Consider this a dining review for the benefit of wildlife in Point Reyes Station.

The Pine Cone Diner.

A Western gray squirrel carries a pine cone in its teeth as it jumps from limb to limb in a Monterey pine next to Mitchell cabin. West Marin’s squirrels are easy to spot but hard to photograph. In the time it takes to raise a camera to my eye, they often bound away to a new location.

Squirrels gnaw off the scales of pine cones while the cones are still green in order to eat the pine seeds underneath.

Sometime ago it became obvious from the small, well-gnawed pine cones we were finding on the walk and decks at Mitchell cabin that once again a squirrel is a habitué of one tree in particular. It’s fun to have the squirrel around, but having the remains of cones and seeds continually under foot is a nuisance.

Also found below pines at the cabin are limb tips a squirrel has gnawed off. Squirrels like to feed on pine trees’ cambium layer, which is immediately under the bark. The bark that’s softest and easiest to gnaw through is at the narrow ends of growing limbs, resulting in squirrels forever gnawing off the ends.

Were this the Yuletide, a few of the tips that fell in the past two weeks would have been big enough to serve as small Christmas trees. One was more than four feet long.

A ruby-throated hummingbird approaches a favorite flower on the deck. In normal flight, a hummingbird’s wings beat around 80 times per second, but in dives performed during courtship, they may reach 200 flaps per second.

The same hummingbird sucks nectar from a blossom.

Hummingbirds are able to hover in one place by flapping their wings in a horizontal figure 8.

A tri-colored blackbird swoops in for a landing, pushing aside other blackbirds, which are pecking birdseed off the deck railing. The tri-colored blackbird’s yellow patch on its wing distinguishes it from a red-winged blackbird.

The flash from the camera is reflected in the fox’s eyes, but the vixen appears oblivious to the burst of light. Photo by Lynn Axelrod

A gray fox heads toward the kitchen door at Mitchell cabin after dark, hoping to be handed a slice of bread. A couple of days later, Lynn saw the vixen jump onto a deck chair and then onto the railing where a mourning dove was sitting, but the bird took flight just in time to escape.

Raccoons likewise fail to react to the camera’s flashes. They too are far more interested in bread. Photo by Lynn Axelrod

An earlier posting describing how animals’ eyes react to light notes, among other things, that wildlife including birds do not usually show any reaction to sporadic flashes, even those directly in their faces,but a quick succession of flashes gets their attention.

A black tailed buck shows the grace of a dancer as he looks up from grazing next to Mitchell cabin.

This deer seems to have marked off my fields as his, for no other bucks have been coming around recently although a fawn and a couple of does are frequent visitors.

If you happen to be a squirrel, hummingbird, blackbird, fox, raccoon, or deer, Mitchell cabin offers great food at no charge. But look out for the fox if you’re smaller than she is.

Lynn had repeatedly commented on the beautiful markings framing the face of one particular female raccoon that drops by Mitchell cabin each evening for a few slices of bread.

“Our Beautiful Raccoon,” a photograph from June 8 by Lynn Axelrod.

The same raccoon with three young kits on June 26.

We’d been wondering if Ms. Raccoon was feeding a family, and last week she confirmed our suspicions when she brought a set of young triplets along with her one evening. The kits for the most part stayed close to their mother.

Mom, as would be expected, was protective of them. Here she keeps an eye on another raccoon as it approaches the cabin.

As is often the case, one of the kits is bolder than the others. While its siblings (upper left) try to stay out of sight behind the woodbox, this one joins mom out on the deck hunting for scraps of bread.

If I accidentally drop a slice of bread before I can hand it to her, mom doesn’t hesitate to reach into the kitchen for it. That, of course, is hardly surprising. My late buddy Terry Gray, who had slept near his kitchen, told me more than once of waking up to find a raccoon, which had come in through the cat door, close to his bed hunting for food.

Besides being unsettling, the raccoons were nuisances, for Terry would have to get up and scare them back out the cat door.

All this inspired me to experiment. Would a fox do the same thing? Apparently it will at least pick a slice of bread off the kitchen floor near the door. But would it come in through a cat door if we had one? My guess is that it would be more hesitant than a raccoon to enter the cabin but might do so if it were convinced there was food inside and no human around. After all, foxes are famous for raiding hen houses.

If I’m right, it certainly would be unsettling to be awakened by some fox hunting close to my bed.

One difference in their personalities I have observed is that raccoons are content with dining restaurant style, eating their food where it’s served. Foxes prefer takeout dining. Unlike their human neighbors, they protect their privacy, which is yet another reason why you’ll never find a fox with phone or Internet service.

If you’ve ever been around a pile driver sinking the steel supports for a big building into the ground, you know what a racket that can be. But I bet you don’t know the origin of the term “pile driver.”

According to The Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (Harper Collins, 1962), “In the colorful language of the West, a pile driver is a horse that, in bucking, comes down to earth with all four legs stiff.” ______________________________________________________________

No pile drivers here. (Photo by Scott Stine)

My neighbor Scott Stine and I two weeks ago hiked up a hill next to Mitchell cabin to photograph the foot of Tomales Bay and the landscape around it. The scene was stunning, but the real wonderment occurred when I sat down to pull some stickers out of my socks.

Immediately a herd of horses moseyed over, probably hoping I was carrying something to feed them. They took turns nuzzling me, sometimes two at a time, and before long one was scratching the top of its head on my back.

It was a carefree lovefest until one horse went too far and began nibbling on a cuff of my pants. I then had to play coy and tuck the leg under me. _______________________________________________________________

Mostly hidden by tall grass, a fawn grazes on another part of the hill. As the year wears on and the fawn gets larger, it strays further and further from its mother but returns to her side every few minutes.

Deer can also be dear. In Venus and Adonis, Shakespeare uses deer as a metaphor for lover. Speaking to the ancient Greek god of attractiveness and desire, Venus tells him: “I’ll be a park, and thou shalt be my deer;/ Feed where thou wilt, on mountain, or in dale:/ Graze on my lips, and if those hills be dry,/ Stray lower, where the pleasant fountains lie.” _____________________________________________________________

Two mother quail and four chicks. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Another of the bard’s sensual creatures.

“For reasons not entirely clear,” The Morris Dictionary notes, “the quail has long had a reputation for what one source calls ‘an inordinately amorous disposition.’

“In Shakespeare’s time harlots were known as quails and he refers in Troilus and Cressida to Agamemnon as ‘an honest fellow enough who loves his quails.’

“A variation on this sense was common in mid-century US slang.

“A San Quentin quail referred to females below the age of legal consent. Misconduct with one such might lead to jail, San Quentin being one of the most notorious of the federal prisons.” _______________________________________________________________

A foxy lady takes a nap on our deck. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

In one of the Brothers Grimm fairytales, The Wedding of Mrs. Fox, a fox pretends to have died to test his wife’s fidelity. When suitors then show up, the vixen rejects them because they aren’t foxes but bears, wolves, and so forth.

Finally a fox shows up who looks like her supposedly dead husband, arrangements are made for a wedding, but her husband appears and drives off the groom and wedding guests. ____________________________________________________________

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), meanwhile, has gone the furthest in promoting a loving compassion for animals.

In its campaign against wearing animal fur, PETA has enlisted numerous celebrities to pose in the buff, albeit with their strategic parts covered.

Celebrities taking part in PETA’s campaign range from retired NBA Hall of Famer Dennis Rodman to these former Miss USA winners Alyssa Campanella, Shanna Moakler, Shandi Finnessey, and Susie Castillo.

Their message is always a version of: enjoy your own skin and don’t wear an animal’s. Who can resist entreaties such as these?

A coyote walked past Mitchell cabin five minutes ago, which brings up the question: what other critters are around at this time of the year? Summer will begin Friday, but on this hill some creatures still have quite a bit of spring in their step, as these photos from the past week illustrate.

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A female gray fox has become a daily visitor to Mitchell cabin.

Foxes are tricksters, as many cultures realize.

And the expression “crazy as a fox” has been around far longer than any of us have.

So it was no accident when Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp decided to call its off-the-wall reporting “Fox News.” ____________________________________________________________

Finding dinner ready on the picnic table.

This vixen shows up in late afternoon shortly after Lynn and I put out birdseed for our cage-free aviary, which at the moment includes: red-winged blackbirds, tri-color blackbirds, scrub jays, stellar jays, sparrows, finches, towhees, doves, crows, ravens, quail, ring-tailed pigeons, juncos, chickadees, and doves. We call their feeding time “the evening bird show.”

Foxes love birdseed as much as birds do, and I recently witnessed the vixen licking birdseed off my deck while a white-crowned sparrow just overhead pecked birdseed off the railing. _____________________________________________________________

By now the vixen sort of trusts Lynn and me. Here Lynn hands her a couple of slices of bread. It’s a friendly exchange. This particular fox’s table manners are surprisingly dainty — no snapping at the hand that feeds her. ____________________________________________________________

After receiving her bread, the vixen usually foxtrots off a short distance to eat, apparently preferring to do her chewing in private. ________________________________________________________________

A second fox, a male, visits us after dark.

However, that’s also the time when two or three raccoons show up to be hand fed their own slices of bread.

If the raccoons aren’t fed immediately, they often doze by the kitchen door, waiting to be noticed.

The fox and raccoons never fight, but they’re leery of each other.

The more-nimble fox, however, always finds a way to avoid confrontations with them. And I’ve sometimes watched while the quick gray fox jumps over the sleeping coon.

I learned a few years ago that I can get them to eat side by side by putting out two handfuls of peanuts in close proximity on the deck. The lure of honey-roasted peanuts is obviously stronger than their suspicion of each other, as this photo from last week demonstrates. ___________________________________________________________

One critter that no doubt is pleased we’re feeding the foxes is the jackrabbit that hangs out in my fields. I’m sure a hungry fox would be delighted to dine on hare if it could catch one. But it would find it far easier to catch the jackrabbit’s slower-footed cousin, the cottontail rabbit.

Well, that’s our fair and balanced fox news for this week. Stay tuned for Sean Hannity’s harangue against these atheists in foxholes.

We humans sometimes don’t know what we’re seeing and often don’t know what we’re hearing and saying.

Abandoned by its mother.

A couple of weeks ago, this bird’s egg suddenly appeared on the railing outside the dining-room window at Mitchell cabin. Although Lynn was sitting at the dining-room table, she didn’t see the bird that laid it, but the egg couldn’t have been on the railing very long. The day was windy, and shortly after I snapped this picture, the egg was blown off the railing and broke.

I later showed this photo to Dave DeSante, president of the Institute for Bird Populations in Point Reyes Station, but he couldn’t identify it. “Too many birds have white eggs like that,” he said.

Nor would he hazard a guess as to what the egg had been doing on my railing. My own SWAG (military parlance for “scientific wild-ass guess”) is that some bird went into labor before she could make it back to her nest.

Another mystery: Why is the National Rifle Association, which is dominated by southern white men, now fighting against federal gun-control legislation.

People need to be armed, they claim, to protect themselves from not only criminals but also from oppressive government.

The NRA seems to forget that in the 1960s, it helped draft some of the early gun-control laws. What has changed?

During the Civil Rights Movement, armed Black Panthers began patrolling the streets of various cities to protect blacks, sometimes from abuse by police.

On May 2, 1967, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, he chanced upon a group of armed Black Panthers at the state capitol. Reagan became so frightened that he took off running and despite his political conservatism immediately began advocating gun-control legislation and garnered support from the NRA.

It sounds to me as if the way to get gun-control legislation passed is to bring back the Black Panthers.

Here’s an expression we hear all the time, but few people know its origin: “Leave no stone unturned.”

The expression, according to the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, “goes back to a battle between forces led by the Persian general Mardonius and the Theban general Polycrates in 477 BC.

“The Persian was supposed to have hidden a great treasure under his tent, but after he was defeated, the victorious Polycrates couldn’t find the valuables. So he put the question to the oracle at Delphi (above left) and was told to return and leave no stone unturned. He did — and found the treasure.”

A “girl” in the Middle Ages: is the child really male or a female? Hard to tell. And, no, the kid’s not a hermaphrodite.

As the Morris Dictionary explains: “It seems hard to believe that in the Middle Ages [the 5th to the 15 century] a girl could be a young child of either sex.

“Indeed, such phrases as knave girl to designate a boy child were common. In Middle English the word had various spellings: gerle, girle, and gurle.”

By the way, there is no such thing as a true hemaphrodite, according to the Intersex Society of North America.

That would require a person to be both fully male and fully female. At most, some people are born with, or develop at puberty, ambiguous genitalia. Other people may look female on the outside but have typical male anatomy on the inside (or vice versa), but that doesn’t mean they are of both sexes, the Society says. Indeed, it adds, one percent of all human “bodies differ from standard male or female.”

We’ll close with a one last surprise from the Morris Dictionary. The term “filibuster was originally a Dutch term and had nothing to do with government. Indeed, it originally meant ‘freebooting,’ i.e, private citizens’ engaging in warfare against a state with whom their country was at peace, usually for personal gain.

“The Dutch word vribuiter literally meant ‘freebooter or pirate.’ And its derivative filibuster was first used in this country during the 1850s to describe adventurers who were running guns to revolutionists in Cuba and other Central and South American countries.

“However, the term filibustering has become so completely identified with delaying tactics in the Senate that the word is not used for gun-running or piracy anymore.

Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) filibusters for eight hours to block a vote on an Obama tax bill in 2010.

“The first use of filibuster to describe obstruction of legislation by invoking parliamentary delays and resorting to prolonged speechmaking appeared in 1853, when one member of Congress sharply criticized the tactics of his rivals as ‘filibustering against the United States.'”

So the next time some Senator resorts to a filibuster to forestall a vote, just remind yourself that he/she is tacitly behaving like a 19th century gunrunner.

Where the computer age meets the Old West.

For several days I wondered if I would be able to put up a posting this week. A week ago, Horizon Cable upgraded the community’s Internet service, and for the next six days, my computer was able to get online only sporadically. In fact, while writing this I lost my Internet service temporarily.

I’m not knocking Horizon. The staff put in many hours getting me back online. The problem, I’m told, is that my hookup is “non-standard.” It long predates Horizon’s ownership, and the cable is mostly strung along barbed-wire fences. _____________________________________________________________

A toll-gate camera recorded a license plate, and this photograph of a Mercedes in Southern California was sent to me.

More computer problems. Last week I received a letter from Metro ExpressLanes in Gardena, Los Angeles County, informing me that I had violated express-lane regulations on Interstate 10.

“Welcome to the Metro ExpressLanes!” the letter cheerily began. “We noticed that you used the I-10 ExpressLanes without a transponder. As of February 23 at 12:01 a.m., all vehicles (including carpoolers) traveling in the I-10 ExpressLanes are required to have a transponder. The attached violation notice has been issued as a result of your travel without a transponder.

“We understand that the transponder requirement is recent, and the $25 penalty has been waived as a courtesy to you. However, the toll amount [75 cents] is still due.”

The license plate on my 1992 Acura. Can you “C” the difference?

Ever since my former wife Cathy and I bought The Point Reyes Light in 1975, I’ve had a “LIGHT” license plate on my cars. People around West Marin often recognize me on the road because of it.

Unfortunately, Metro ExpressLanes’ computers, which apparently use the Close Enough operating system, proved unable to distinguish between “LIGHT” and “C LIGHT.”

I’ve now written Metro ExpressLanes: “I have not been in Southern California in several years. My car is an Acura, not a Mercedes, and my license plate is “LIGHT,” not “C LIGHT.” Whether that will lay the matter to rest or whether I have become mired in a bureaucratic swamp remains to be seen. _____________________________________________________________

Enjoying a sunny afternoon last week, this dragonfly, a male Red-veined meadowhawk, kept returning to one small twig on a branch next to Mitchell cabin.

Still seeing red. When flying, dragonflies and damselflies look similar, but once they land, they’re easy to tell apart. Dragonflies at rest keep their wings spread, as you see in the above photo.

When damselflies are at rest, they fold their wings over their backs, as this female Common bluetail is doing.

It’s good to have damselflies and dragonflies around because they both eat insects, primarily mosquitos and midges. ______________________________________________________________

The first camellia blossom of spring at Mitchell cabin. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Also in the red: the camellia is the state flower of Alabama although it’s not native to the Deep South or even to the United States. The flowering trees originated in Asia and have been cultivated in China and Japan for centuries.

They began showing up in England during the 1700s as a result of increased trade with Asia. Inventor Col. John Stevens, who had served in George Washington’s army, is credited with introducing them to North America in 1797. He is said to have imported some camellias from England to beautify his land in Hoboken, New Jersey. ________________________________________________________________

Male quail (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) has been called one of the great poets of American literature, and when these guys (above and below) showed up on Sunday morning, they brought to mind four lines from the final stanza of Stevens’ poem Sunday Morning:

“We live in an old chaos of the sun,/ Or old dependency of day and night…. Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail/ Whistle about us their spontaneous cries….”

Of course, their spontaneous cries can’t begin to match mine when my Internet connection manages to get itself “lost,” as they say, while I’m using my computer.

Female Blacktail deer

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The weather has been so pleasant the last few days that even horses in the field next to mine have taken to lying down and basking in the sun.

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Meanwhile, a badger has excavated a burrow (also known as a “sett”) in the grass in front of Mitchell cabin.

As was noted here four years ago, “Badgers mate in late summer,” according to 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….

“They live off their mother’s milk until August when they strike off to establish their own home range.”

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Badgers live in setts up to 30 feet long and 10 feet deep, for they are extremely 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.

Its common for badgers to take over the burrows of prey they’ve eaten. Given the overabundance of gophers on this hill, I suspect that’s how this sett came to be.

I’ve found a couple of other holes along my driveway where a badger apparently chased gophers into their burrows. However, the holes were small compared to the sett’s opening, leading me to infer the badger gave up the chase in these other locations.

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A mother badger is known as a sow while her offspring are called cubs or kits. In May 2009, I photographed this sow and kit sunning themselves atop their sett in the horses’ pasture.

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Hank Snow (1914-1999).

On old song from the western countryside. While letting my thoughts wander a week ago, I happened to remember the late Hank Snow. He was without a doubt Country and Western music’s preeminent singer from Nova Scotia.

In 1962, the highly popular performer recorded the tongue-twister hit I’ve Been Everywhere (Click here to hear). The song required awesome elocution, and it inspired more than a 125 knockoff versions.

Snow himself had taken an Australian song and reworded it for North American audiences. Many of the knockoffs localized the song’s place names to appeal to listeners in different parts of the US. Through a friend from Florida, I knew of a version aimed specifically at certain cities and towns in that state. (The singer, however, couldn’t begin to match Snow’s virtuosity.)

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A mysterious turn of events: In my March 31 posting, I noted that according to Google Analytics, which tracks visits to this blog, the number of readers in my hometown of Point Reyes Station had plummeted to zero during the first few days of last month while readership in Sunnyvale mushroomed. Offhandedly I joked, “Has Silicon Valley hijacked West Marin?”

The posting must have caught somebody’s eye. Within a week of its going online, according to Google Analytics statistics, visits to this blog from Sunnyvale fell off to virtually none.

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Meanwhile, again according to Google Analytics statistics, the number of visits to this blog from Point Reyes Station residents returned to normal. Could this be coincidence? The history of the Old West is replete with unsolved mysteries.

As a regular reader of The San Francisco Chronicle’s Jon Carroll, I recognized an echo of the divine in his March 5 column, which was headlined: My legs are frozen and I can’t get up.

The column, which focused on his cat named Bucket, asked: “Do you inconvenience yourself just to please a cat? ….Do you allow your legs to freeze and tingle because the cat on your lap does not feel like moving just now?”

Indulging cats in this way is not another sign of modern Americans’ excessive solicitude toward their pets, many of which are better fed than impoverished citizens in some African countries. Rather there is historical and religious precedent for being especially considerate of sleeping cats.

I’m thinking, of course, of a cat named Muezza that, according to Muslim lore, belonged to the Prophet Muhammed. Legend has it that one day when Muhammed heard the call to prayers, he went to put on his robe only to find Muezza asleep on a sleeve. Rather than disturb the cat, Muhammed cut off the sleeve and wore the mutilated garment to the mosque.

An India peacock walks next to Mitchell cabin.

As has been noted here previously, a lone peacock showed up on this hill several months ago and eventually began hanging out with a flock of wild turkeys. He can often be seen bringing up the rear as the flock hunts and pecks its way across the fields.

Occasionally, however, the peacock gets separated from the flock and begins its shrill cries as he searches for his companions.

A peacock by the chimney.

Last Wednesday Lynn repeatedly heard the peacock’s cries coming from somewhere near Mitchell cabin. We both went out on the deck and scanned the fields uphill and downhill but saw nothing.

Eventually we went indoors only to hear more of the peacock’s cries, which always sound a bit like anguished screams. So we went back outside, but again we couldn’t spot it. I was about to go indoors when I heard some scratching on the roof. I looked up, and there was the peacock looking down at me.

After a minute or two, the peacock flew awkwardly to the ground (they’re not good at flying), crossed a field, and departed with a stately strut down the driveway.

Another colorful visitor during the past fortnight was this tom turkey. The wild turkey could be heard gobbling after a disinterested hen he was pursuing. The gobbles were noisy, but they didn’t compare to the peacock’s screams.

This bobcat, like the peacock and turkey, is a regular visitor to Mitchell cabin. Unlike the birds, however, it seldom makes a noise. A couple of weeks ago, my neighbor Didi Thompson called to let me know the bobcat was in my field, and I was able to shoot this photo of it, as well as several others.

Shaili Zappa Monterroso arrives at Larkspur Landing after taking a Golden Gate Ferry from San Francisco.

One visitor last month who doesn’t drop by Mitchell cabin all that often was my youngest stepdaughter Shaili, a student at the University of Minnesota. Shaili grew up in Guatemala and lived at Mitchell cabin during the months I was married to her mother, Ana Carolina Monterroso.

Shaili turned 20 while she was visiting and is seen here celebrating with Lynn.

Although her first language is Spanish, Shaili speaks better English than some of my friends who grew up here.

Of recent, I’ve noticed people having trouble with homonyms, words that sound the same but are spelled differently and mean different things: sum and some, weight and wait, wear and ware, or there, their and they’re.

Homonyms are one reason why it’s better to get news from newspapers than from radio or television, for it is obviously easier to distinguish between written homonyms than spoken ones. This is particularly important when it comes to one’s “burro” or his “burrow.” A “burro” is an “ass.” A “burrow” is a “hole in the ground.” Listening to the radio, it’s sometimes hard to tell one from the other.

The discovery of bobcat traps set along the boundaries of Joshua Tree National Park has angered “thousands of people,” The Los Angeles Times reported March 4. (The park straddles the Riverside County-San Bernardino County border.)

In response to the public “fury,” California Assemblyman Richard Bloom (D-Santa Monica) has introduced the Bobcat Protection Act of 2013 (AB 1213) to “ban trapping of bobcats for commercial purposes.” Even though a similar bill was defeated in 1993, I’m betting this one will be successful.

A bobcat pauses while strolling past Mitchell cabin last Thursday.

“Trappers are keenly interested in bobcats today because the price of a pelt has risen from $78 to about $700 since 2009 in China, Russia, Greece and other foreign markets,” The Times explained.

“Assemblyman Bloom’s bill is a critical step in bringing California’s antiquated wildlife laws into the 21st century,” Brendan Cummings, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s wildlands programs and a resident of the community of Joshua Tree, was quoted as saying. “Right now, it’s legal for trappers to line the boundary of a national park with traps, kill the park’s wildlife and ship their pelts overseas.”

Bobcats are becoming so common around homes in Point Reyes Station that a few have been trapped for preying on people’s animals, and at least one or two have ended up as roadkill. There have been no signs of anyone trapping bobcats for their pelts at the fringes of West Marin’s parks, thank God; however, without the Bobcat Protection Act, there will always be the potential for commercial trapping, if done quietly so as to avoid a fight with the neighbors.

“Although bobcats are trapped primarily for their fur, existing state law classifies them as ‘nongame mammals,’ and provides no limit on the number of bobcats that may be taken by a licensed trapper,” The Times added.

“Bloom’s proposal would reclassify bobcats as ‘fur-bearing mammals’ and make it illegal to trap them or to import, export, or sell any bobcat part or product.” Currently, trappers can get a license for $111.50, but they must check their traps daily and annually report their take to the state.

“Body gripping traps are already illegal in California,” The San Francisco Chronicle added, “so the bill would ban the use of wire mesh cages that trappers generally bait with cat food or carrion to lure the cats inside, causing the door to close.”

Lynx rufus shows off its bobbed tail.

An estimated 1,813 bobcats were taken in California during the 2011-12 license year, an increase of about 51 percent over the previous season, The Times quoted state wildlife authorities as saying. “Trappers took 1,499 of those bobcats, with hunters taking the rest.”

Assemblyman Bloom’s proposed legislation would not ban sport hunting of bobcats; however, it became illegal to use dogs to hunt bobcats or bears in California under a law that took effect Jan. 1. The law was authored by State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown last September.

Bobcat outside my window.

“Bobcats can kill prey much bigger than themselves but usually eat rabbits, birds, mice, squirrels, and other smaller game,” according to the National Geographic. “The bobcat hunts by stealth, but delivers a deathblow with a leaping pounce that can cover 10 feet.”

I can’t imagine much opposition in West Marin to Assemblyman Bloom’s Bobcat Protection Act. Even the agricultural community can live with it since the proposed law would not prohibit killing bobcats that start preying on chickens or other farm animals.

She’ll be missed. Thursday was the last day of February, which also meant it was Kathy Runnion’s last day working in the Point Reyes Station Post Office. With the Postal Service eliminating employees, closing post offices, and stopping Saturday deliveries to save money, Kathy accepted an early retirement offer.

Kathy on Thursday said her goodbyes while serving refreshments in the post office’s lobby. One of the reasons for doing so was to assure postal customers she was in good spirits and hadn’t “gone postal,” she joked. With her are Oscar Gamez from Toby’s Feed Barn (at left) and David Briggs from The Point Reyes Light (at center).

Kathy, who lives in Inverness Park, worked 24 years for the Postal Service, 14 years as a clerk in the Point Reyes Station Post Office, four in the Bolinas Post Office, and one in the Inverness Post Office plus five years as a rural carrier in Glen Ellen.

It’s not that Kathy had been angling for early retirement. Seated at a Toby’s Feed Barn table near the post office, Kathy (at right) in November 2011 distributed American Postal Workers Union literature. The flyers urged the public to back a congressional measure, House Bill 1351, so that the Postal Service would be saved rather than savaged.

“The problem,” the APWU explained, “is that a bill passed in 2006 is pushing the Postal Service into bankruptcy. The law imposes a burden on the USPS that no other government agency or private company bears. It requires the Postal Service to pay a 75-year liability in just 10 years to ‘pre-fund’ healthcare benefits for future retirees. The $20 billion in postal losses you heard about doesn’t stem from the mail but rather from [the] congressional mandate.”

Unfortunately, Congress as usual wasn’t up to protecting the public interest once politics got involved.

Another lost cause. Kathy (right) in May 2008 joined other West Marin residents in trying to dissuade the Vedanta Society from letting the Point Reyes National Seashore use Vedanta property as a staging area for slaughtering a herd of fallow deer. Estol T. Carte (center), the Vedanta Society’s president, listened to the polite group of demonstrators but promised nothing and delivered just that.

US Senator Dianne Feinstein, then-Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, then-Lt. Governor John Garamendi, famed zoologist Jane Goodall, and the senior vice president of the Humane Society of the United States, John Grandy, PhD, were likewise on record as opposing the impending slaughter, but the Park Service was out for blood.

Nearly all the fallow and axis deer in the park were gone within months despite recent assurances from the National Seashore that the killing would be carried out over 11 years, which would allow time to take another look at whether to get rid of all the exotic deer. It was one more frustrating flip-flop by the Park Service, which in 1974 had insisted the deer belonged in the National Seashore because they were “an important source of visitor enjoyment.”

Kathy feeding denizens of a Planned Feralhood enclosed shelter at a Nicasio barn.

Retiring from the Postal Service will not take Kathy out of the public eye, however. For 12 years she has headed Planned Feralhood, an organization that traps and spays or neuters feral cats.

More than 700 of them have been adopted for pets. Some of those which could not be domesticated were let loose but with feeding sites established so they don’t have to fight over scraps of food and garbage. Others are being cared for in Planned Feralhood shelters.

Planned Feralhood recently became a non-profit corporation after operating for years under the fiscal umbrella of other nonprofits. Donations can be sent to Box 502, Point Reyes Station, CA 94956.

Two gray foxes basking in the sun as seen from a rear window of the Point Reyes Station Post Office. The foxes are on the roof of a shed that’s part of Toby’s Feed Barn and adjoins the Building Supply Center’s lumberyard.

In December 2009, I was at home one morning when I got a call from Kathy at the post office. I’d probably like to get a photo of a pair of foxes sleeping just outside a post office window, she said. I grabbed my camera and rushed into town, managing to get there in time to record the scene.

Two days before she retired, I received a similar message from her: “I’ve got a downtown wildlife story for you that needs investigation.” Naturally, I asked what was up. Kathy said she had seen some kind of hawk, although not a red-tailed or a red-shouldered hawk, walking on the cement floor just inside the Feed Barn next door.

People were at the coffee bar in the entranceway, but they didn’t seem to worry the hawk, which was surprising because hawks tend to avoid humans. Kathy added that all the small birds that used to nest among the rafters of the Feed Barn had disappeared.

I asked Feed Barn owner Chris Giacomini about this, and he confirmed the birds had disappeared, but he didn’t know about the hawk. It seems a hawk had discovered good hunting at Highway 1 and Second Street. All the pigeons that used to perch on top of the Grandi Building also disappeared for awhile, Kathy told me, but a few have returned.

With Kathy’s retirement from the post office, Point Reyes Station is losing not only a first-rate postal clerk but also a first-rate observer of the wildlife to be found in the town’s commercial strip.