SeeCalifornia.com

This weekend Quincy, Calif. celebrates Groundhog Day with Groundhog Fever Festival. California’s population is around 40 million–and its vermin and critter numbers are much larger!

While the much publicized coronavirus originating from China (visually reminiscent of a solar corona under an electron microscope and not named after the City of Corona, Calif.,) reached California via global travel, scientists with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention said tests show the pneumonia-like virus initially jumped from animals to humans at the Huanan Seafood Wholesales Market.

The Chinese market at the center of the deadly coronavirus outbreak sold live animals such as foxes, rats, skunks, wolf pups, peacocks, porcupines and camel meat to eat.

A bill signed in Oct.2019 by California’s own Gavin Newsom will allow people to eat their own roadkill from California roads–once a permit process is set up. Good idea or bad?

Just today we received a press release announcing a lawsuit filed and supported by In Defense of Animals, alleged  Terranea Resort and Spa in Rancho Palos Verdes “is responsible for the mass trapping and/or unlawful relocation of 70 raccoons, including babies, 25 opossums, several squirrels, and skunks over a three-year period.”

Friends I read the release to had mixed reactions but mainly were in favor of Terranea, asking “What’s the big deal?”

I lived in the East Bay city of Lafayette where animal control trapped and sometimes euthanized skunks burrowing under hillside homes. Heads turned when commuters on BART smelled like the skunks that permeated their heating vents with a sickening odor.

And, in Orange County where I now reside, my city traps and euthanizes coyotes, much against the advice of wildlife agencies.

Every spring in Surprise Valley there’s a festival called Squirrel Roundup, where people flock to the area to shoot the ground squirrels that overpopulate the area. At their banquet they typically serve chicken.