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When I got home today, our cat Newy ran inside with a present for me in her mouth: a live sparrow. When she dropped it on the bedroom carpet, the sparrow took a few steps but didn’t try to fly. This allowed me to scoop it up with one hand and carry it outside where I released it seemingly unharmed under a bush.

The sparrow was Newy’s second surprise of the day. I had previously discovered she’d coughed up a series of hairballs on the staircase. They looked ickier than they proved to be when I cleaned them up, and they didn’t smell all that bad. Nonetheless, they were still a nuisance. (Note: After we took in this previously stray cat (above) a year ago, I named her “the Nuisance Cat,” but my wife Lynn changed the name to “Nui” and then to “Newy.”)

There’s a reason for the expression “what the cat dragged in.” Many cats, such as Newy, like to bring home presents for their masters. Along with several birds, numerous lizards have shown up in Mitchell cabin, thanks to Newy.

Here’s a blue belly lizard she dropped off on the living room couch.

Lizards, like the sparrow, often are in a dazed shock after spending time in the cat’s jaws, and this makes it possible to catch and pick them up as Lynn is doing here.

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And now for some nutty national news.

Rightwing conspiracy theories have moved beyond being just goofy to being downright dangerous. Police in Maryland say Jeffrey Burnham, 46, (above) murdered his brother Brian Robinette, a pharmacist, because Robinette has been administering Covid-19 vaccinations. The vaccinations are part of a government plot to poison people, Burnham had claimed, adding that his brother “Brian knows something.”

But apparently Burnham wasn’t really all that concerned about protecting people’s lives, for while he was eliminating his brother, he also murdered his sister-in-law, Kelly Sue Robinette, 57, and an 83-year-old friend of hers, Rebecca Reynolds, police report.

If the government really wants to reduce the population, using nutty people to do the job would sound more certain than administering millions of vaccinations.

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Some international news

My youngest stepdaughter, Shaili Zappa, 28, flew back to Guatemala Tuesday after a nine-day visit.

Shaili is the third daughter of Ana Carolina Monterroso of Guatemala City, my fourth wife. Her sisters are Kristeli and Anika.

A little over a decade ago, Shaili attended West Marin School while Anika and Kristeli attended San Marin High. Shaili plans to move back to the Bay Area beginning next year and already has a job lined up with a high tech firm.

An adventurous young lady, Shaili has traveled widely. Here she feeds a giraffe mouth to mouth in Kenya. Shaili said the creature was as friendly as it looks.

Lynn and I, along with a number of friends from her earlier days in West Marin, are certainly looking forward to her return.

Caveat lectorem: When readers submit comments, they are asked if they want to receive an email alert with a link to new postings on this blog. A number of people have said they do. Thank you. The link is created the moment a posting goes online. Readers who find their way here through that link can see an updated version by simply clicking on the headline above the posting.

Roof rats are a fact of life throughout West Marin, causing extensive damage by chewing on stored belonging and particularly on the wiring of automobile engines. A couple of times over the years, Cheda’s Garage has repaired rat damage to my cars.

Roof rats on Mitchell cabin’s deck eating leftover seeds scattered for the birds.

Of recent, the rats have annoyed my wife Lynn by eating the buds off a potted camellia I had given her as a Valentine’s present several years ago. On Tuesday, Newy, the stray cat we’ve adopted, went digging in a wine-barrel half that holds a clump of bamboo. Immediately an adult rat jumped out of a second hole on the other side of the barrel and ran off.

Newy kept on digging and soon caught a baby rat. Here she leans into the barrel to inspect a rat hole before sticking her claws into the creatures at the bottom. She had already snared one newborn (at left) and ultimately caught a total of four. 

The newborn roof rats were so young their eyes hadn’t yet opened. Nor had they grown fur coats. Nature red in tooth and claw reveals where Newy grabbed the first unlucky creature.

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Jesus to the rescue. As noted here last week, the grass around Mitchell cabin needed to be cut ahead of the fire season. In addition, the fields were becoming dotted with clumps of prickly thistles. As I’ve done in previous years, I called Jesus Macias who showed up Monday with a riding mower and two weed-whacking helpers.

They did a great job but had to leave a small patch of grass near the kitchen uncut because of a swarm of bumblebees there. Luckily I was able to cover myself up so completely two days later that I managed to weed-whack that patch without getting stung. A small swarm did form, but I left before they went after me.

Reader Mike Gale, a Chileno Valley beef rancher, responded to last week’s reference to the Mother Goose rhyme’s timing for cutting thistles: “Cut thistles in May,/ They’ll grow in a day;/ Cut them in June,/ That is too soon;/ Cut them in July,/ Then they will die.”

As was noted, however, Mother Goose rhymes were originally penned 300 years ago in the more-northern latitudes of England and France, where the growing season starts later. Thistles in West Marin need to be cut a month earlier. “Yes, this is the time for the attack mode,” Mike wrote me. “Unfortunately thistles are probably the last species to be affected by the drought.”

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Still swallowing. Another item in the last posting concerned cliff swallows building a nest in the eves above our kitchen door. We’ve now seen at least two adult swallows in the mostly completed nest, prompting me to read a startling fact about cliff-swallow nesting.

“Individuals often lay eggs in other individuals’ nests within the same colony,” the US Fish and Wildlife Service reports. “It has been observed that some [of these] parasitic swallows have even tossed out their neighbors’ eggs and replaced them with their own offspring.”