Reading this makes me smile. I live maybe a half mile from the beach in SoCal and in many ways I might as well be on your ranch Herb. All these critters you guys are talking about are all over the place here. Skunks, possums, squirrels, raccoons. In my complex there are the fattest squirrels you've ever seen because everybody feeds them. Just to remind us this really is a desert area there's gazillions of little black lizards running around. There's a couple of owls in the trees right behind me. I'll smell a skunk a couple times a week. So many people and animals around that the skunks do what they do pretty much every evening and the city is out all the time trapping them. They take them 25 miles up in the mountains and let them loose.

There was an article in the local paper a few months ago about how dangerous a raccoon can be to your dog and people too for that matter. I had no idea, they said most of the time they're mild mannered but if a medium sized dog decides to mess with one a raccoon can tear him up pretty good. I've seem them occasionally too but they're not so easy to spot.

Just a few miles south is Palos Verdes Estates. This is where Trump has one of his golf courses and you're lucky to buy a garage for a million bucks. Up there on the hill there are not only these critters, there are rattlers, whole flocks of wild peacocks and a few horse stables along with many different bird species. That hill was a wild forest 50 years ago and the estates are fairly big with lots of land and big trees. I've done gigs at the PV country club and you see the peacocks walking around. I'm down here on the beach yet it's 20 minutes to the country club and all that forest and stuff. Oh, did I mention ducks? Whole flocks of ducks at Polliwog Park in Manhattan Beach a couple miles from me. Everybody feeds them too.

When I think about it it really is amazing the wildlife in this very high density area right around me. This isn't counting the ocean. The day boats go out of King Harbor in Redondo every day and catch squid, halibut, yellowtail, sea bass and who knows what else. Further out in the Catalina Channel they go after marlin and swordfish.

Lots of folks from elsewhere don't realize all this wildlife is right in the middle of LA. You have to watch for deer at night running across Sunset blvd just a mile west of Hollywood.

Bob

Biab/RB latest build, Win 11 Pro, Ryzen 5 5600 G, 512 Gig SSD, 16 Gigs Ram, Steinberg UR22 MkII, Roland Sonic Cell, Kurzweil PC3, Hammond SK1, Korg PA3XPro, Garritan JABB, Hypercanvas, Sampletank 3, more.