Hosting our wildlife neighbors — My girlfriend Lynn Axelrod is a reporter for The West Marin Citizen, which for the past two weeks has been publishing its annual pet issues. She and I don’t have any pets ourselves because they would drive away birds and four-footed wildlife, but in recent years I too have sometimes published an animal issue at the beginning of the new year.
Wild turkeys can be aggressive, and a decade or more ago, they began chasing and otherwise terrorizing school children in Tomales. This young deer, however, was not at all intimidated when it found itself grazing among a flock of turkeys between Mitchell cabin and neighbors Dan and Mary Huntsman’s home last Sunday.
A turkey stares at me from behind a lamp hanging over our dining-room table.
A mother raccoon (at rear) introduces her four kits to our kitchen.
A bobcat hunting just uphill from the cabin.
A gray fox on our deck.
This possum didn’t mind being petted as long as I gave it something to eat.
A coyote in the field below Mitchell cabin two weeks ago.
One of my favorite wildlife photos, which I’ve published before, is of a buckeye butterfly on a chrysanthemum. The plant was growing in a pot on my deck.