising transition for young badgers as they learn how to fend for themselves and not become somebody’s food or shaving brush. Many don’t survive.