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Sorting through pumpkins. On Wednesday, Lynn and I headed over to Nicasio’s enormous pumpkin patch and bought a medium-sized squash for our harvest-season horn of plenty.

Each year we celebrate the harvest with an old-fashioned cornucopia in our front room.

This fall we’ve become used to seeing what I once would have considered an odd event, a skunk eating with a family of raccoons. Like dogs, raccoons confirm each other’s identity by sniffing rear ends, and they don’t hesitate to sniff a skunk’s backside. This skunk raises its tail as if it’s going to spray, but it never does. The raccoons and skunk sometimes shoulder each other as they compete for kibble on our deck. At first, I would occasionally hear faint growls during these matchups, but no more.

When I started photographing them Friday night, the camera’s flashes immediately caught the raccoons’ attention. The skunk, on the other hand, didn’t even look up.

Bobcats are crepuscular, meaning they are most active around dusk and dawn. In recent months, we’ve repeatedly seen them around Mitchell cabin. This one was sitting in a spot of sunlight outside our kitchen window this past week. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell)

Male bobcats do not help raise their young, which are born blind. The kits stay with their mothers more than half a year. Adults are said to roam up to seven miles per night. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell)

Two or more blacktail deer show up daily. Judging from the fur on this buck’s rump, he’s probably been chewing on an itchy spot.

For Lynn and me, this fall is off to a good start. May you too enjoy the autumn.