Coyotes began howling not far from my cabin just before dark tonight. For me it’s a thrill to hear and occasionally see them, but I’m no sheepman.

For 40 years, there were no coyotes in West Marin because of poisoning by sheep ranchers. However, coyotes never disappeared from northern Sonoma County, and after the federal government banned the poisoning, they spread south and began showing up here again in 1983. Since then coyotes have put more than half the sheep ranches in West Marin and southern Sonoma County out of business.

There are also more bobcats around these days, and some Point Reyes Station residents believe that many of them had been living in the pasture of the Giacomini dairy ranch before the Park Service bought the land and in 2007 flooded it. For residents raising chickens or other fowl, the forced relocation of bobcats has been a serious problem, and a number of them have been shot.

But for the rest of us, spotting bobcats is exciting. I occasionally see them around my cabin, and for the second time in a year, nature photographer Sue Van Der Wal of Inverness saw a bobcat at her house on July 23, as she told me with delight.

Also intrigued by bobcats is professor Michael Scriven of Inverness Park. Michael, who has taught at universities in the US and abroad, as well as written numerous books and articles, last month penned a light-hearted “memento of a recent visitor” and sent it to me.

Here is his poem titled Bobcat: “On my deck, spots and pads whisper past,/ The stride of a cheetah,/ The mien of an eater,/ Chipmunks chatter their ire,/ Doves flee from a flyer,/ The Prince of the Felids has passed.”

A roof rat eating birdseed off my deck last week. I enjoy watching roof rats but had to spend time and money last year cleaning their droppings out of my basement, sealing off walls they had chewed through, and repairing an electrical line on which they’d been gnawing.

Roof rats are also plentiful at the moment. In June, I found one that had been run over on block-long Campolindo Road, not exactly a high-speed thoroughfare. And during a dinner party in Stinson Beach last month, I spotted a roof rat at a neighboring house scurrying across (appropriately enough) the roof.

Some people have nothing good to say about roof rats. Along with getting into basements and attics, they are especially fond of chewing through the drain hoses of dishwashers.

In addition, many people are aware of the roof rat’s role in the Black Plague. In the 1340s, their fleas spread the plague around Europe, killing off half the population in some places.

Roof rats originated in tropical Asia and made it across the Near East in Roman times before reaching Europe by the 6th century AD. As the influence of European countries spread around the world, so did roof rats, arriving in the New World on the ships of European explorers. Not surprisingly, another name for roof rats is ship rats.

Roof rats are smaller than the inaccurately named Norwegian rats, which are actually from North China. An easy way to tell the two apart is that the tails of roof rats are longer than their bodies. The tails of Norwegian rats (also called sewer rats) are not.

All this raises the question: is there anything good that can be said about rats other than that they’re cute, at least to some of us. Apparently there is. The 2006 Children’s Choices Award went to a book by Barbara Wersba about a rat named Walter.

I haven’t read Walter, but Publishers Weekly reports: “Wersba’s brief tale of a blossoming friendship introduces a literate rat, who ‘christen[ed] himself Walter’ after reading works by Sir Walter Scott and [by] the children’s book author whose home he inhabits.

“The rat hero, who lives under the floorboards of a house owned by Miss Pomeroy, makes a discovery in her library one day. Not only has she written a children’s book series about a secret-agent mouse, but he discovers many other authors who have also written about mice (‘There was a whole flock of little books by a woman named Potter, which dealt obsessively with mice,’ he observes disdainfully)….

“Walter begins communicating with Miss Pomeroy through notes, and he questions why authors never write about rats. In the satisfyingly sentimental finale, the author leaves for Walter a singular Christmas gift and the two finally meet.”

Somewhat surprising for a children’s book are Walter’s reported allusions to The Great Gatsby, A Farewell to Arms, and The Maltese Falcon. These “will appeal more to older readers,” Publishers Weekly wryly observes.

Walter is appropriate for readers 8 and up, the review says. So if you’re 8 or older or have a child that is, you may want to pick up a copy of the book in order to keep rats in perspective. In the course of their lives, most people encounter far more rats than bobcats or coyotes.

A mother raccoon guards her two kits while they eat peanuts (cacahuates) off my deck.

My former wife Ana Carolina in Guatemala refers to raccoons as “mapaches,” which is the name the Spanish colonists gave them.

The word was taken from the Nahuati word “mapachitli,” meaning “one who takes everything in its hands.” Nahua was the language of the ancient Aztecs and is still spoken in Central Mexico.

The mother raccoon (right rear) comes to my kitchen door each evening and stands on her hind legs so I will see her and put out food. But when I open the door to do so, she quickly backs away and begins a low growl. Her message is obvious: “Make sure you don’t get too close to my kits!”

The English word “raccoon” comes from the Virginia Algonquian word “aroughcun,” which is also spelled “arathkone.” The language, a subgroup of the Algonquian language, died out in the 1790s.

The kits are are far less skittish around me than their mother is unless I make a quick movement.

Historical curiosity: The first written description of raccoons was made by Christopher Columbus, who in 1492 discovered them on his expedition to the New World.

Many fledglings after first leaving the nest want to be fed as if they were still in it. On the railing of my deck, this young crow (“cuervo” en español) caws incessantly and holds its mouth open in hopes the parent will feed it birdseed, even though the youngster is standing in birdseed.

Crows are smaller than ravens although at a distance it’s hard to gauge their sizes. The most obvious difference is in their tails when the birds are in flight. The tail feathers of a raven form a wedge shape while the tail feathers of a crow are almost straight across.

Young bucks sparring next to my cabin. These young blacktails are not trying to hurt each other but to establish dominance. Does prefer to mate with the stronger buck. From an evolutionary standpoint, this passes along the genes of the hardier deer (“venado” en español), which helps ensure the survival of the species.

í que ahora ustedes tiene la lección de esta semana sobre los mapaches, cuervos, venados y la lengua española. Estudien mucho y no gasten dinero en Arizona.

As I drove down Campolindo Drive Tuesday morning, I spotted a gray fox ducking into a culvert under neighbors George and Earlene Grimm’s driveway.

A week ago, I spotted a fox, possibly the same one, sitting in a field next to my cabin and being dive bombed by a couple of crows. The crows have a nest high in a nearby pine tree, but I doubt the fox could ever climb up to the chicks.

All the same, it was yet another sign that young animals are everywhere around here at this time of year.

A female raccoon shows up on my deck almost every night, hoping I’ll put out bread or peanuts for her. Some of the raccoons on this hill are comfortable around me, but she isn’t and runs off a short distance whenever I open the kitchen door. Nonetheless, she chases off the raccoons that feel more at home at my place.

Last night she surprised me by showing up with two kits, which were even more skittish than she. Both spent much of their time hiding behind my woodbox, watching their mother dine in the open.

Raccoon kits are not always so timid. More than once I’ve had kits walk right into my kitchen when I left the door open.

Raccoons breed from late fall into early spring, with females sometimes having more than one short-term mate. The gestation period lasts about two months, and litters typically range from two to seven kits. Kits are born deaf and blind. They do not open their eyes for about three weeks, a couple of days after their ear canals open.

Raccoons around water often appear to wash their food. In Europe, where they have been introduced, the Germans call them “Waschbären,” meaning “wash bears.” However, researchers now believe they are not actually washing their food but their paws.

Just above their claws are stiff hairs called vibrissae, which have sensory cells associated with them. The vibrissae allow raccoons to identify objects before touching them with their paws. Washing keeps the hairs clean and sensitive.

A blacktail buck beside my cabin last Thursday. If you’ve every wondered about the difference between a “buck” and a “stag,” the word “stag” refers to the male red deer of Europe, which is also called a “hart” when mature.

In the past few weeks, I’ve also spotted a blacktail fawn on this hill, sometimes with its mother. Usually blacktail does have two fawns, but a couple of weeks ago, I saw a fawn, which had been killed by a car, lying beside Highway 1 near Campolindo Drive. I fear the worst.

A blacktail doe at my back fence Sunday. Does give birth from late spring to early summer. “Hind,” as in the Golden Hinde Resort, is another word for “doe.” The resort in Inverness is, of course, named after Sir Francis Drake’s ship, which was named after the deer, and the name of the ship is sometimes spelled “Hinde,” as in London’s Golden Hinde Museum.

Blacktails in the wild have typical lifespans of seven to 10 years while in suburban habitat where they feast on gardens, they can live for 17 to 20 years if cars or dogs don’t get them.

“All three major deer species native to North America (blacktail, whitetail, and mule) trace their ancestry back to a primordial, rabbit-size Odocoileus, which had fangs and no antlers and lived around the Arctic Circle some 10 million years ago,” Bay Nature reported five years ago,

Based on DNA tests, the magazine added, “researchers theorized that whitetails (Odocoileus viginianus) emerged as a separate species on the East Coast about 3.5 million years ago.

“They apparently expanded their range down the East Coast and then westward across the continent until reaching the Pacific Ocean in what is now California some 1.5 million years ago. Moving north up the coast, they evolved into blacktails.

“Columbian blacktail deer (Odocoileus hemionus columbianus) are the subspecies of blacktails native to the Bay Area. According to the California Department of Fish and Game, there are now approximately 560,000 deer in all California, about 320,000 of which are Columbian blacktails.

“Near the end of the Pleistocene, some 11,000 years ago, as the glacial ice receded from the Sierra passes, blacktails moving east from their traditional homes in the coastal valleys of California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia began to encounter a second wave of whitetails expanding their range westward across the Great Plains, Bay Nature added.

“It is now believed that subsequent back-and-forth crossbreeding resulted in the various strains of mule deer scattered across California and the western United States.”

Interestingly, Coastal blacktails and mule deer differ from whitetails in the way they run. As Mother Earth News has pointed out, “While the whitetail runs by pushing off alternately with its front and rear legs in long, graceful bounds, blacktails and mule deer typically launch themselves with all four legs at once in bouncing, pogo-stick jumps that verge on the comical, boing, boing, each bound gaining as much altitude as forward distance.”

At this time of year when there’s so many uncomprehending fawns boing boing-ing around West Marin, I urge drivers to slow down at night and use their high beams whenever possible. Hitting a deer is hard on your emotions, not to mention your car. I know; last winter I hit a young buck that jumped out in front of me on Lucas Valley Road.

In our willingness to do anything to get a photograph, we wildlife photographers, like paparazzi, sometimes seem to have no shame. If you’d seen me on my deck in my shorts Friday snapping pictures of a coyote, I’m sure you would agree.

As it happened, I’d spent the afternoon using a Weed Wacker to cut back grass along both sides of my driveway, which is about a tenth of a mile long. Needing to wash up after the work, I had taken a shower and was just starting to get dressed when I looked out my bedroom window and spotted a large coyote in the field below.

Without pausing to pull on a shirt or trousers, I grabbed my camera and hurried outside as quietly as I could so as not to scare the critter away. By now, the coyote had crossed my field and was nosing around near my parked cars.

I wondered if it was sniffing around for this doe I’d spotted by my cars earlier.

The coyote stuck around long enough for me to take its picture before it disappeared into a clump of (appropriately enough) coyote brush. As soon as it did, I called my neighbor Jay Haas about the sighting, and from his vantage point, he managed to spot the coyote too.

A bobcat wanders around a car belonging to two guests.

I don’t know what it is about my parking area, but it attracts wildlife as if it were a watering hole in the Serengeti Plain.

I’ve been able to photograph both predators and prey hanging around my cars, coyotes and deer, bobcats and rabbits, as well as wild turkeys, great blue herons, and countless other birds.

A brush rabbit, also known as a cottontail.

Near the bottom of my driveway is the top of my neighbors Skip and Renée Shannon’s driveway, and they have their own ecosystem of squirrels, crows, hawks, and owls.

Fledgling great horned owl. Photo by Renée Shannon

Renée, who is the business manager and ad director for The Point Reyes Light, last month told me Skip had been outside when a young great-horned owl fluttered down from a pine tree and landed in the grass. Skip quickly called to Renée to get her camera, and she was able to photograph the bird before it managed to fly a short distance and land on a woodpile.

Renée then phoned ornithologist Jules Evens of Point Reyes Station, and he caught the fledging owl and took it with him to a Tomales Bay Watershed Council meeting in the National Seashore.

Someone at the meeting was on her way to San Rafael, so I gave the owl box to her, and she delivered it to Wildcare (Patient #488), Jules told me later. “Apparently it had a fairly common blood bacterium [found] in owls and hawks.” The “prognosis,” he added, was “not good.”

Mystery skulls. Photo by Linda Petersen

My story took an odd turn a week ago when Renées counterpart at The West Marin Citizen, Linda Petersen of Point Reyes Station, discovered two animal skulls on the ground between her garbage cans and back fence. The immediate question was: what kind of animal?

Linda checked skull photos online and decided they looked like pig skulls. I emailed photos of the skulls to Jules and to Chileno Valley rancher Mike Gale, and both agreed Linda was probably right. “They appear to be medium-size porkers,” Mike wrote back.

That, however, doesn’t explain how the skulls ended up on the ground between Linda’s garbage cans and back fence. Did someone hold a luau and chuck pig heads over her fence? “Pretty rude of someone to toss them into her yard, eh?’ Jules mused.

Because few of us in Point Reyes Station have home delivery, the post office has long been the most popular meeting spot in town. On Monday, it was the scene of one of those happy little moments that make small towns great places.

As it happens, postal worker Erin Clark, who was helping out in Point Reyes Station for a day, is a volunteer with a wildlife-rescue group, Rancho Raccoon, headed by Megan Isadore of Forest Knolls.

About a week earlier, Rancho Raccoon received four newly born raccoons that were orphaned when a building was torn down in Oakland. Erin took over raising the newborns when they were less than a week old.

Like any mother, Erin has to periodically check on her young ones, so on Monday she brought them with her when she went to work. There was no risk of the baby raccoons getting into trouble at the post office where they spent the day sleeping in a back room. At 11 days old, their eyes had not yet opened nor were their ears fully developed.

Erin is the only mother the raccoons know, so whenever she picks one up, the baby tries to suckle on her fingers.

Equally picturesque but less cuddly were 15 western pond turtles I counted Monday on two logs in a pond off Cypress Road. The small pond at Anastacio and Sue Gonzalez’s home attracts a variety of wildlife, and on warm days, these turtles emerge to sun themselves.

California’s Department of Fish and Game has designated the western pond turtle a “species of special concern.” Because some pond turtles, especially fertile females, migrate, motor vehicles periodically kill a few. Pesticide runoff, loss of habitat, and introduced predators are also reducing their numbers. Around West Marin, a major threat is from non-native bullfrogs, which eat hatchling and juvenile turtles.

Western pond turtles can be found from the Canadian border to Baja California although in the state of Washington, they almost became extinct around 1990 because of an unidentified of disease. However, they are now making a recovery there thanks to government programs.

As I started down my front steps Monday en route to the post office, I startled a young buck that was lying down, chewing its cud. The deer jumped up and started to quickly walk away, but I began talking to it in a low voice, and it stopped to look at me.

When I stayed put and kept whispering soothingly, the buck relaxed and started scratching fleas. Before long it was grazing. Not wanting to disturb the deer, I had to wait about 10 minutes until it wandered off and I could get to my car and drive into town.

Italian thistles on my hill

On Sunday I completed a two-week assault on the thistles in my field. I even removed thistles on the edge of three neighbors’ fields since one neighbor’s thistle problem quickly becomes the neighborhood’s thistle problem.

As first described in this blog April 28, a fortnight spent pulling up and cutting down thistles was exhausting and sometimes painful. Several fingers sustained battle wounds, but I expect to fully recover. As of now, I’m storing enough thistles in plastic bags to keep my green-waste container full for another month of pickups.

Eliminating thistles is, of course, a bit like eliminating spiderwebs. Every time the light changes, you spot one you previously missed. All the same, I sort of felt a sense of satisfaction Sunday evening for having persevered in this unpleasant task for two weeks.

The cable guy, Jim Townsend of Horizon Cable

I would have felt even better were it not for one screwup. My cabin is connected to one of the oldest sections of the Horizon Cable system in Point Reyes Station. It’s so old that much of the cable was originally strung along this hill’s barbed-wire fences.

Ever since buying the old system, Horizon Cable has been upgrading it. However, at one corner of my fence, a short length of cable in relatively thin conduit still dangles beside the barbed wire. On Sunday while using loppers to cut down the largest thistles, I reached into a clump and instead cut the cable.

Immediately I alerted Horizon Cable, for although I didn’t much mind not having television, not having access to the Internet was a real drag. I felt cut off from friends and family in faraway places. I couldn’t get my nightly fix of al Jazeera.

Thankfully on Monday morning, Horizon technician Jim Townsend showed up and managed to get me back online despite having to dig up some old-style fittings for my old-style section of the system. I don’t mind being on an antiquated section with part of my cable running along a barbed-wire fence. To me it symbolizes the enduring rusticity of Point Reyes Station.

Spring began Saturday, and what a relief it was. Many of us could not have withstood another week of winter. Where I live, the wind was the problem, not the downpours. The rainstorms were, of course, badly needed by Marin County’s ranchers and water districts.

For the horses in the pasture next to mine, it was a time to be relieved of the blankets they wore all winter to stay warm, but which made it hard for them to scratch itches.

With their blankets gone, it was also time for a spring bath. A couple Arabians lay down in the Giacomini family’s stockpond while others showered by splashing themselves with water. Once out of the pond, several horses happily rolled around on their backs in the green grass of spring.

The wild turkeys on this hill pretty much ignore the horses, and the horses don’t mind having turkeys hunting and pecking around them.

Two young bucks by my front steps Sunday afternoon.

Two does groom each other outside my kitchen window. Researchers say this allogrooming, as it’s called, may be done for eliminating ticks or for establishing social relationships.

Four wary blackbirds waiting for a crow to leave before they can comfortably partake of birdseed I spread along the railing of my deck.

Possum in my kitchen leans outside to eat.

As pictured in a previous posting, a female possum that hangs around my cabin allows me to pet her like a dog and scratch her behind the ears whenever I put peanuts on my deck for her.

“Does the possum ever get in the house?” people frequently ask. The answer is yes, but it doesn’t happen quite the way one would expect. Twice I’ve opened the kitchen door to put out peanuts only to have the possum waddle into the kitchen and then lean back out the door to eat off my deck.

I suspect she does this to stay out of the way of passing raccoons.

It’s funny to watch, but at night the open door lets in cold air and bugs. The first time this happened I tried to gently push Ms. Possum’s tail out the door so I could shut it, but she instantly gave me a look that said she was offended. Now I’m not one to deliberately offend a possum, so I apologized instanter and proffered another handful of peanuts, which was accepted.

A Nov. 10 posting, “Progress in the backyard peace process,” described my getting an initially hostile raccoon and possum to peacefully coexist. I had brought them to the negotiating table by putting two piles of peanuts on it. Over the course of several nights, I moved the piles closer and closer together until they were eating side by side.

However, as the posting noted, I was continuing my shuttle diplomacy, for I’d taken to heart Henry Kissinger’s warning: “The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.”

Female possum out to dinner with a male raccoon.

A major breakthrough occurred Friday night when the two sides ended up so close together they occasionally rubbed noses as they dined on a single pile of peanuts. Both trod lightly around each other, but there was no snapping or growling.

In contrast, the same raccoon got into three fights with other raccoons the following evening, suffering a painful bite to a front paw during one brawl. I’m sure all this reveals something about the difference between inter-species and intra-species relations, but I don’t know what.

Turning to international diplomacy, a posting on Jan. 23, “Disconcerting standup reporting,” described al Jazeera correspondent Prerna Suri in New Delhi reporting on India and Bangladesh rekindling ties. The standup comes a short way into her report.

What makes her standup so disconcerting is that she appears to be in the middle of a New Delhi expressway with cars whizzing past her on both sides.

Commenting on the posting, professional cameraman Mark Allan of Inverness Park noted he had shot similar standups on a curb at Lombard Street and Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco. By shooting with a long lens, he said, the traffic seemed closer than it really was.

This past weekend, Prerna herself submitted a comment in which she explains how her report was actually shot. “This stand up in question was, as Mark rightly pointed out, done on a curb (not in the middle of an expressway like you mentioned),” she wrote. “It was right outside the India Gate.”

The capital’s 140-foot-high India Gate is a monument to the more than 80,000 Indian troops who were killed in World War I, fighting for the Allies.

Meanwhile, the posting on Prerna’s standup has drawn interest from around the world. In the past month, far more readers have reached this blog by Googling Bangladesh India standup report than any other topic.

Now for followup reports on the undiplomatic front. The Point Reyes-Petaluma Road saw two more instances of vehicles running off the road last weekend. In one case, a vehicle ran off Highway 1 just a few feet north of the two roads’ intersection.

Neither mishap was as dramatic as the one reported here a week ago when a Porsche on March 5 sailed off an embankment at the first curve immediately east of Point Reyes Station. The sportscar flew 50 feet through tree branches and dropped 25 feet to the ground. Driver Joshua Moore, 38, of San Rafael miraculously escaped without injuries when the car landed on its wheels.

In far less dramatic fashion, a black Toyota Corolla ran off the roadway at Four Corners (the intersection of the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road and Nicasio Valley Road) shortly before 6 p.m. this past Saturday.

The car came to rest against some willows in a gully southeast of the intersection, and neither of the two occupants was injured. However, the Highway Patrol arrested the driver, Arthur V. Gomez, 36, of Fairfield, for allegedly driving under the influence of alcohol.

The next day, another vehicle ran into a ditch on the north side of Highway 1 at the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. A 25 mph sign was knocked down in the mishap, but no injuries were reported, and authorities were not notified. By Monday, the sign was back in place.

For the last three or so years, a feral cat has been hanging out on this part of the hill.

At first I wasn’t pleased to have him on the hill, fearing he would try to catch the birds around my cabin. My neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsman weren’t particularly happy to have the cat around either because it used to fight with their cats.

Over time, however, the cat began to fit into the neighborhood better, and the deer that also hang out on this hill were intrigued by it.

A doe watches the cat wash itself.

On Valentine’s Day, however, I noticed the cat lying in the grass outside my kitchen window. It was so motionless I thought it might be dead, but eventually it got up, shook itself, and walked off.

The next morning I was a bit surprised to see a buzzard sitting in a tree outside my living-room window. I had never seen a buzzard in the tree before. After looking around for a while, the buzzard flew off, but the following morning, it was back. Only this time it was on the ground eating the cat.

Not only was the scene disturbing, I found myself wondering what killed the cat. If the cat died as a result of eating a mouse or rat that had been poisoned, the buzzard could be poisoned too. The buzzard soon flew off, and I put the remains of the cat in the garbage to eliminate any further risk to buzzards.

However, as my friend Tony Ragona pointed out later in the day, cats die for many reasons, and for all I knew this one may well have died from kidney failure.

That made me feel a little better for the buzzard, but I still felt a bit shocked at having seen a housecat, albeit one that had gone feral, being eaten by a buzzard outside my window.

The cat’s grim departure seemed one more reason to periodically put your spare change in the Planned Feralhood cans on the checkout counters of several stores in Point Reyes Station.

The program is headed by Kathy Runnion of Nicasio, who works at the Point Reyes Station Post Office, and it has been successful at humanely limiting the number of feral cats around town.

Another surprise: Last week I was in my loft one midnight dreary while I pondered weak and weary over many a quaint and curious posting of forgotten lingo when suddenly there came a tapping, as of someone gently rapping, rapping at my dormer window.

“Who could my visitor be?” I muttered. “Wind or prophet? Bird or devil? A raven on the window’s bevel?”

But ’twas no raven tapping on my dormer window. Two raccoons had climbed onto the eaves above my front door and were hunting moths attracted to the light coming through the glass.

When I used to cover Sheriff’s Calls for The Point Reyes Light, I’d periodically come across a dispatcher’s report that some resident home alone at night was alarmed at hearing a prowler outside the house, sometimes on the roof. Inevitably a deputy would investigate, find no prowler, and conclude the culprit must have been a raccoon.

The answer may not have satisfied the resident, but from what I’ve observed, most of the time it was probably correct.

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.