Sparsely, Sage and Timely
By David V. MitchellIt’s a wild life
What a week for wildlife in my staid life. For more than a month I’ve had five does and fawns in my pasture daily, and recently a love-stricken buck has been followed the does around. Apparently it doesn’t matter how much of a deer he may be, however; the does remain run-offish. Deer are common throughout West Marin. Most of us see them all too often eating our roses or littering our roadsides with their carcasses.
The deer in my yard have taken a fancy to the leaves falling off my persimmon tree. I leave the persimmons themselves to the birds and raccoons, which probably get more enjoyment out of them than I would. In years past, I picked a few persimmons but found I never had enough time to cook with them, so they spoiled.
As for the deer, if I don’t stare at them, they let me walk within 15 feet of them as I descend my railroad-tie steps.
On Saturday afternoon, however, nature came up with something far more unusual for my enjoyment. As I drove past Nicasio Reservoir’s dam, a coyote sauntered across the shoulder on the south side of Point Reyes-Petaluma Road and disappeared into the wooded canyon below the spillway.
I don’t know if they’re all the same coyote, but Light business manager Scott Yancy of Inverness Park and typesetter Cat Cowles of Inverness saw a coyote along Point Reyes Station’s levee road a couple of weeks ago. In early November, my wife Ana Carolina and I saw a coyote on Limantour Road, stopped our car, and let the coyote walk past us, warily giving us a wide berth.
Sunday night I was again driving on the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road just east of Point Reyes Station when a gray fox suddenly darted across the pavement between an oncoming truck and my car. Of course, I hit the brakes, and somehow I slowed – just enough – that vulpine luck prevailed.
I can recall back in the early 1990s when for awhile there were so many foxes in downtown Point Reyes Station that I saw one at least every week or two. One evening in 1992, The Light’s business manager at the time, Don Schinske, saw a fox trotting down Mesa Road in front of the office. Another took to frequenting the gap between the Palace Market and the Building Supply Center. At my house, foxes would take shortcuts across my deck at night.
Unfortunately, outbreaks of canine distemper in 1994 and of an unidentified virus in 1996 killed off many of West Marin’s foxes and raccoons, and their populations remained low for the next few years.
During my 29 years of living in West Marin, I’ve seen only three live bobcats although I’ve seen two mountain lions: on Pierce Point in 1977 and beside Nicasio Reservoir in 1999. Moreover, it appeared for awhile that a mountain lion had visited my yard Sunday night.
Monday before breakfast, I set off on my daily walk down my long driveway to pick up The Chronicle when I noticed some footprints in the frost covering my railroad-tie steps. Given the size of the prints and their stride, my first impression was that someone had gone down my steps ahead of me that morning. But then I noticed the tracks had dog-like toes and nails.
I was puzzled, however, by the size of the prints. A measuring tape showed they were five inches long. Naturally, I told several staff members and other friends about these tracks in the frost, and the general opinion was that the only creature around here big enough to leave such prints was a mountain lion.
A check of mountain lion websites, however, quickly revealed two problems with that theory. The tracks of an adult mountain lion hereabouts range from 3.25 to four inches, one website noted. The track I measured was without question five inches long.
Soon a second reason for ruling out any mountain lion became apparent. Like all cats, it turns out, mountain lions retract their claws while walking, so their prints leave no claw marks at the ends of their toes. The website included a comparison of dog and mountain lion tracks. What I had seen looked more like the print of a very, very big dog.
Then the coyote I’d seen two days earlier came to mind, so I checked coyote websites. Their prints matched what I had seen but certainly weren’t five inches long.
Then I happened upon the wcm Solutions, Inc. website, and it included a couple of amazing photos of tracks that a coyote in Northwest Austin, Texas, left in wet cement. As the website explained, "The coyote’s thin legs are close together, and great efficiency is gained in overlaying the front and rear paws while the coyote is in full stride."
In other words, when coyotes are in "full lope," their rear paws land approximately where their front paws had just been. "These [paw prints] almost appear as a set of tracks from a strange, two-legged creature," the website commented.
So there was my answer. No mountain lion but a loping coyote. Two of its paw prints had been overlaid so closely that together they measured five inches long. The only remaining question is why was the coyote crossing my pasture at a full lope? Was it chasing a fawn, a jack rabbit, or a neighbor’s cat?
My final wildlife story of the week starts with a feral cat that a couple of months ago began hanging around my house. After a couple of unsuccessful experiences trying to domesticate feral cats in the late 1990s, I was determined to ignore this one.
However, after I saw it within a matter of minutes catch two birds eating birdseed spread atop a railing, I reluctantly started feeding the cat. That was fine, but on Monday night it gulped the cat food down so fast I felt obliged to refill the shallow canning jar I’ve been using as a cat dish.
Before the cat could return, however, a possum showed up on my deck, sniffed its way to the unlidded, wide-mouthed jar, and then proved too dumb to find the opening on top. Instead of merely sticking its nose over the lip of the shallow jar, it kept trying to push its head through the glass.
Finally it found its way inside and gobbled what was immediately ahead of its nose. When all cat food on the opposite side of the jar was gone, however, the possum didn’t have the sense to go to the other side of the jar to get at the food that was now piled under its chin. Instead, it practically stood on its head to push the food out into the middle of the jar where it could get at it.
While all this was going on, the cat returned. The possum’s back was toward the cat, and it didn’t see the newcomer who seemed to think the interloper might be merely another cat.
Soon the cat began trying to nose its way past the possum to snatch whatever food the possum had knocked from the jar onto the deck. For awhile, the possum didn’t seem to notice, and I watched with amazement.
Unfortunately, the cat apparently mistook one of the possum’s pink-toed feet for some spilled cat food and took a nip. That was the end of the bi-species soirée. The possum whirled around and hissed. The cat backed off and crouched with its tail twitching. For awhile it remained on the deck at a respectful distance, but after apparently concluding the possum was in no mood to share, it slunk off.