LIVING IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA is truly living in the Wild West, with nature often getting the upper hand, whether its earthquakes, summer wild fires that often threaten population centers, rainy season mudslides that knock houses from their foundations, sharks attacking surfers or mountain lions jumping hikers.
“You live in nature,” one of Miss Jo’s editors, a native New Yorker, once correctly observed, after being whipsawed as a car passenger along the remote coastal highway in Sonoma County, one of many routes where a wrong turn can easily send you into the Pacific Ocean or off a cliff into a canyon.
While its not showing who has the upper hand, nature also shows its 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: