Two close friends from Los Angeles, Janine Warner, who reported for The Point Reyes Light when I owned the newspaper, and her husband Dave LaFontaine, have been staying here for the Christmas holidays.

On Christmas Day itself, however, some even more exotic guests showed up.

Around noon Janine went out on the deck to enjoy the sunny Christmas Day and soon spotted a coyote in my field. Here it heads into some eponymous coyote brush.

Immediately I hurried inside and grabbed my camera. Before long, the coyote reemerged next to my parking area. It could hear us chattering on the deck and began staring at me while I took its picture.

The creature then looked down my driveway to make sure all was clear. Coyotes can be fierce, but they’re not foolhardy.

When it finally decided to leave, it started off at a brisk walk. Whether walking or running, coyotes are amazingly graceful.

Coyotes have a walking speed that sometimes tops 20 mph while their running speed can easily top 30 mph. This coyote, however, was just meandering. It took him almost half a minute to travel 0.2 miles to the bottom end of the driveway, where he then sat down to survey the area. Before long, he had disappeared without a trace.

Less than five minutes later, as if on cue, two bucks showed up outside our kitchen window. Both were good looking animals, but the buck in the foreground had an especially regal bearing.

Accompanying the bucks were two does. Like the bucks, the does were not particularly nervous, even when I went out the back door to get a clear photo of them.

Of course, these were not the only wild animals to visit Mitchell cabin on Christmas Day. Our familiar raccoon families showed up in the evening. We fed them slices of bread, but, to save money, we’re now supplementing that with dog kibble instead of honey-roasted peanuts.

Also showing up were our usual pair of gray foxes. One is comfortable enough around us to take slices of bread from our hands. The other, however, is sufficiently skittish that most of the time we have to throw slices to him.

Having a peaceful relationship with the animals around us is key to our having a decent existence, as most religions agree. “Life is dear to the mute creature as it is to a man. Just as one wants happiness and fears pain, just as one wants to live and not to die, so do other creatures,” wrote the XIV Dalai Lama in 1967.

“There is not an animal on the earth, nor a flying creature on two wings, but they are people like unto you,” proclaims the Qur’an. “Animals, as part of God’s creation, have rights which must be respected,” Dr. Donald Coggan, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, observed. “It behooves us always to be sensitive to their needs and to the reality of their pain.”

Many people will enjoy some turkey come Christmas. I’m enjoying 13 already. There are always wild turkeys around West Marin, but at this time of the year, there are more than usual around Mitchell cabin.

A flock of 13 wild turkeys this week parades across my field toward a stockpond.

While most people feel they know a fair amount about turkeys, domestic and wild, there have been many misconceptions over the years regarding the bird, which originated in North America and was first domesticated by the Aztecs.

One misconception is that wild turkeys have no white meat. They do, just proportionately less than domestic turkeys. While many Americans prefer white meat, people in other parts of the world are more likely to prefer dark. Or so I read.

Because much of the white meat comes from a turkey’s breast, the main domestic turkey we eat, the Broad Breasted White breed, has been bred to have a large chest. One result of this breeding, however, is that domestic turkeys, unlike wild turkeys, cannot fly. In addition, because of their large size and weight, they cannot mate, and hens must be artificially inseminated.

Likewise, domestic turkeys are white because they’ve been bred to be white. White feathers don’t leave unsightly pigment spots on turkeys after they’ve been plucked.

The wild turkey is an elegant bird. Benjamin Franklin felt it should have been chosen as the national symbol instead of the the eagle, which he considered “a bird of bad moral character.” Franklin didn’t having like a carrion eater as this country’s symbol.

Spanish conquistadors in Mexico in 1524 were the first Europeans to taste turkey meat. They found it delicious and brought some turkeys back to Europe. By 1524, turkeys had reached England, where they were quickly domesticated. Shakespeare refers to a “turkey cock” in Twelfth Night written in 1601.

Turkeys got their unlikely name because the “turkey merchants,” who did business in the Ottoman Empire (of which Turkey was the seat), were were the same merchants who brought turkeys to England from North America. This led to a widely held misimpression that the turkeys were coming from Turkey. Similar mixups occurred in other cultures. The Hebrew word for turkey literally means “chicken of India” while the Turkish word for turkey is “Hindi,” which refers to Northern India.

As for the country’s name, Turkey (which in Istanbul is Türkiye) is a combination of “Türk,” which is believed to have meant human beings in an archaic version of the Turkish language, while the “iye” apparently meant land of. In short, “Turkey” originally meant land of human beings, as a friend from Turkey confirms.

Elsewhere this turkey and fawn would be at risk of ending up on someone’s dinner table come Christmas. In this time and place, however, they can safely graze together, the fawn eating grass and the turkey eating insects and seeds. Merry Christmas, and I send you my wish that also on your Bach 40, sheep may safely graze.

It’s time for another look at wildlife that have been showing up this fall around Mitchell cabin.

Last week I reported finding coyote scat on my driveway and noted that neighbor George Stamoulis had not only found the scat on his driveway, he’d seen the critter itself ambling up Campolindo Road.

Finally I saw the beast for myself. About 1:30 p.m. Saturday, I looked out the kitchen’s glass door just in time to see a coyote round the corner of the cabin. I grabbed my camera, went out on my deck, and managed to catch this shot of the coyote marking its territory by urinating and scratching the ground.

I get a kick out of seeing coyotes, but, of course, I’m not a sheepman. For 40 years, there were no coyotes in West Marin, but they never disappeared from Northern Sonoma County. After the federal government made ranchers stop poisoning them, coyotes began returning southward. They reached West Marin in 1983 and within the next 15 or so years wiped out a majority of sheep ranches in West Marin and Southern Sonoma County.

Along with sheep, coyotes sometimes hunt deer and not infrequently eat domestic dogs and cats. Among their most-common prey are small mammals, birds, snakes, lizards, and large insects. Traditionally diurnal, coyotes are becoming more nocturnal because of pressure from human development.

Hunting outside my kitchen window.

Last week I posted a couple of photos of a bobcat that had just shown up outside my kitchen window. Here’s a third image that shows it hunting. Bobcats’ favorite prey are rabbits and hares, but they’ll eat anything from insects to rodents to deer.

Gray foxes are omnivorous, eating fruits along with birds and small rodents. They also like cheap, white bread. Gray foxes tend to be nocturnal or crepuscular (active at dawn and twilight).

Along with the Asian raccoon dog, they are the only members of the Canidae family that can climb trees. That’s one way they can raid bird nests and avoid the coyotes.

After sizing up the situation Saturday night, a gray fox takes a slice of bread from my girlfriend Lynn’s hand.

Also visiting our deck each evening, hoping for slices of bread and honey-roasted peanuts, are two families of raccoons. While the families don’t like each other, they are at ease around us. Here a young raccoon curls up outside our kitchen door to take a nap. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

When Lynn and I returned home from a visit to my optometrist in Terra Linda last week, we found a mirthful message on our answering machine from Linda Sturdivant of Inverness Park. “Hey Dave,” she said. “I want to tell you about something beautiful I saw yesterday.

“As I was leaving here, I got to the end of the levee road. At the pumpkinhouse, there is one of the most beautiful red trees you could ever see. Get a picture.”

The pumpkinhouse gets its nickname from the pumpkin displays that once were on its front porch and fence every year. If you check Janis Ceresi’s comment, she includes a link that shows what the pumpkin house used to look like on Halloween.

Wanting more information regarding the tree’s location, I called Linda back, and a friendly young woman answered. Not recognizing her voice, I asked, “Is this Linda?” She said she was. “Just where is this beautiful tree?” I asked, and she sounded confused. “Which tree?” she responded. “The one you called me about.” She then asked me, “Where are you?” and I replied, “In Point Reyes Station.”

“Well, I’m in San Francisco,” she said. We both laughed and hung up, and I called the real Linda Sturdivant.

The tree Linda saw is not the only one around here with brilliant fall colors. This allée of maple trees is across Highway 1 from Campolindo Road, where I live.

Last week I had just started down my front steps when I heard a commotion in a pyracantha bush on Doreen Miao’s property uphill from mine. Not sure what I was seeing, I grabbed my camera and started snapping photos.

Before long the source of the disturbance became obvious when a flock of wild turkeys fluttered to the ground. What had they been doing up in the bush? I was surprised that the bush’s bitter berries are safe to eat, so I checked the Seasonal Cooking website. “Contrary to a common myth, they are not poisonous,” the site said. “Pyracantha, a relative of apples and roses, is entirely edible.”  In fact, you can use the berries to make preserves and jelly.

As we head toward winter, a variety of wildlife has begun hanging around just outside the cabin. I photographed this blacktail buck just below our deck. In addition, a doe and her fawn are so comfortable here that I can walk within a few yards of them.

Last week I was looking out my kitchen window when I spotted this bobcat looking back at me.

It’s been awhile since I’ve seen a bobcat so close to Mitchell cabin, but it didn’t seem to mind my presence and soon resumed hunting.

Another predator that I haven’t seen for more than a year showed up this week. I didn’t see the coyote, but I found its scat in my driveway. Neighbor George Stamoulis found a fair amount of coyote scat in his driveway and saw the animal itself moseying up Campolindo Road.

Last night, Lynn and I spotted still another creature that hasn’t been around for months. A young possum showed up on my deck to eat the remainder of peanuts Lynn had put out for raccoons. Raccoons and grey foxes have become so common during the evening at Mitchell cabin that they’ve become fairly comfortable with us. We can feed them slices of bread by hand with no problem.

I’ll close on a linguistic fact I learned from the WildCare magazine this week. There is a name for the burbling sounds mother raccoons and their young make among themselves. It’s called trilling, as in Lionel, and we’ve heard it many times.

What do you call a group of raccoons? They’re sometimes called a nursery, but the most common name is a gaze.

Three raccoon kits squeeze into the birdbath on my deck to clean their paws after eating.

I’ve always been fond of raccoons, but I’m beginning to wonder if a surplus is developing around Mitchell cabin.

Of course, there are many raccoon tails in Marin County. The Marin Humane Society, for example, rescued a baby raccoon from a gutter’s drainpipe in the Hamilton area of Novato Thursday afternoon.

The trapped raccoon was discovered by children who heard its cries, The Marin Independent Journal and Bay City News both reported.

It took animal control officers, who used a plumbing camera, two hours to locate the approximately month-old raccoon and then pull it out to safety.

The baby raccoon is now at the WildCare wildlife rehabilitation center in San Rafael.

Here eight raccoons, two mothers, each with three kits, dine on honey-roasted peanuts on my deck. A ninth raccoon, a solitary male adult, will show up after this gaze has left.

Possums are found throughout West Marin wherever ponds, creeks, marshes, and even drainage ditches provide riparian habitat. West Marin’s possums originated in the Deep South where “common opossums” are commonly called possums, thanks to a linguistic phenomenon known as aphesis. Calling mosquitoes “skeeters” is another example of aphesis.

“The common opossum,” writes Point Reyes Station biologist Jules Evens in The Natural History of the Point Reyes Peninsula, is “the only marsupial native to North America [but] is not native to Point Reyes or the Pacific Coast. 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. Point Reyes avoided the onslaught until about 1968.”

Another introduced species often found in the fields next to Mitchell cabin, Equus caballus.

They’re called Arabians in the sign on the pasture gate, but I doubt a one of them has ever seen the Mediterranean. This being the Far West, “cayuse” (rhymes with “dye use”) would seem more appropriate. Surely you remember Willie Nelson singing Don’t Fence Me In: “On my cayuse let me wander over yonder/Till I see the mountain rise.”

“Cayuse” in reference to a horse comes from the name of the Cayuse people of the Pacific Northwest. Sort of like Belgian referring to both a people and a chestnut-colored draft horse.

Canada geese flying over the hill behind Mitchell cabin.

Hundreds of Canada geese winter annually on Tomales Bay, on Nicasio Reservoir, and at Bolinas Lagoon. Along with these snowbirders, a year-round population of Canada geese is developing in West Marin.

Many of the year-rounders are descendants of geese that people with a surplus goose or two dropped off at the pond in front of the Cheese Factory on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road, beginning back in the 1970s.

Monday morning I was watching several Juncos and Bushtits in the grass outside my kitchen window when I noticed some other little creatures scurrying around among them. At least three or four gophers were having a field day.

The fields around Mitchell cabin are honeycombed with gopher tunnels, but I seldom get to photograph the inhabitants.

While it’s fun to watch gophers pop out of the ground, dart around like field mice, and then dive back down their holes, they can be a nuisance. For a couple of years I tried to cultivate a vegetable garden, and while I could keep the deer out, the gophers were unstoppable. More than once I noticed a carrot top shaking inexplicably only to then be pulled underground root first.

In February 2009, rainwater flowing downhill through a gopher tunnel near my cabin created this artesian well where it surfaced.

For me, gophers are merely an annoyance, but for West Marin ranchers, gopher tunnels are a major problem. Tomales rancher John Jensen this week told me that according to agricultural authorities, there are 50 to 250 gophers per acre around here.

The problem is that in heavy rains, hillsides riddled with gopher tunnels act like sponges, which can result in mudslides. In January 1995, gopher tunnels triggered a huge slide on Gary Thornton’s ranch in Tomales.

So I wasn’t at all upset by this bobcat’s hunting gophers outside my window three years ago.

While I watched, the bobcat pounced and caught one as it emerged from its burrow. With the gopher in its teeth, the bobcat trotted uphill to dine in a patch of coyote brush.

In other wildlife news, the raccoon family which showed up on my deck in late July have now become nightly visitors. When the mother raccoon first brought the kits onto my deck (above), the youngsters had very little fear of me but kept looking around in puzzlement as to why they were there.

Mrs. Raccoon, of course, knew that my deck provides good hunting for bread and peanuts. Momma likes both, and the kits immediately took to honey-roasted peanuts. For awhile, however, the young showed no interest in bread, which was unfortunate because white bread is much cheaper than honey-roasted peanuts.

Eventually my girlfriend Lynn figured out the problem. The kits didn’t know how to eat a full slice of bread. Without picking up the bread on the deck, they would try to gnaw at it but would get nowhere. Lynn eventually started tearing the slices into small pieces, and the problem was solved. Their biggest problem now is getting our attention. Here Mrs. Raccoon and her three kits stand on a woodbox outside my dining-room window, hoping we will see them and put out food.

And what if Lynn and I are not to be seen when the raccoons look in the downstairs windows? Some of them have learned to climb onto the roof and peer in an upstairs window, much to the amusement of Lynn.

Several of my cat-owning friends have found gophers in their homes brought in as feline presents. Unpleasant but not worrisome. Other people I know have come home to discover a raccoon has found a way inside, typically through a cat door, and left their kitchens in shambles. More of a problem.

But I don’t know anyone who has ever found a bobcat in their house. In their hen house, yes, but not their own house. If you or anyone you know has had experience with Lynx rufus in your domicile, please send in a comment and tell us about it. It should make for a good story.

Afterward: As it turned out, two readers did have fascinating stories to tell about about bobcats, one in a house and one in a truck. The stories can be found by clicking on the comments section above.

In researching his 2008 book Vital Diversities: Balancing The Protection of Nature and Culture, Inverness writer Mark Dowie later recounted in the West Marin Review, “A Yupik native scientist [in Alaska] told me, ‘We have no word for ‘wilderness.’ What you call wilderness, we call our backyard.'”

This mother raccoon brought her three kits to my deck for the first time a week ago.

The Yurik concept of wilderness makes perfect sense to me. My backyard, even my deck, could easily be called “wilderness.”

My wilderness includes deer in my fields on a daily basis. On rare occasions I’ve seen coyotes, bobcats, and badgers, and every night a group of smaller animals shows up on my deck.

The critters at night are usually foxes, raccoons, and possums looking for bread or peanuts.

It’s often easy to hear the call of the wild in my backyard. Some alpha males, especially among red-winged blackbirds and raccoons, seem more intent on driving other males away from food than with getting some for themselves.

The second time the three kits showed up (right), their mother was not with them.

Before long, an adult raccoon began growling at them, and they took refuge in a narrow gap between my woodbox and the wall of my cabin. When the adult stuck around, they were too frightened to leave, so I finally went outside. This caused the adult to run off a short distance and provided the kits with a chance to escape.

After all, someone has to keep order on my deck, and it’s fallen to me to enforce the law of the wild.

The foxes get along with each other better than the raccoons do, and because they’re not intra-species rivals, the raccoons will often eat side by side with foxes when I put out peanuts. I’ve even had a possum join in, creating an ecumenical dinner for local wildlife.

Red-winged blackbirds look over my deck prior to landing on it.

Every day in the late afternoon I put out birdseed, which attracts pigeons, doves, quail and juncos, but most of all it brings in bluejays, towhees and red-winged blackbirds.

The birdseed also attracts roof rats. These cute little critters with long tails are amazingly good at climbing walls and railings, jumping onto the picnic table, and squeezing through tiny openings.

A fortnight ago, Linda Petersen of Inverness, ad manager of The West Marin Citizen, took a week’s vacation and left her Havanese dog Eli in the care of my girlfriend Lynn and me.

Late one afternoon, he, Lynn and I were sitting on my deck at sunset when Eli spotted one of the roof rats, which spotted Eli at the same time. I grow flowers on my deck in wine-barrel halves, and the rat scurried under one of the barrels. Immediately Eli was sniffing under the barrels, barking and growling.

It was pandemonium. While Eli would try to drive a rat out from under one barrel, another rat would pop out from under a nearby barrel and dash across my deck to safety. Before he was done, Eli had flushed seven roof rats. It was an exciting drama, but it made me glad that, at least for the moment, I’ve been able to seal off my basement against the rats. For now, they show up only when the birdseed is first scattered.

Quietly watching the drama but staying out of it was this Western fence lizard on my wall. It moved very little, depending on its coloring for camouflage. Fence lizards, I should note, are often dark when they first get up in the morning and become lighter as the day grows warmer. Kind of like the rest of us.

With the summer fire season almost upon us, I finally had my fields mowed last Friday. Most of the grass was already dry, and tractor owner Gary Titus brought a rig down from Tomales to do the work.

Gary Titus mowing my fields in June 2007. He’s bought a new tractor since then but does less mowing.

Gary spent several hours driving up and down my hill, managing to stay upright even on steep sections. For years Gary has mowed my fields, but he’s basically in the electric-gate business, and by now he has only three mowing customers. Luckily, I’m one of them.

The trick each year is to figure out when to do the mowing.

If I get it done too early, some grass will grow back, especially if it rains. If I wait too long, the fire season will have begun.

This year, as always, I waited until I was sure the rains were finally over before I asked Gary to do the mowing.

Gary showed up the next day, did his work, and four days later, the rains were back.

There was a day when the change of seasons counted for something, but as rain soaked this hill Tuesday and Wednesday, I could see where some grass was already turning green.

Nor is that the biggest problem around Mitchell cabin. Last week I discovered that fascia boards along the eaves at the back of the house need to be replaced, along with adjacent timbers and a bunch of shingles.

Leo Gilberti of Fairfax carries a rotten fascia board to one end of the eaves while Terry Gray of Inverness Park takes measurements.

The work has required a couple of trips over the hill to pick up supplies.

In fact, I had to drive all the way to Santa Rosa in a friend’s truck just to buy shingles.

Surprisingly, no roofing-materials store in Marin County had brick-red shingles in stock although all of them without exception said they would be getting some before too long.

Is there an unreported brick-red-shingle fad underway in Marin?

Or do few stores keep the shingles in stock because few people buy them?

In either case, Allied Building Products on Santa Rosa Avenue for the moment has a lock on the brick-red-shingle business in Marin and Southern Sonoma County.

My friend Terry Gray is helping me with the project.

Originally I had planned to start stripping shingles off the eaves on Tuesday, but then came the rain. I try to avoid working on my roof in the rain, especially when the work involves removing part of the roof.

On Wednesday, however, we resumed the roofing project before a last sprinkling had completely tapered off, for I could remember an old song called The Arkansas Traveler:

“Oh, once upon a time in Arkansas,/ An old man sat in his little cabin door/ And fiddled at a tune that he liked to hear,/ A jolly old tune that he played by ear./ It was raining hard, but the fiddler didn’t care,/ He sawed away at the popular air,/ Tho’ his rooftree leaked like a waterfall,/ That didn’t seem to bother the man at all.

“A traveler was riding by that day,/ And stopped to hear him a-practicing away;/ The cabin was a-float and his feet were wet,/ But still the old man didn’t seem to fret./ So the stranger said, ‘Now the way it seems to me,/ You’d better mend your roof,’ said he./ But the old man said as he played away,/ ‘I couldn’t mend it now; it’s a rainy day.’

“The traveler replied, ‘That’s all quite true,/ But this, I think, is the thing to do;/ Get busy on a day that is fair and bright,/ Then patch the old roof till it’s good and tight.’/ But the old man kept on a-playing at his reel,/ And tapped the ground with his leathery heel./ ‘Get along,’ said he, ‘for you give me a pain;/ My cabin never leaks when it doesn’t rain.'”

This is the 300th posting on SparselySageAndTimely.com, and my friend Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles has urged me to write something commemorating the occasion.

The first posting went online back on Nov. 28, 2006, and at least one per week has followed ever since.

Usually it’s been fun although on a few slow weeks I’ve felt like The Desperate Man (at right), a self-portrait by Gustave Corbet (1819-1877).

As was explained in the first posting, keeping a log on the web (i.e. a blog) is a bit like keeping a log on a ship. It includes both a journal of one’s trip through life and reports on significant events along the way. How a web log came to be called a blog, by the way, reflects the whimsy that has long characterized those who gambol on the World Wide Web of the Internet.

A blogger named Jorn Barger coined the term in a Dec. 17, 1997, entry on his site, jokingly turning “web log” into “we blog.” And who is Jorn Barger? Wikipedia reports he is editor of “Robot Wisdom,” has taught at Northwestern, and once lived at The Farm (Stephen Gaskin’s commune in Tennessee).

Some weeks my topics were obvious: major storms, the November 2007 oil spill along the coast, community celebrations, and the deaths of prominent people. Some postings, such as those recounting West Marin history, required a bit of research.

West Marin’s animal life, both wild and domestic, has been a constant of this blog. Here two horses in a field next to mine enjoyed a sunny day last weekend.

Naturally, so to speak, some wildlife adventures chronicled here probably aren’t as fascinating to all readers as they are to me. This past week I’ve been delighted that a new possum (seen here) has begun visiting my cabin in the evening. It’s younger than the one that had been coming around, and both are more skittish than the possum a couple of years ago that would let me pet her as she snacked on peanuts.

Regular readers know I am particularly intrigued when seemingly unrelated events turn out to be connected. My favorite such posting told how a grim, 1909 Hungarian play called Lliom led to the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Carousel, which in 1963 led to Gerry and the Pacemakers’ rhythmic recording of You’ll Never Walk Alone, with that rendition then becoming a worldwide professional soccer anthem.

Readers too seem to like following these connections.

My April 19 posting What does the Easter Bunny have to do with Jesus’ resurrection? drew readers by the hundreds.

The posting told how Gregory the Great (at right), who was pope from 590 to 604, unintentionally brought about the Easter Bunny’s becoming associated with Jesus’ resurrection.

Some 877 people dropped by here this past Easter, 308 on Easter Day alone, to read the story. I was struck by the fact that 270 of those visitors found their way here via Google.

While we’re on the topic of Google, are any of you old enough to remember the 1923 hit tune Barney Google? “Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google had a wife three times his size./ She sued Barney for divorce/ Now he’s living with his horse.

“Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google, with his googley eyes./ Barney Google, has a girl that loves the guys./ Only friends can get a squeeze./ That girl has no enemies./ Barney Google, with his googley eyes.”

Nor should we forget the comic strip Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, which is still going strong after 92 years.

Doesn’t all this make you wonder about the origin of the corporate name Google? In fact, it comes from a misspelling of “googol,” which refers to the number one followed by 100 zeros. Nonetheless, the verb “to google” (use the Google search engine) is now included in major dictionaries. But I digress….

This being spring (witness the iris on my deck), I’ll end with a poem composed for this commemorative posting.

With thanks to T.S. Eliot, Allen Ginsberg, Matthew Arnold, William Butler Yeats, Alfred Lord Tennyson, William Shakespeare, Dylan Thomas, and Robert Frost for their contributions:

West of Eden

The hollow men/ Headpiece filled with straw./ Starving hysterical naked,/ dragging themselves through the Negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix.

Who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tenement roofs/ Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Things fall apart; the center cannot hold;/ Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world./ Half a league, half a league,/ Half a league onward,/ All in the valley of Death/ Rode the six hundred./ To die, to sleep.

Do not go gentle into that good night,/ Rage, rage against the dying of the light./ I have promises to keep/ And miles to go before I sleep.

One of the great pleasures of living in West Marin is the variety of wildlife I see around my cabin every day. Here is a sampling of the creatures I saw last Friday, beginning with a salamander. These amphibians have more of a history than one might think.

The second salamander I found on  firewood in one week. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

As someone who heats his cabin with a woodstove, I go out of my way to insure no bugs are sent to a fiery death in the inferno. I’ve gone so far as to dislodge a hibernating yellow jacket before sticking its log in the fire.

A week ago, I was about to toss a piece of firewood into my woodstove when I spotted a salamander hiding in one of the log’s cracks. Much relieved that I had discovered the hapless amphibian in time, I naturally put it back outdoors.

Many ancient Greeks and Romans believed that salamanders are born in fire. Some salamanders inhabit rotting logs, and when the logs were put in a fire, the salamanders would try to escape, leading people to believe that salamanders were created by the flames.

Salamander in my hand. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Finding a salamander in my firewood a week ago made me doubly alert for others, and on Friday I found a second.

I placed the second salamander among some flowers growing in a wine barrel on my deck, only to have a woodrat jump out of the barrel the moment I did so.

Immediately I worried that I had saved the salamander from fire only to feed it to a woodrat. The salamander, however, quickly crawled out of sight, and there was nothing to be done.

A woodrat on the leg of my picnic table last Friday.

A gray  fox on the railing of my deck Friday night. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod)

Foxes and raccoons have become regular nighttime visitors on my deck, as has been noted in several postings.

Also on the railing Friday night was this raccoon.

The two are not fond of each other, but after I spent several weeks conditioning them, they learned to get along in order to share in the peanuts I scattered outside my kitchen door. My technique was one I’d previously used in convincing a possum and raccoon to dine together.

Initially I put out two piles of peanuts several feet apart, one for each species, and over the course of several nights moved the piles closer together until the critters were eating nose to nose.

A possum, fox, and raccoon share a nighttime snack.

On Friday night, this conditioning reached new heights when a possum, fox, and raccoon all showed up. By placing peanuts fairly close together, I was able to get all three critters to eat nose to nose without squabbling.

Afterward I wondered if they were as amazed as I at what had just occurred. It was the perfect culmination of a single day spent watching my smaller neighbors.