LIVING IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA is truly living in the Wild West. In these parts, nature often gets the upper hand, with cities and towns hemmed in by the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco Bay, mountainous parks and farms.
Winter windstorms send houses with iffy footing sliding down muddy hills. Summer and early fall firestorms routinely devour thousands of acres of parched, remote canyons and hills, along with houses in their paths. Sometimes the fires nip perilously close to population centers, like the 1991 firestorm that swept uncontrollably through the Berkeley and Oakland Hills across the Bay from San Francisco, when 25 people lost their lives and around 2,000 homes were consumed.
Hikers in parks sometimes get jumped by mountain lions— and there are survivors to tell their tales. Sharks bite surfers and their boards. Vacationers miss hairpin coastal highway curves for their last three-second tour.
And of course, the earth likes to shake. Although there haven’t been major temblors in the Bay Area since 1989, minor, unnoticeable earthquakes happen all the time. When you do feel a little rumble, San Franciscans often shrug. Once during a little quake, Miss Jo was the only one to run outside from the Safeway in the Mission.
Other times you get to see nature’s sweet and vulnerable side, like the case this week of the sea lion pup that crawled out of the Bay to cross morning rush hour traffic on eight-lane I-880 in the city of Oakland.
Thankfully, the pup was rescued by police who named him Fruitvale for the highway exit and turned him over to the Marine Mammal Center in nearby Sausalito. The center reports an increase in sea lion youngsters losing their way because of a shortage of herring and other food.
Injured marine mammals are treated at the center and released: