Ridgeline

Posted on July 7, 2003 in Biomes Neighborhood

Ridgeline ascends from El Toro just before the fork at Cook’s corner and then descends to meet up with the left fork near a boarding stable. The developers of Portola Hills planted coyote brush and installed sprinklers as a guard against the brush fires which shave the hills every few years. Instead of a sidewalk, the right side as you climb the hill is planted in fat-bladed, foreign grass.

In the evenings, rabbits — Western cottontails — come out of the coyote brush and dine on the lawn. Sometimes when I pass, I count them. The number runs from five to eleven. The rabbits space themselves out so that there’s no chewing the lawn down to stubble by their concentration.

The other night I came up the hill to find a crow picking at a carcass with a synclined tire track down the middle of it. I counted seven live bunnies, two very close to the spot where the one had died.

Photo By Shirley Curtis
Courtesy Animal Pictures Archive