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Junior grand marshal. Heidi Gonzalez, a junior at Tomales High, was named junior grand marshal of Sunday’s Western Weekend parade. She earned the title in competition with two other young women by selling the most raffle tickets; half the proceeds were allocated to nonprofits and the other half to furthering their education.

The bagpipers in Sunday’s parade carried placards that read: “What’s on Our Streets Flows into Our Creeks” and “Please Pick It Up, Every Little Bit Helps.”

Dancing down the parade route was a group from Esforço Carnival, San Francisco.

Also dancing in the street were Aztec dancers, a highlight of every parade.

At the head of the parade was a procession of fire engines, as is also traditional.

The parade entry of KWMR FM won first place in the adult-float category of the parade. Four baby goats owned by truck owner John Roche Services, which uses goats to trim grass, were in the cage at right. In the center clapping is my wife, Lynn, a member of the community-owned radio station’s board of directors.

Coco McMorrow, 14, of Inverness was one of two deputy junior grand marshals of the parade.

Deputy junior grand marshal Hana Cassel.

The weekend was so packed with public events that I’ll spend a moment now showing snapshots of the main ones.

Point Reyes-Olema 4-H Club members get training Saturday for the rabbit-show competition in Toby’s Feed Barn where most of the festivities were centered. Back in the 1970s and 80s when there was more ranching in West Marin, horses and livestock were a major part of the “4-H Junior Livestock Show,” as the celebration was then called. No more.

Inside the Feed Barn’s gallery was a display of children’s arts and crafts. The caption on this display explains, “DeeLynn Armstrong’s 1st grade class at Inverness School, alongside Esther Underwood’s 5th grade class at West Marin School, created a rainbow mosaic using recycled plastic bottle caps.”

“Melissa Reilly’s kindergarten class at Inverness School studied animal habitat and made snakes from felted wool. The process starts with raw, unspun wool which is wetted with soapy water,” explained the caption. “The snakes are shaped by hand and once dry, the wood fibers contract and become felted. This project was facilitated by Jillian Moffett.”

A Saturday evening barn dance was held in, appropriately enough, Toby’s Feed Barn. With a band and a caller setting the pace, children and adults took part in a variety of line dances.

Angelo Sacheli (center) describes the low-cost-housing accomplishments by Mark Switzer (left) in naming him grand marshal of Sunday’s parade. Avito Miranda prepares to translate the remarks into Spanish.

Competitors in the junior grand marshal ticket-selling competition were (from left): Coco McMorrow, Heidi Gonzalez, and Hana Cassel. Miss Gonzalez ended up junior grand marshal while Ms. McMorrow and Ms. Cassel were named deputy junior grand marshals. Last year’s junior grand marshal, Mollie Donaldson (in back), hung the sashes on the three.

Ms. Gonzalez’s junior grand marshal recognition came with both flowers and a trophy.

After the awards ceremony, the dancing resumed.

Waiting for Sunday’s parade proved tiring for at least one youngster.

Mainstreet Moms, political activists who meet weekly at St. Columba’s Church in Inverness, carried placards urging people to vote.

Straus Dairy’s entry is always a hit because it gives out free cartons of ice cream. Dairyman Albert Straus is at left.

Petaluma dairy princess Amanda King and first alternate Camilla Taylor.

Bill Barrett leads the parade entry of the Coastal Marin Fund, which benefits local nonprofit organizations by selling artistic brass coins to use for local purchases and for tourists to take home.

West Marin Community Services, which runs the food bank and the thrift store in Point Reyes Station while also providing many other forms of assistance to low-income people.

Vern Abrams, who has been living in his car in Point Reyes Station, used a musical parade entry to remind parade goers of the needs of West Marin’s homeless residents.

The Inverness Garden Club, which maintains several public flowerbeds in Inverness and Point Reyes Station, handed out flowers as it proceeded down the street.

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If you like wildlife, state government wants you to kill some of it.

California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife has announced it will try “to recruit new hunters and anglers throughout the state” because hunters provide 60 percent of the funding for fish and wildlife conservation through license fees and taxes on guns and ammunition, The San Francisco Chronicle reported three months ago. 

That funding has been steadily declining. “Only about 5 percent of Americans 16 and older hunt,” a 50-percent decline in just five decades,” The Chronicle explained. “The decline is attributable to urbanization, the rise of media entertainment, restricted access to hunting territory, and a lack of free time. Additionally, hunting declines as the population ages, and as the Baby Boomers grow ever older, the number of hunters will continue to plummet.”

Hunting doesn’t appeal to me. As I see it, the state’s encouraging hunting, accompanied by purchases of guns and ammunition, in order to bolster license fees and taxes makes as much sense as it would to encourage double parking in order to collect more in parking fines.

Solar panels.

The curse of solar panels. Solar panels are becoming popular in Afghanistan, The Economist reported last week, but they’re not being used primarily for homes. They’re mostly used for growing opium to make heroin, which “helps fund the Taliban, as well as pro-government warlords who are scarcely better.” The panels provide the electricity for opium farmers to pump water from deep wells, and that’s lowering the water table, the magazine noted. “Shallow wells have gone completely dry.”

Judaism’s Star of David

Still another, but happier, surprise. In a review of the book Sacred Liberty: America’s Long, Bloody and Ongoing Struggle for Religious Freedom, the same Economist also reported that in contrast to historic anti-Semitism, “Jews are now the country’s best-liked religious group but the warm attitudes transcend philo-Semitism.” What’s happened? “By 2010 around half of all Americans had a spouse of a different religious tradition. Neighborhoods, workplaces, and friendships have become more religiously diverse.” It’s clearly counterproductive to be prejudiced against one’s friends and associates.

The Victorian-era poet Robert Browning (1812-1889).

One of the English poet Robert Browning’s most memorable lines is: “God is in His heaven, all’s right with the world,” which is from the poem Pippa Passes. “But,” as the linguist/journalist Bill Bryson points out in his book The Mother Tongue, “it also contains this disconcerting passage: ‘Then owls and bats/ Cowls and twats,/ Monks and nuns in a cloister’s moods,/ Adjourn to the oak-stump pantry.’

“Browning had apparently somewhere come across the word twat, which meant precisely the same then as it does now but pronounced with a flat a” and somehow took it to mean a piece of headgear for nuns. The verse became a source of twittering amusement for generations of schoolboys and a perennial embarrassment to their elders, but the word was never altered, and Browning was allowed to live out his life in wholesome ignorance because no one could think of a suitably delicate way of explaining his mistake to him.”

The rainbow flag of the LGBT movement.

Another racy surprise. Researchers had concluded that gay men tend to have more older brothers than straight men. Harper’s magazine, however, last October reported further research has found that “holds true only for those who are prone to be the receiving partner during anal sex.” Make of that what you will. I won’t hazard a guess.

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Hail hitting the deck at Mitchell cabin on Feb. 15. Nor was that the end of it. As recently as Saturday morning, spots on Inverness Ridge were hailed. As it turned out, the hail three weeks ago gave a strong hint that West Marin was heading into a spell of heavy weather.

Spring weather, so to speak. By Feb. 26, so much rain had fallen that an artesian spring bubbled up from a gopher hole near Mitchell cabin.

The rain created a much grimmer scene downtown that day. All the roads in and out of Point Reyes Station and other West Marin towns were flooded, mudslides caused structural damage, trees came down on houses, roads, cars, and utility lines, resulting in a series of blackouts.

And it was at least as bad elsewhere in Marin County that week. Three homes in Sausalito were destroyed by a mudslide. Multiple homes in the hills above San Anselmo were isolated by downed trees and mud. Highway 37 east of Novato was completely flooded for days.

Papermill Creek as seen from the Green Bridge on Feb. 26. Homes and businesses on the eastern end of the levee road in Point Reyes Station were flooded when the creek rose. One person was evacuated by canoe.

A doe takes shelter from the rain under a coyote bush in our field.

Even though larger wildlife are generally stuck outdoors when it rains, most animals handle bad weather amazingly well although I suspect that some of them don’t fully understand what’s going on. I was watching a nearby fawn today when light rain began falling. From the fawn’s reaction, it appeared that she at first mistook the droplets hitting her head for flies and tried to shake them off and brush them away with a hoof.

A bobcat goes on a gopher hunt in wet grass during a pause in the rain a week ago. The fields around our cabin are filled with gopher holes, making them a good hunting ground, for we’re seeing the bobcat almost every day now.

After the rains had subsided, I spotted 25 doves in a tree uphill from our cabin, and it almost seemed Biblical.

“Noah sent forth a dove from him to see if the waters were abated off the face of the ground. But the dove found no rest for the sole of her foot, and she returned unto him in the ark, for the waters were on the face of the whole earth.” A week later Noah sent the bird out again “and the dove came in to him in the evening; and, lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf pluckt off: so Noah knew the waters were abated from off the earth.” Nonetheless, Noah remained in the ark for another week and again “sent forth the dove which returned not again to him any more.” Genesis 8

In the aftermath of the floods, a lot of repair work is needed around Marin County. People who lost homes or cars are suffering. And I keep trying to stop small-scale erosion in my driveway.

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Los Angeles policeman Richard Grotsley shows the 4.5-foot rattlesnake that the Synanon cult, then based in Marshall, used in its attempt to murder attorney Paul Morantz in October 1978. Two members planted the snake with its warning rattles cut off in Morantz’s mailbox. The snake bit the attorney and likely would have killed him were it not for a swift response from paramedics. (United Press International photo)

NBC Sports Bay Area next week will air a documentary titled Split End: the Curious Case of Warren Wells. It should be of special interest here. Wells was an All-Pro wide receiver who played four seasons for the Oakland Raiders. After alcoholism led to his receiving two drunk-driving convictions and an assault conviction, a judge in 1971 ordered him to enter Synanon in lieu of going to jail. Wells spent only six months in the cult, but he never recovered from having his spirit broken there and was unable to play professional football again. Wells, who died last month at the age of 76, was interviewed for the documentary. In it, he is clearly confused at times as a result of serious dementia.

The showing will be at 8:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 24.

Were it not for his legal problems and time in Synanon, Wells might have been one of the greatest wide receivers in history. In 1969, for example, he led the American Football League in yards received (1,260), yards per catch (26.8), and touchdowns (14).

Synanon founder Charles Dederich

Charles Dederich, a recovering alcoholic, started Synanon in 1958 in a rented storefront in Santa Monica, touting it as a rehabilitation organization for drug addicts; however, it soon turned into a highly profitable corporation which avoided taxation by calling itself a religion.

In 1964, Synanon began buying its three properties in Marshall. Those three are now the state’s Marconi Conference Center overlooking Tomales Bay plus the S-2 Ranch and the Walker Creek Environmental Ed Center, both on the Marshall-Petaluma Road. At various times Synanon also owned properties in Santa Monica, Oakland, Badger and Visalia (both in Tulare County), and Lake Havasu (in Arizona).

Members lived at Synanon where no alcohol or drugs were available and Dederich could direct their lives. When they recovered from their addictions, members were often convinced not to leave but to remain as employees. In addition, more and more non-addict “squares” began moving into Synanon for the lifestyle, often cajoled into turning over their houses, bank accounts, and cars. Synanon justified this with a promise to take care of them for the rest of their lives. Many members became low-paid salesmen for Synanon’s highly profitable Advertising Gifts And Premiums business.

ADGAP was a distributor of promotional souvenirs to merchants such as car dealers. The souvenirs were often keychains, cocktail glasses, or other knickknacks inscribed with the merchants’ names. Synanon’s sales pitch was essentially: ‘You’re going to buy this stuff anyway, and if you buy it from us, your money will help cure drug addicts.’ The ploy was so successful that ADGAP eventually grossed $11 million a year.

Meanwhile Dederich was becoming increasingly authoritarian and demanding. Synanon already prevented members from having much contact with family members on the outside. To insure that members were totally committed to Synanon as it had evolved, Dederich launched what amounted to a series of conformity tests. In 1975, all members, male and female, were required to shave their heads. In early 1977, Dederich coerced men who had been in Synanon five years or longer to have vasectomies and pregnant women to get abortions. Later that same year, virtually all couples, married or not, were required to “change partners.” Members who objected to any of this had to get out, leaving the more zealous members as the core of the cult.

Critics, including lawyers suing the cult, were considered “enemies” and now could be marked for violence. Initially violence had been forbidden by Synanon, but Dederich soon dropped the ban.

Atty. Paul Morantz being interviewed for ‘Split End.’

After atty. Morantz won a $300,000 judgment against the cult for a Southern California woman who had been brainwashed and wrongfully imprisoned in Marshall, Dederich went on a rant recorded by Synanon itself. On the recording, which was seized by police, Dederich can be heard growling: “I’m quite willing to break some lawyer’s legs, and then tell him I’m going to break your wife’s legs, and then we are going to cut your kid’s ear off. Try me. This is only a sample, you son of a bitch. And that’s the end of your lawyer. And that’s the end of him and all his friends. It’s a very satisfactory and humane way of transmitting information.”

Yours truly being interviewed in the documentary.

In 1978 with Synanon violence becoming increasingly common in West Marin and elsewhere, editorials in The Point Reyes Light, which I published at the time, began criticizing law enforcement’s failure to see the pattern. Each incident was treated as unrelated to all the others until ……… the rattlesnake in Morantz’s mailbox. That crime was so bizarre that California’s criminal justice system was finally forced to pay more attention to the group.

Dederich and his two snake handlers were soon arrested and in court made no claim of innocence but instead pled no contest to charges of conspiracy to commit murder. The two were sentenced to a year in jail. After he complained of frail health, Dederich was not jailed but sentenced to five years probation and ordered to stay away from Synanon. In fact, he lived 17 more years, dying at the age of 83 in 1997.

By then, Synanon was no more. In 1991, the IRS had taken away the cult’s tax-exempt status, which forced it to disband. After viewers of Split End, see the damage Synanon did to Wells, most will agree that Synanon should have been disbanded long before then. I’d recommend the documentary even if I didn’t have a cameo in it.

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We are in the midst of holiday crafts fairs from the community center in Muir Beach to the community centers in Bolinas, the San Geronimo Valley, and Point Reyes Station. 

And that is in addition to last Friday’s Christmas-tree lighting in Point Reyes Station and an exhibit that opened Sunday in Inverness’ Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History. It focuses on key women in early Inverness and on Point Reyes.

Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell

Point Reyes Station celebrated its 20th annual Path of Lights Friday. Many stores stayed open late, and luminarios lined the sidewalk in front of them. West Marin Senior Services sponsored the lighting of the town Christmas tree beside the bank.

Also in Point Reyes Station, the Dance Palace Community Center held its 48th annual artisan craft and holiday market all weekend. Terry Aleshire (center) confers with his elves.

Working the table at the Dance Palace fair’s raffle were (from left): Allie Klein, Amelia Aufuldish, Bella Schlitz, Zoe Rocco-Zilber, and Melissa Claire.

Cannabis-based remedies for various ailments were on sale.

Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell

San Geronimo Valley’s community center held its 49th annual holiday crafts fair on the portico and inside the building, 89 years since it first opened as a public school.

Amy Valens, left, talks with local vendors Rebecca Maloney (center) and Denise Jackson. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell) 

Richard “Santa” Sloan determines who’s been naughty or nice. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell)

Suzanne Sadowsky sits behind the Hanukah menorah. The holiday commemorates the oil that miraculously lasted eight days, lighting the Temple recovered by the Maccabees in 165 B.C. The holiday begins tonight. (Photo by Lynn Axelrod Mitchell)

Sarah Riddell Shafter (1823-1900) married Oscar Lovell Shafter in 1841 and bore him 11 children.

‘Those Shafter Women’ is the name of the exhibit that just opened in the Jack Mason Museum of West Marin History. “It focuses on the wives and daughters of the original six children born to Mary Lovell Shafter and William Rufus Shafter,” the museum newsletter notes. The eldest was named Wealthy Loretta Shafter Edminister…” Yes, her first name really was “Wealthy.”

Emma Shafter Howard married Charles Webb Howard in 1861. In 1890, they separated, and he agreed to support her for life and to leave half of his extensive West Marin holdings to her. However, he left her only Bear Valley Ranch, as Emma discovered when he died in 1908. Emma, who was known as “a strong woman,” sued to get her half of the property and was successful. This, however, caused bad feelings with some of the other heirs, her children and younger sisters.

Emma took part in numerous social causes. She was a lifetime member of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. She founded the Women’s Agricultural and Horticultural Union of California. 

The exhibit is in large part a genealogical presentation with history told as it relates to members of the Shafter family.

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Thanksgiving, Nov. 22 this year, is only a week away, and the flock of wild turkeys that hangs out on this hill doesn’t seem especially worried. However, 10 years ago when this photo was taken, the turkeys seemed much plumper. Must be the drought.

Last week, the fruit on our persimmon tree was starting to get ripe. What could be more cheerful looking?

The setting sun seen through smoke over Inverness Ridge last Friday.

The cheery scenes of fall began darkening last Thursday when the “Camp Fire” 185 miles east of here in Butte County began filling West Marin skies with smoke day after day. As of this writing [updated 8:53 p.m. Nov. 25], the fire had destroyed the town of Paradise and was already the deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history.

It is known to have killed at least 85 people with more than 1,275 others still missing. It blackened more than 2,500 square miles before it was fully contained around 7 a.m. Sunday. The Camp Fire razed nearly 14,000 homes.

As welcome as the smoke, a roof rat this evening crawled out from under a planter barrel on our deck to poach birdseed.

An egret walking past our kitchen door a couple of weeks ago. In the past, egrets have shown up around Mitchell cabin infrequently. This bird, however, has shown up several times of recent and twice perched on our deck railings.

A blacktail buck. My neighbor Dan Huntsman seemed to look this buck in the eye when he photographed it standing between our homes in the sun.

The same buck a few days later resting in the shade on the far side of our house.

This bobcat near my driveway was photographed late last month by my neighbor Dan Huntsman.

There’s more to the animal life around Mitchell cabin than wildlife. Here student riders with Point Reyes Arabian Adventures circle on a nearby hill.

Twice this week raccoons again ate kibble on our deck with a skunk, and as in the past, they audaciously sniffed, and even pawed its rear end, but didn’t get sprayed.

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Point Reyes Station’s polling place on Tuesday was, as usual, in the Public Safety Building shared by the county fire department and the sheriff’s office.

Tuesday was D-Day for America’s Democrats, who managed to establish a beachhead by taking back control of the House of Representatives. However, the war is not yet over. The Republicans still are in control of the Senate. Il Duce and friends must still be contained.

Toby’s Feed Barn set up a giant-screen television Tuesday evening so the community could watch the election results come in. Booths sold Mexican and Thai food just outside the door. And as the crowd began to gather, singer Tim Weed performed a few songs to help keep spirits high.

Corpses found in Point Reyes Station after the battle.

Measure I, which authorized Shoreline School District to issue up to $19.5 million in bonds, received 64 percent of the vote. It needed 55 percent to win.

Shoreline School District’s trustee election was won by incumbent Tim Kehoe and archeologist Heidi Koenig.

Measure W, which will increase by 4 percent the transient occupancy tax at rental lodgings in West Marin County, needed a two-thirds majority to win and picked up 72 percent. Half of the tax revenue will be allocated for fire and emergency services, and half will be allocated for housing for the local workforce, seniors, and people with disabilities in West Marin.

North Marin Water District board of directors winners: Rick Fraites and Jim Grossi.

Marin Municipal Water District board of directors winners: Jack Gibson and Cynthia Koehler.

Stinson Beach Fire Protection District board of directors winners: Marcus White and Will Mitchell.

Marin County’s new district attorney will be Lori Frugoli, who outpolled Anna Pletcher by 4.05 percent.

A turkey buzzard soared overhead this afternoon looking for election carnage.

Statewide, Democrat Gavin Newsom easily won the governor’s race. Democrat Eleni Kounalakis is our new lieutenant governor. Democrat Xavier Becerra was elected state attorney general. Marshall Tuck appears to have squeezed past Tony Thurmond for superintendent of education with a 0.7 percent majority; the office is nonpartisan, but both happen to be Democrats.

Legislature. The incumbents who represent West Marin, both Democrats, won: State Senator Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Marc Levine.

Congress. Here too our incumbents, both Democrats, were easily reelected, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Jared Huffman. 

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David Briggs (center) serves a sausage to Donna Larkin while behind him Jim Fox doles out pancakes to Nadine Booras.

Point Reyes Disaster Council’s 32nd annual pancake breakfast was held Sunday morning in the Point Reyes Station firehouse. The event is a fundraiser for the Disaster Council, which is made up of resident volunteers, and works as a civilian adjunct to the county fire department. Frying the pancakes, along with eggs and sausages, were members of the Inverness Volunteer Fire Department.

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Tomales celebrated its annual Founders’ Day Sunday with its traditional parade down the main street and festival in the town park. Tomales artist and cartoonist Kathryn LeMieux incorporated her California Mermaids characters into this scene, which she painted for the festival poster.

A Coast Guard honor guard marched at the head of the parade.

The parade was more spread out than in years past. Fewer floats took part. Tomales High did not send cheerleaders as it often does. Nor was there the usual contingent of antique cars, farm tractors, etc. but the crowd was still enthusuastic.

As is common at parades in West Marin, more than a few participants threw wrapped candies to kids along their route. Meanwhile the festival, which included a variety of food booths, art offerings, and music, was packed and convivial.

The Boy Scouts provided their own color guard. Tomales’ main street is Highway 1, which had to be closed through town during the parade.

The parade marshals turned out to be sisters, Mary Zimmerman and Kathleen Sartori.

Tomales rancher Al Poncia and his wife Cathie rode a three-wheeled motorcycle that was pulling a trailer with a keg labeled “Papa’s Grappa.”

The Hubbub Club from the Graton-Sebastopol area of Sonoma County.

Tomales sheepman Dan Erickson drove a truck marked “ZOOMALES,” which was loaded with plants and scary-looking creatures.

A “Tomales Baby Boom” entry celebrated the “future” Future Farmers of America.

E Clampus Vitus is annually a colorful participant in the parade. The Clampers are a boisterous club which pulls pranks but also puts up memorials for events in local history considered too small for the State Historical Society to commemorate. The Los Angeles Times once mused whether the group should be considered an “historical drinking society or a drinking historical society.”

The 1877 William Tell House bar and restaurant, the oldest saloon in the county (the building on the left), reopened last month under new ownership.

Mexican dancers, who pull their own drums with them, add excitement to many parades around here.

Not so excited was this participant who appeared to doze off while riding in a parade entry.

Far more excited was this canine passenger, Rylo, riding with Karen Lawson in Curtis McBurney’s parade entry.

Providing music for the festival in Tomales Town Park was a group called Foxes in the Henhouse.

Along with all the food, music, and crafts in the park, townspeople could sign up to become volunteer firefighters or to take Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) training. Kids could climb, swing, and take slides in the park’s small playground. In short, there was something for everyone.

Paul Manafort (Photo by Elsa/Getty Images)

I first heard the news from gleeful friends whom I ran into downtown around noon. This morning, President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted of eight felonies. The corruption charges should mean he will now spend the rest of his life in prison, unless Trump pardons him. That could happen. After Manafort’s verdicts were announced, Trump made a point of calling the crook “a good man” and calling his conviction “a disgrace.”

Equally significant, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen in another courtroom pled guilty to eight felonies, including tax fraud, false statements to a bank, and campaign finance violations on behalf of Trump. Cohen, you’ll recall, is the bag man who paid off porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal before the 2016 election to keep quiet about Trump’s exta-marital affairs with them. Cohen has apparently now agreed to provide information to help the Justice Department’s investigation of the President’s repeated wrongdoing.

Cohen wasn’t the only one singing. A dark-eyed junco on my deck sang when he began eating his supper.

Lynn and I scatter birdseed on the deck railings a couple of times a day for all the jays, doves, crows, towhees, juncos, sparrows, finches, chickadees, quail and more that stop by on a regular basis.

A scrub jay drops by Mitchell cabin for his dinner. Like the junco, he is for me a symbol of a tranquil world away from national politics.

Meanwhile, a roof rat helps himself to the birds’ seed and the birds’ bath. 

The junco is a bit wary of the rat but doesn’t stop pecking up seed.

Dining on the deck along with the birds and rats, are raccoons. They too avail themselves of the birds’ bath. And like some birds, they don’t hesitate to bathe in the water they’re drinking.

Even without the general schadenfreude over the Trump team’s starting to get its comeuppance, my home and animal friends would have seemed especially cheerful today.