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.

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.

The advertising manager of The West Marin Citizen, Linda Petersen, 61, of Inverness, suffered major injuries last night around midnight when her car hit a utility pole just west of Motel Inverness.

Her tiny Havanese dog Sebastian was killed in the crash, causing much sadness around Point Reyes Station.

Linda took him everywhere she went, and when The Citizen opened its office in Point Reyes Station more than a year ago, Sebastian soon became a much-beloved dog about town.

A gentle animal with long, silky hair and almost sad eyes, Sebastian charmed most people. Adults, as well as children, regularly stopped by The Citizen office just to see him.

As it happened, I had taken care of Sebastian all afternoon and evening yesterday while Linda helped with a caterer’s event in Stinson Beach.

On her way home to Inverness, Linda stopped by my cabin about 11:30 p.m. to pick up Sebastian but didn’t stick around long, explaining that she was sleepy and needed to get to bed. Unfortunately, her concern proved to be all too valid.

Sebastian among my daffodils.

Just after she drove through Inverness Park, she fell asleep at the wheel, ran off Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, and hit a utility pole. A sheriff’s deputy noted that although the car’s front end was crushed, the utility pole received virtually no damage.

Photographer Jasper Sanidad caught Linda’s and Sebastian’s affection for each other being echoed by a couple behind them in the garden of Café Reyes.

Paramedics transported Linda to Marin General Hospital, where she underwent surgery today for multiple broken bones and a collapsed lung.

Linda’s daughter Saskia van der Wal places roses on a small cairn above Sebastian’s grave.

This afternoon, Linda’s daughter Saskia and I picked up Sebastian’s body at the Marin Humane Society, where Animal Control had taken him. Returning to Point Reyes Station from Novato, we stopped near Nicasio Reservoir’s dam where a roadsign warns of falling rocks and gathered a trunk-full of rocks. She and I then buried Sebastian under a persimmon tree in my front yard and used the rocks to erect a cairn over his grave.

The mound of rocks is intended to serve both as a memorial to Sebastian and as a barrier to critters that might want to dig him up.

Linda was my houseguest for a year in 2007-08, and she and I have remained close friends.

I’m still in shock over what has happened to her, but I’m confident her spirit will be what saves her. When I talked with Linda at Marin General today, she was determined to get through this ordeal and resume her normal life.

As for Sebastian, during the year he and Linda lived in my cabin, we became buddies. (In this photo by Linda, I’m sheltering him from a cold wind.) When Linda was away, Sebastian slept beside me on my bed at night. In recent months I had looked after him several afternoons a week.

However, at 16 Sebastian was virtually deaf, legally blind, and (for the last few months) hobbled by an untreatable tumor on a rear leg. He didn’t have that much longer to live, but I still haven’t come to terms with the finality of his death. I probably won’t for some time.

As an old dog, Sebastian was too blind to notice the deer close behind him, and the doe quickly realized he was no threat.

Sebastian came from San Juan, Puerto Rico, where Linda lived for more than 20 years. Saskia had found him running in the streets of a working-class neighborhood, filthy, and eating garbage.

He nonetheless was such a sweet dog that Saskia tracked down his owners and asked if she could have him. Embarrassed by his condition, they gave him to her. In short, even as a young dog Sebastian was so good-natured he saved himself from a street dog’s life and enjoyed 11 good years instead. He was that charming.