I’m always fascinated by how well some wildlife of different species get along with each other. Deer in particular seem to enjoy the company of other species.

I was reminded of this felicitous phenomenon when I spotted a hawk (lower right) keeping company with a small herd of deer grazing near Mitchell cabin. _____________________________________________________________

A curious blacktail doe watches a house cat clean itself on a woodpile.

I’ve also seen deer show similar interest in rabbits resting in my field.

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While another doe grazes, she keeps company with a great blue heron as the bird hunts gophers in my pasture.

A roof rat and a towhee eating birdseed side by side on our picnic table. It’s such a relaxed relationship that neither appears to notice the presence of the other. ________________________________________________________________

Some things that happen around Mitchell cabin are more of a surprise.

Friday night I was lying on my side looking into my woodstove when I noticed a phantasmagorical head sticking out of the flames.

At first it appeared to be wrapped in newspaper headlines. Lynn, however, explained that she had used some discarded fundraising solicitation forms to light the fire.

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Yet another truck wreck in West Marin. A week ago Saturday, a truck and trailer rig hauling grocery supplies overturned on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road, blocking traffic for nine hours.

Shortly before noon today, a milk truck overturned on Highway 1 near Nicks Cove, closing the highway for several hours. “The truck, heading south near Nicks Cove, failed to negotiate a turn and landed on its side along the highway,” said Mike Giannini, a battalion chief with Marin County Fire Department.

“The accident caused a hatch to fail and allow approximately 4,000 gallons of milk to be discharged from the tank. Additionally, about 100 gallons of diesel fuel was spilled. Firefighters were able to contain the diesel with absorbent materials.

“At the time of the accident, the milk was approximately 100 yards from Tomales Bay,” Giannini reported at 5 p.m. “Crews are continuing to monitor any possible threat to bay waters.

“The driver of the truck was evaluated by Marin County Fire Department paramedics and was transported to the hospital for evaluation. The exact cause of the accident is under investigation.”

All this is getting to be routine. Let’s see where next weekend’s truck wreck occurs.

Around Christmas, my only pair of slippers came apart, and a cobbler in San Rafael insisted the damage could not be repaired. This would not be that big a deal for most people, but I wear size 15-wide, and no shoe store in Marin County handles slippers that large.

I went online to see if anyone around here does and found a shoe store in Santa Rosa which has shoes and slippers that big and bigger, Santa Rosa Shoes on Cleveland Avenue, so Lynn and I took my car to Santa Rosa Saturday to check out the selection. Sure, that was a long way to go for a pair of slippers, but who wants cold feet?

We headed east on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road on a warm, sunny day until we reached the McEvoy Olive Ranch on Red Hill where a Highway Patrol officer standing on the road signaled us to stop. We, of course, did.

The reason was obvious. Less than an hour earlier (around 1:45 p.m.), a big rig tractor-and-trailer combination, which the CHP later said was traveling too fast for the road, had overturned. It was now lying on its side. Its cab was still on the pavement, but its trailer was dangling precariously down a steep embankment.

“The driver of the truck, 54-year-old Douglas Schmidt of Winton [Merced County], was uninjured,” Highway Patrol press officer Andrew Barclay reported today. “Schmidt related that the refrigerated truck was full with miscellaneous grocery items and that he had lost control of the vehicle after he felt the trailer begin to sway from side to side as he navigated a series of reversing curves.”

One lane of the road was open, but by the time I’d picked out a pair of slippers and we’d enjoyed dinner in Kettles Vietnamese Bistro near the shoe store, the situation had changed. When we tried to drive back home on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road, we discovered both lanes were blocked.

The heavy equipment being used to pull the trailer back onto the road needed all the maneuvering room it could get.

Traffic was being rerouted onto San Antonio Road or back through Petaluma to Western Avenue. The officer directing traffic said he believed the San Antonio Road-Highway 101 connection, which has been closed for construction, was momentarily open. So we tried that route. Bad idea.

Not only was the connection still closed, we ended up driving for miles on frontage roads before heading back to Petaluma. From there, we drove west on Western Avenue toward Hicks Valley and saw an amazing scene. All the traffic on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road was being diverted onto much smaller, rural roads, making backroads seem as crowded as Highway 101.

When we finally got to Hicks Valley, another roadblock was diverting eastbound traffic off the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. But we were westbound, and we  were able to continue on our way back to Point Reyes Station. It had been a surprisingly tiring hunting trip, considering that our quarry had merely been a pair of slippers, but we did survive.

The road, which had been closed nine hours, was reopened today at 12:40 a.m.

CHP press officer Andrew Barclay reported this morning, “Our preliminary investigation indicates that unsafe speed for the roadway was the likely cause of this collision.”