Last week’s posting discussed Senator Dianne Feinstein’s challenging Point Reyes National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher’s plans to close Drakes Bay Oyster Company.

County supervisors had asked Feinstein to intervene after hearing from members of the public, including UC Berkeley biologist Corey Goodman, who revealed the park administration had misrepresented research to justify closing the company.

On July 21, Feinstein toured the oyster farm with owner Kevin Lunny and Supt. Neubacher, as well as convened a meeting in Olema of top Park Service officials, National Seashore officials, Lunny, Supervisor Steve Kinsey and others. The upshot of the meeting was that Lunny can now get the permits he needs to improve the oyster operation.

Four days earlier, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey had written Supt. Neubacher, saying his plan to imminently start exterminating the axis and fallow deer herds in the park was unjustified. She disputed his administration’s claim that park research showed the growth of the herds has reached crisis stage. Nonetheless, extermination has now begun.

White, as well as brown, fallow deer browse with spotted axis deer in the Olema Valley. Notice how the spiral antlers of the axis buck seen here contrast with the palmated antlers of the fallow buck in the next picture. (Photos by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

Perhaps the park has displayed its most outrageous chutzpah when it claims the fallow and axis deer eat too much brush, thereby depriving the blacktail deer of food and the threatened red-legged frog of riparian habitat. In fact, there is such a buildup of brush in the National Seashore that it has become a fire hazard. Why do you suppose the park each year holds all those controlled burns?

As for threats to the red-legged frog, the main two dangers are from bullfrogs and the National Seashore administration.

The park’s policy of converting historic stockponds from freshwater ponds to saltwater lagoons amounts to eliminating primary habitats for the red-legged frog. Indeed, when the park was initially discussing plans to convert the Giacomini Ranch to a saltwater marsh, the Neubacher administration acknowledged it would be wiping out red-legged frog habitat but said not to worry; there’s plenty more elsewhere in the park. At the time, the administration boasted that one of the largest populations of red-legged frogs in California is in the National Seashore.

A much greater threat to red-legged frogs than non-native deer are non-native bullfrogs, which eat adults and tadpoles. Scientists have noted that much of the park’s red-legged frog population has been displaced by bullfrogs, which are found in ponds throughout the park. Hundreds of bullfrogs can be found in some Olema Valley ponds.

A brown fallow buck displays his moose-like antlers.

So why isn’t the park setting its sights on bullfrogs rather than pretending that the threat to red-legged frogs is fallow and axis deer? Because what the Neubacher administration really wants to protect is itself. What the park passes off as science is in actuality a political calculation: “Catch hell now and get it over with.”

Neubacher became superintendent after a citizens advisory commission appointed by the Secretary of the Interior held hearings in which the public and scientists from across the county determined the optimum size of the herds. Their conclusion? Approximately 350 deer apiece. What followed, however, were periodic public outcries over methods used in culling the herds.

It periodically seemed the park just couldn’t do it right:

In the 1980s and early 1990s, rangers claimed 90 percent of the deer they killed were going to St. Anthony’s Dining Room to feed the poor. In 1992, however, when The Point Reyes Light invoked the Freedom of Information Act to check the park’s culling records for the previous eight months, it turned out that only 29 percent of the deer shot had been ending up at the soup kitchen. Deer slain where rangers would have had to lug them a ways to reach a vehicle were left where they dropped.

The National Seashore earlier this year said it will donate the slain fallow and axis deer to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa and the St. Vincent de Paul Society in San Rafael. It now says the Hopper Mountain National Wildlife Refuge in the Central Valley will get some of the meat to feed condors. The park would like the public to think that all the meat will go to these organizations. Past experience suggests otherwise.

During culling in 1992, some rangers merely herded the deer into low brush, shot willy-nilly at them, made no attempt to finish off wounded animals, and left them all to rot. Unfortunately, deer with a gut wound can take several painful days to die. When then-Supt. John Sansing found out what was going on, he acknowledged the rangers were in the wrong and demanded the culling be done in a humane fashion. The culling then continued through 1994, after which Supt. Neubacher stopped it, and the herds began growing.

A white fallow doe, whose ancestors lived in the Near East, and a spotted axis doe, whose ancestors came from India and what is now Sri Lanka. Rancher Doc Ottinger in the late 1940s acquired the original members of their herds from the San Francisco Zoo, which had a surplus, and brought them to Point Reyes for hunting.

So what is really going on? Despite Congress’ intent when it voted to create the Point Reyes National Seashore, the Neubacher administration is in the process of creating a Disneyland-like facade of wilderness. In the process, much of the cultural history of West Marin is being obliterated.

The narrow-gauge-railroad town of Hamlet has been razed, the pioneer town of Jewell has been wiped out, historic barns have been torn down in the Olema Valley, attempts are underway to end 150 years of oyster growing in Drakes Estero, and the 65-year-resident herds of fallow and axis deer are threatened with extermination. All this reminds one of Taliban zealots in 2001 blasting apart two 6th-century Buddha statues carved into a cliff. The Taliban considered the the 125- and 174-foot-high sculptures non-Islamic and, therefore, out of place in Afghanistan.

From the end of the last ice age 11,000 years ago until the National Seashore was created, elk and, since the Gold Rush, cows kept Point Reyes in grassland. However, the park has eliminated grazing on hundreds of acres, which have now become brushed over with coastal chaparral. As this happens, rare plants that can only live in grassland are endangered. Grassland rodents disappear, thus reducing a key food source for eagles, hawks, and owls that had hunted the fields.

The environmental damage to the grassland ecosystems of former pastures seems to matter less to the park administration than making the landscape look wild. However, this artificial wilderness bears no resemblance to what Point Reyes had been like since the Pleistocene Epoch.

The Neubacher administration would appear to imagine that the tule elk, which the park reintroduced to Point Reyes in 1978 after a 110-year absence, will eventually become numerous enough to replace cows on the point. But it’s all Fantasyland. If elk numbers ever got that high again, the park would need to reintroduce 15,000 Miwoks, as used to live in the area, to cull the herd through eating a lot of venison. In contrast, the herds of cows the elk would displace can be, and are being, efficiently culled by the ranchers who own them.

It’s time that more members of Congress than just Woolsey and Feinstein pay attention to the park administration’s repeatedly thwarting the will of both Congress and most of the public. So far, the Neubacher administration is shrugging off Congresswoman Woolsey’s letter opposing its plan to eliminate the fallow and axis herds. The time to act is now. Professional riflemen have already begun shooting deer. Readers need to email Woolsey via http://woolsey.house.gov/contactemailform.asp and request she organize more support in Congress for these exotic creatures.

Threatened with extinction in the Point Reyes National Seashore, black and white versions of fallow deer browse in the park’s underbrush. Generations of the deer, whose ancestors came from in the Near East, had lived on Point Reyes before the National Seashore opened in 1965. The National Seashore now wants to eliminate them as non-native newcomers. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

The administration of Point Reyes National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher is beginning to feel the heat from members of Congress.

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey and US Senator Dianne Feinstein have now joined West Marin residents, the agricultural community, and animal-rights groups in questioning the park administration’s justifications for two drastic plans: closing Drakes Bay Oysters and eliminating the park’s 60-year-resident herds of fallow and axis deer.

At the request of county supervisors, a concerned Senator Feinstein on July 21 convened a meeting to discuss the National Seashore administration’s plans to close Drake’s Bay Oysters. The company is owned by Kevin Lunny, who also raises grass-fed beef within the park, and he was on hand along with top National Park Service officials, state officials, Supervisor Steve Kinsey, and others.

Kevin Lunny shows baby oysters that will be raised in Drakes Estero. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

Senator Feinstein, who also toured Drakes Bay Oysters, at times had her hackles up. She knew Professor Corey Goodman had revealed to the Board of Supervisors that the park administration had misrepresented data in justifying its plan to close the oyster farm. Dr. Goodman, a professor of microbiology at UC Berkeley whose expertise in analyzing data is widely recognized, previously reviewed research as a member of the National Academy of Sciences.

The upshot of Feinstein’s meeting in the Olema Inn is that Lunny can now get the permits he needs to upgrade the oyster farm he bought from the Johnson family. Still to be decided, however, is the fate of the mariculture operation after 2012 when its current lease expires.

Also familiar with Dr. Goodman’s revelations regarding the park’s misrepresenting research data is Congresswoman Woolsey’s office, as spokesman Chris Shields confirmed for me last week. The congresswoman on May 30 discussed axis and fallow deer with a coalition that included the Marin Humane Society, In Defense of Animals, Marin Wildcare, and local residents. She subsequently wrote Neubacher on July 17, disputing his claim that there is an immediate need to eliminate fallow and axis deer in the park.

“There is no urgency to move forward,” Congresswoman Woolsey wrote. “Park research fails to show any ecosystems collapsing or any native animal populations currently declining because of the exotic deer’s presence in the park.”

Not all “white deer,” as they are often called, are white. Fallow deer can be white, brown, spotted, and black. The spotted deer seen here, however, are axis deer while the black critter is angus beef on the hoof. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

Unfortunately, as Dr. Goodman complained to Marin County supervisors, the press too often has uncritically spread the National Seashore’s inaccurate claims about the oyster company. The same could be said of inaccurate claims about the deer herds.

One claim is that the fallow and axis herds are growing out of control. Two years ago, the park administration told the public the fallow herd was doubling every 6.5 years. A week ago, The Independent Journal quoted the park as now claiming the herd is doubling in four years. The claim, of course, is malarkey, as anyone who regularly drives through the Olema Valley knows.

Accepting for the moment the Neubacher administration’s estimate, there are now 900 fallow deer in the National Seashore, give or take 50 or so. If the herd were really doubling every four years, there would have been only 125 fallow deer in the park when Neubacher became superintendent 12 years ago and stopped the culling. In fact, his predecessor, Supt. John Sansing, had been following a policy of maintaining the fallow and axis herds at roughly 350 deer apiece through culling.

Nor did the axis herd ever recover from that culling. The park says it now numbers only 250 deer. Yet the Neubacher administration also claims the axis herd doubles every 3.5 years. If that were true, there would have been only 16 axis deer left in the park when Neubacher stopped the culling.

The fallow herd is growing, and its size should ultimately be limited, but the rate of growth is hardly out of hand. As Congresswoman Woolsey notes, there is time to find alternatives to eliminating the herds.

Gentle and curious, fallow deer are easily domesticated. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of digitalfamily.com)

Consider the National Seashore’s claim that the fallow deer are now out-competing native blacktail deer for grass and brush. As most residents will confirm, there are more blacktail deer in West Marin now than at any other time in recent memory.

Why? One reason is that homes have been built up to the edges of the park, creating the sort of non-urban, residential development where blacktails thrive. Studies in the Bay Area have found suburban blacktail deer often live more than twice as long as those in the wild, with does doing fine in territories as small as three or four square blocks.

The park also claims the growth of the fallow herd is forcing it to expand eastward. Wait a minute! The park itself is expanding eastward. The Truttman Ranch, the Beebe Ranch, and the Lupton Ranch, all on the eastern slope of the Olema Valley, have been taken out of agriculture since being acquired by the park. All the residents of Jewell on the eastern edge of the Neubacher administration’s jurisdiction (which includes pieces of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area) have been evicted.

By steadily reducing human activity at the eastern edge of the fallow deer’s long-time range, the park through the years has been unintentionally encouraging the fallow deer to occasionally wander eastward.

So what is really behind the National Seashore administration’s eagerness to eliminate the park’s fallow and axis deer? Protecting blacktail deer, red-legged frogs, or the administration itself? That will be the topic of next week’s posting.

Two ravens have begun defending my pasture, often sitting atop pine trees and croaking out loud “cr-r-ruck” warnings. Whenever I wander down my driveway, they circle low overhead, creating quite a din. The easiest way to distinguish ravens from crows, by the way, is by their tails. Raven tails are tapered like the bottom of a man’s tie while the ends of crow tails are squared off. In this photo, a downward flap of the wings leaves a ghost image above them.

A blacktail fawn nibbles on a blackberry vine outside my kitchen window.

Whether one finds entertainment in music, wildlife, or the cosmos, Marin County can be a pretty good place to live. The wildlife alone is more entertaining than television, and enjoying it merely requires keeping your eyes and ears open. In West Marin where light pollution is minimal, the cosmos is on display every night that isn’t foggy. And as for Marin’s music scene, the venues may be small, but the performers are typically top notch.

Moonrise at the Station House Café. The arms of light extending to the right and left are part of a small cloud in front of the moon. In the foreground, a woman in the shadows reads a map by the light of the café sign as a car drives by.

Meanwhile inside the Station House, Si Perkoff on piano, Daniel Fabricant on standup bass, and Dale Polissar on clarinet perform a dazzling set of melodic jazz.

Last Friday a friend and I attended an impressive performance of Hawaiian slack-key-guitar music at the Dance Palace, and on Saturday another friend and I went to the venerable No Name Bar in Sausalito to listen to jazz. The No Name is virtually the last establishment around here surviving from the Beat Era, and the music we called “modern jazz” in the 1950s and 60s can still be heard in the bar every Friday and Saturday night.

Shortly after we found a table, three couples showed up and took a pair of tables next to us. One nut-brown-complected woman in the group was speaking French, and before long she stood up and began dancing all by herself. Now it’s not unusual for a couple or two to dance in the narrow straits between the No Name’s bandstand and bar, but in my years of going to the place, I had never before seen a dancer quite like this one.

The woman must have been a French stripper, for she started doing bumps and grinds in front of the band, giggling all the while. Her dance routine included flirting with men at the bar and periodically raising her a leg over her head as if she were flashing. (In fact, she was wearing long pants.) At other times, she passionately kissed her rakishly coifed husband, and in general kept both men and women in the bar wondering what she would do next.

When the band at her request played a bossa nova number, she and a tall blonde from her group started to dance only to have a somewhat tipsy guy, who’d been on a stool at the bar, cut in and start dancing with her. The blonde then convinced a more-than-hefty black woman from another table to dance with her. Rhythmically swaying to the beat, the third woman’s grace was as impressive as her size. The French woman meanwhile danced holding the tipsy man’s hands on her butt or alternately holding her own arms around his neck; her husband just laughed.

When the three couples finally left the bar, the waitress quipped: “Show’s over.” My friend and I chuckled, but the tipsy guy on his stool at the bar looked forlorn.

The rest of the world may going to hell in a handbasket, I thought to myself, but here in Marin County, folks are still finding ways to have fun.

More entertainment: With a droplet of water still on its chin, a roof rat prepares to climb down a lattice after taking a drink from the birdbath on my deck. In the late 1340s, roof rats’ fleas spread bubonic plague throughout Europe, but the main danger from the timid, little roof rats now in West Marin is to dishwashers. Please see Posting No. 13 for that story.

A blacktail doe and her two fawns in my field.

Fawns at play bound across my field.

Now that Independence Day is over, let’s take a moment to reflect on what it was really all about. Footraces in Inverness? Parades in Woodacre and Bolinas? A tug of war between Bolinas and Stinson Beach? Illegal fireworks on Stinson Beach? I myself spent much of the holiday enjoying nature.

The odd thing about the Fourth of July is what it doesn’t represent. For example, did the 13 colonies begin their fight for independence from the British crown on July 4, 1776? No, the “shot heard ’round the world,” at the opening battle of the Revolutionary War, had already been fired on April 19, 1775, in Concord, Massachusetts. Paul Revere had made his famous ride the previous night. On April 23, 1775, King George III had declared the colonies to be in open rebellion. The colonists had seized Fort Ticonderoga from the British on May 11, 1775, and on June 16, 1775, had fought the Battle of Bunker Hill.

In short, the American Revolution had been underway for a year when on June 7, 1776, representatives of the 13 colonies, meeting in Philadelphia as the Continental Congress, began debating whether to declare independence from the Kingdom of Great Britain. On July 2, all the colonies except New York (which abstained) voted to approve a draft of the Declaration of Independence.

On July 4, 1776, members of the Continental Congress (with New York as usual abstaining) voted to approve a final draft of the Declaration of Independence, but only John Hancock, president of the Congress, signed it before it was sent to a printer.

The document we know as the Declaration of Independence was signed by all members of the Continental Congress, including New York, on Aug. 2, 1776, and backdated to July 4. Perhaps one reason we don’t celebrate Independence Day on Aug. 2 is that those who signed the document on Aug. 2 did so in secret to avoid British reprisals. I personally would have thought that keeping the public in the dark negated the purpose of a “Declaration of Independence.”

In any case, all this was so convoluted that future President John Adams mistakenly wrote his wife after the first vote: “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.”

Likewise in the dark and fighting for survival: this dauntless vine of ivy has worked its way through a narrow gap in the wall into my basement, where it is now growing up through a cabinet in my workshop. Because there are no windows in the workshop, the vine gets light only when the basement door is briefly open, as it is here, or when the sun is in a position where there may occasionally be a crack of dim light around the door. The photo demonstrates the valiant persistence of ivy, but it also reveals why many homeowners don’t want it growing on the outside walls.

In contrast to the controversy raging in town and in the press this week over the sorry state of The Point Reyes Light under its new publisher, life has remained fairly bucolic at my cabin.

In preparation for the fire season, tractor operator Gary Titus from Tomales on Saturday mowed my pasture and that of my neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsman.

Homes uphill from fields of dry grass are particularly vulnerable to wildfires, county firefighters remind West Marin residents each summer.

Titus, who mows our pastures annually, told me that ours, like other fields he’s mowed this year, were faster to cut than usual even though the grass was higher. It apparently has to do with which types of grass grow best as the timing and amount of rainfall vary.

The mowing provides quite a show, for crows continually fly in circles around the tractor looking for insects, snakes, and other small creatures killed, or at least stirred up, by the mowing. It is not uncommon for West Marin’s ubiquitous gopher snakes to get chopped up by mowers, but Titus was happy to report that this year he hasn’t killed a single snake.

Most of the wildlife around my cabin have, of course, not been affected by the mowing.

Possums at night still climb lattice to drink from the birdbath on my railing.

And the raccoon that my stepdaughter Anika photographed last month peering in my dining-room window is back at it. Standing on my firewood box outside, the raccoon (which appears earlier on this blog) initially seemed to be merely checking on what those of us inside were doing.

This week when I spotted her again, however, the raccoon had more on her mind. On my window ledge is a ceramic candlestick with the lifelike shape of a small bird. The raccoon obviously wanted to grab it, but there was a pane of glass in the way.

In contrast to the rural tranquility around my cabin, protesters in Point Reyes Station milled around in front of The Point Reyes Light Monday morning. Some were upset by the paper’s sensationalism, which which under publisher Robert Plotkin has been heavy on gratuitous gore. Others complained that the newspaper no longer provides West Marin with the coverage it needs. “It’s lost connection to the community,” protest organizer Elizabeth Whitney of Inverness told the press.

The demonstration, which got advance coverage in Saturday’s San Francisco Chronicle and by the Associated Press, was covered live on Monday by Sonoma County public radio and the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.

In a lengthy article by Paul Payne, The Press Democrat quoted Plotkin as calling the demonstration a “march to mediocrity, a protest against excellence. I bought the newspaper to make something extraordinary.”

Payne also interviewed Joel Hack, owner of The Bodega Bay Navigator website, who plans to launch a competing weekly newspaper in West Marin on July 5.

Hack told The Press Democrat and The Chronicle that his newspaper would cover school board and other public meetings (as The Light did before Plotkin bought it in November 2005). He also promised to also cover the special accomplishments of everyday residents, such as “aunt Mabel’s prize-winning raspberry jam.”

The new paper has been temporarily dubbed The West Marin Pilot until readers chose a final name, and Hack last week told The Chronicle that scores of people have begun subscribing before the paper even exists or has a definite name. He has also reported significant success in lining up advertisers.

Editing the new newspaper will be former Light editor Jim Kravets. In Saturday’s Chronicle, Kravets is quoted as saying, “It’s a journalist’s dream to work in a community where people don’t just pick up the paper out of rote, but run to it.”

Kravets has called for a community meeting at 7 p.m. Monday, June 18, in the Dance Palace, to tell editors and staff of the West Marin community newspaper what they want and don’t want in their newspaper. He described the meeting as a chance for West Marin residents to ensure the “paper is not merely relevant but essential for the enlightened practice of West Marin citizenship.”

Notwithstanding the protest and a new competitor, The Light itself got some good news this week.

Missy Patterson, who runs the paper’s front office, has changed her mind and will not work for the new newspaper, Hack reported. He said Patterson did not explain her reasons in detail, mentioning only that she was uncomfortable with her earlier decision to jump ship.

And on Wednesday, The Independent Journal reported that former Light bookkeeper LaShanda Goldstein has pled guilty to embezzling $62,000 from the weekly.

Goldstein, 29, of Santa Rosa remains in Marin County Jail in lieu of $62,000 bail, The Independent Journal added.

On Monday, she pled guilty to “one count of embezzlement with an enhancement for stealing more than $50,000,” the paper reported. She could face a maximum sentence of four years in state prison, but Deputy District Attorney Rosemary Slote said Goldstein may be sentenced to probation because she has no prior record.

I ran into a snake near the foot of my driveway last Thursday. Or, to be more precise, I managed to avoid running over it.

A Pacific gopher snake three to four feet long was warming itself on sunny patch of Campolindo Drive near the ends of Skip and Renée Shannon’s driveway, Jay Haas and Didi Thompson’s driveway, and my driveway.

Two other neighbors, George and Earlene Grimm, walked up when they saw me taking the snake’s picture, and Earlene told me she and George have counted as many as 15 gopher snakes in their yard.

Another neighbor, George Stamoulis, later told me he had picked up a gopher snake a few days earlier and found its scales to be pleasantly smooth as it wiggled around in his hands before he set it back down.

Gopher snakes are found coast to coast from southern Canada to the central Mexican state of Sinaloa. They are non-venomous although they don’t want you to know this.

“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.”

However, the museum adds, “the tapered tail, the absence of a rattle, the lack of a facial pit, and the round pupils all distinguish the gopher snake from the rattlesnake.”

The gopher snake is 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.

With all the birds, people, and snakes on my hill, this is sometimes a busy neighborhood. My stepdaughter Anika Zappa, who just visited me for a week, spotted a female raccoon on my firewood box looking in the dining-room window one evening and shot this photo.

No sooner had Anika departed than former Point Reyes Light reporter Janine Warner and her husband Dave LaFontaine showed up for a four-day stay. They had been here only a couple of days when Janine looked out my kitchen window and saw a blacktail doe looking back at her.

Like the raccoon, the deer was unfazed at being able to see humans just inside the window. However, were I to open an outside door, the wildlife would quickly back off.

Apparently, the wildlife on my hill have come to consider my cabin a cage. As long as my doors to the outdoors are closed, they presume I’m safely locked inside, leaving them free to wander wherever they please. When my cage door opens, however, they act as if we on the inside may be on the verge of escaping.

“Nature has wit humor, fantasy etc.,” wrote Novalis (1772-1801). “Among animals and plants, one finds natural caricatures.” His observation came to mind last week when I photographed this great blue heron standing watch over a World War II army bunker at the Muir Beach Overlook.

Novalis, by the way, was the nom de plume of Baron Frederich von Hardenberg, who was “one of the greatest early German romantic poets,” to quote The Encyclopedia Americana, and “exerted a strong influence on 19th century romanticism and the neo-romantics of the 20th century.”

In The Novices of Sais (a city in ancient Egypt), Novalis wrote (using the encyclopedia’s translation) that “the secret of nature is to be the fulfilled longing of a loving heart.”

I was reminded of Novalis’ second observation last weekend when I spotted a possum near one of my trees in broad daylight. Possums are mostly nocturnal, and I typically notice them around my cabin long after sunset.

Peeking possum

This possum soon hid behind the tree and began peeking around the trunk at something under my deck. I was naturally curious what that was but didn’t want to disturb the scene.

So I stayed inside, and presently a small, female possum came waddling onto my deck. I immediately recognized her, for most nights she checks my deck for scraps and birdseed, often climbing a lattice in order to drink from a birdbath on my railing.

Sorry, not interested!

The male hesitantly joined her on my deck, but there was nothing to eat and she showed little interest in him, so the timid male sadly waddled back into the grass. Courtship in nature, as among us humans, is seldom easy.

Also like us humans, much of the animal world in West Marin was sweltering in this week’s “heat wave.”

Whenever the days get as hot as they did Monday and Tuesday, the horses in Toby Giacomini’s pasture next to mine go splashing in his stockpond.

But to repeat Novalis’ observation, “Among animals, one finds natural caricatures,” and I occasionally see a horse immerse itself in the stockpond as if for a baptism.

Nor is that comparison as far-fetched as it may sound.

“If horses had hands or were able to draw with their feet and produce the works which men do,” wrote the Greek philosopher Xenophanes (570-475 BC), “horses would draw the forms of gods like horses.”

“The world, dear Agnes, is a strange affair,” wrote the French playwright Jean Baptiste Poqulin Moliere (1622-73). Indeed it is, and I’ve been keeping a record.

Now I don’t claim to believe in such miracles, but a recognizable apparition of Jesus (or is it Moammar Khadafy?) appears on the glass door of my woodstove almost every time I light a fire.

I’ve repeatedly cleaned all traces of soot and creosote off the glass, only to have the apparition’s sad visage reappear again and again.

Pilgrims, supplicants, and expatriated Libyans are invited to send comments to SparselySageAndTimely.com in order to receive information on visiting hours and donations expected at the door.

In an article on biological clocks, the Feb. 17-23 Economist noted, “People produce urine fastest at 6 p.m. They are most likely to develop an allergic reaction at 11 p.m. And 1 a.m. is a prime time for pregnant women to go into labour.” The Economist is British, hence the un-American spelling of “labor.”

If all this is true, I reasoned, 6 p.m. must begin a flush hour that follows the rush hour, so I called North Marin Water District and talked to Ryan Grisso in water operations. Is there, I asked, a spike in water use at 6 p.m. each day à la the supposed spike at halftime during the Super Bowl?

Ryan checked with his supervisor Brad Stompe and called back to say water use does indeed spike at 6 p.m. However, he added, it also spikes at 6 a.m., so he and Brad were unable to attribute the spikes simply to flushing. They could also have to do with people starting to cook, Ryan said.

It occurred to me, however, that numerous people get out of bed around 6 a.m., and at that hour too, their bodies would function in time with their biological clocks. All the same, the 6 a.m. spike wouldn’t necessarily conflict with the cooking theory, for much of the commuter crowd also starts fixing breakfast around 6 a.m.

For now, I guess, we’ll just have to leave it all dangling and pose another question.

Last week I photographed a raven perched on my birdbath as it tore apart some long, worm-like prey.

What was the prey? All I could tell for sure was that its hide was segmented, its flesh was bright pink, and it was surprisingly long. So I asked Point Reyes Station ornithologist Rich Stallcup what the bird was eating.

He wrote back that he although could not tell me precisely, it is probably a big grub (beetle larva) or possibly a larval ceanothus silk worm.

“It is not a snake, lamprey, or eel,” Stallcup added with good humor.

As it happened, I photographed a ceanothus silkmoth on my kitchen door a few weeks ago.

If that was one of its larvae being eaten, West Marin just lost a soon-to-be beautiful resident.

But then, there’s no figuring out animals, at least some of the time.

When I moved to Point Reyes Station 32 years ago, my former wife Cathy and I owned a Rhodesian ridgeback named Maria. Despite her size, 120 pounds, Maria was hardly an aggressive dog, but she was a guard dog. We had gotten her after finding prowlers peering in our windows while we were still living in Monte Rio. However, once we moved to Point Reyes Station, Maria’s main guard duties were reduced to scaring stray cats off our deck and lying on our steps keeping watch for our return.

When we did return up our driveway at the end of each workday, I always found it reassuring to spot Maria lying in the grass between the railroad-tie treads of our stairs.

Maria died almost three decades ago, so I felt a bit of déja  vu last week when I noticed a blacktail deer had taken over her lookout spot.

I’d never had a guard deer before, but I felt confident it would have caused a commotion had a prowler tried to climb my stairs while it was lying there.

We’ll end with another item from The Economist, which curiously refers to itself as a “newspaper” and not a news “magazine,” which it is.

The word “notorious” has been used facetiously so often that some people have forgotten what it really means. Just as a reminder, The American Heritage Dictionary defines “notorious” as “known widely and usually unfavorably; infamous: a notorious gangster; a district notorious for vice.”

Given what the word means, I was surprised this week by a large advertisement in the April 28-May 4 issue of The Economist for “the São Paulo Ethanol Summit 2007.” The ad proclaims that “Brazil [is] ahead once again” in renewable energy, and describes the summit as “the first event of global expression on this matter with the notorious presence of worldwide leaders, CEOs, scientists, researchers, economical and political authorities.”

Sounds like a “notorious” gathering, alright.

I need merely to look out my cabin windows to see it all around me, among the deer, horses, and red-winged blackbirds, among the raccoons, steers, and bluejays. It’s the unending struggle by each species to maintain its pecking order.

The pecking order, which is sometimes called “dominance hierarchy” or “social hierarchy,” when talking about humans and other mammals, takes its common name from the fact that it was first observed among poultry.

As Wikipedia explains, “The top chicken is one which can peck any chicken it wants. The bottom chicken is one that lets all the other chickens peck on it and stands up to none. There are chickens in the middle, who peck on certain chickens but are, in turn, pecked on by other chickens higher up on the scale.”

Like other young animals foxes play-fight to establish dominance. I photographed these red foxes across my fence on neighbor Toby Giacomini’s land. The fox described below was the locally more-common gray fox.

You can observe pecking orders in prisons and schoolyards. In his 1960 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey (1935-2001) portrays a sane man, RJ McMurphy, who cons his way into a mental institution to avoid a short prison term for petty crimes. Once in the institution, McMurphy immediately asks his fellow wards America’s eternal question, “Who’s the head bull-goose loony around here?”

Pecking orders are more pronounced among some species than others, I’ve observed. With red-winged blackbirds, for example, maintaining their chosen spot at the feast of birdseed on my railing is more important than eating it. Brown towhees and Oregon juncos, on the other hand, worry far less about who’s at the head of the table.

I once asked Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evans why some birds are more aggressive toward their own species when feeding than are other birds. Evans said he wasn’t certain but theorized that birds whose diets are limited to certain food would likely protect it more aggressively than birds that eat a wider variety of foods.

While social hierarchies are supposed to exist within a species, there are obviously similar hierarchies among species.

The cutest little roof rat you ever did see stretched like a first grader at a drinking fountain to get a drink from my birdbath at twilight Thursday.

Last week, I was watching a towhee pecking at a scattering of birdseed under my picnic table when a roof rat ran out from behind a flowerpot and drove the towhee off. I’d never seen such a thing before, but the towhee seemed unfazed. It merely hopped three feet away and started in on another scattering of seeds.

To some extent size determines which species dominates which. A possum will scurry off if a raccoon shows up. But as I observed Tuesday night, a raccoon will flee a much-smaller fox.

Usually, confrontations between raccoons themselves are limited to growling and, like blackbirds, fluffing up to look bigger.

But I’ve also seen raccoons fight, and they were savage.

Although raccoons have fearsome canine teeth, the little gray fox I saw Tuesday clearly had a much-larger raccoon buffaloed, if you can stand the metaphor. And even if you can’t, this column is over. But if someone knows why a raccoon would be afraid of a fox, please send in a comment.

One of the odder events in this long-running saga called Nature’s Two Acres occurred Saturday night. (The two acres, of course, is my pasture surrounding this cabin in the hills above Point Reyes Station.)

It all began when Dee Goodman, who is visiting from Mexico, and I went out on my deck at twilight Saturday to enjoy the view. For a while, we sat on patio chairs drinking coffee, but as the evening grew chilly, we went back inside.

While outside, I had set a nearly full mug of coffee on the deck, and probably because Dee and I were talking when we went indoors, I forgot to take the mug with me.

As it happens, I drink my coffee with a fair amount of those sweet, flavored (hazelnut, vanilla nut, or crème brulé) creamers made by Nestle. I am not alone in enjoying coffee thus diluted nor, as I’ve now discovered, is my species.

Later last Saturday I was working at my computer when around midnight I went downstairs for a bite, and to my surprise, a possum was on my deck lapping up my forgotten coffee. Before long, he had emptied the mug. I wasn’t worried and laughed to myself that if a possum could digest roadkill, it could digest a mug of coffee.

Still writing in my loft at 2 a.m., I went back down to the kitchen, and as I headed toward the refrigerator, I immediately spotted the possum. It had returned and was now outside my kitchen door.

It’s fairly common to see a possum scurry when scared, but I can’t say that I’d ever seen a perky possum before. One mug of coffee, and this little guy was wired.

The possum was pacing back and forth outside my door, climbing on and off the railing, and occasionally poking around my covered firewood (above). Again amused, I decided to give the perky possum a slice of bread. The possum started when he heard me unlatch the kitchen door, but rather than scurrying off, he made a dash toward the opening.

From what I’ve observed, possums don’t see diddly squat at night (although they’re supposed to) and depend almost entirely on smells to guide them. I’m not at all sure this possum even saw me, but he sure smelled food in my kitchen. I had to bean him with a piece of bread to keep him from running into the cabin.

As he ate it, I tossed out a few more pieces and he spent the next 10 minutes running around the deck, sniffing for crusts.

The moral to all this, I suppose, is that if your neighborhood marsupial is too prone to playing possum, just serve him a cup of coffee.

SparselySageAndTimely.com previously quoted Point Reyes Station naturalist Jules Evens as saying, 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.” By 1931, possums had spread as far south as the Mexican border but did not reach Point Reyes until 1968.

Luckily for possums, the Point Reyes National Seashore hasn’t any plans to exterminate the hundreds, if not thousands, of them in the park although like the white deer they’re not native.

When the National Seashore opened in 1965, possums were just arriving in the park while the non-native white (fallow) and spotted (axis) deer had been living on Point Reyes for 20 years. But unlike the white deer, the public hasn’t shown particular interest in possums, and the National Seashore administration in its perverse fashion targets its eradication programs on non-natives that appeal to members of the public.

Why? It’s simply a matter of Calvanism reminiscent of the Puritans’ ban on bear baiting (siccing dogs on a chained bear). The Puritans weren’t particularly upset by cruelty but didn’t like to have the public enjoying itself so much.