Category: Life in Los Angeles

Possum Chronicles: Volume 1 (#391)

We have a lot of possums in our neighborhood. They freak some folks out, but they’re great to have in your yard—they eat bugs like ticks and they’re immune to rabies.

But those possums don’t always stay in the yard. Andy and I found one in the garage one night, sitting in a bag of dog food, chowing down. He blinked once at us and kept eating kibble. The possum continued to stuff his unbothered little face as Andy dragged the bag out of the garage and into the yard. Eventually the possum sauntered off into the night, sated.

We got a giant plastic container for dog food storage the next day.

Andy and I had a rare date night at a fancy gala when our son Dalton was in middle school. I was excited that there would be dancing. Andy was excited there would be good food he didn’t have to cook. Dalton was excited to finally be at home, alone, with unlimited time on his gaming computer.

But no sooner had the dancing begun than I got a phone call: “MOM! There’s a possum in the kitchen!”

“What?! Are the animals attacking it?”

“It’s in the corner under the chair and the dog barked but couldn’t get to it. I locked the dog and Boss Cat in my bedroom.”

“Well done, we’re on our way!”

We hurriedly exited the event (WHICH WAS NOT CHEAP, ALAS FOR DESSERT) as Dalton texted me a picture:

Halfway home, Dalton called again: “I got it out of the house!”

“Great job! How?”

“I set up exercise mats and cushions blocking off every path except for one to the door. Then I opened the door, got a broom, and kind of herded it along the path until it ran out the door.”

We congratulated Dalton on his ingenuity and speculated that the very small possum squeezed under the gap in our security door, possibly to escape a predator. Except fleeing into a house with a bully mix and a fierce cat was jumping from the frying pan into the fire. That possum was darn lucky that 1) our house is small, with minimal open space between furnishings, and 2) Boss Cat preferred to hunt other predators.

After we hung up the phone, Andy shook his head and said, “I can’t believe he got the possum out of the house.”

“Oh, I knew he would.”

“You did not.”

“Honey. Our kid is impatient as fuck. No way was he going to wait for us to get home.”

Especially not when his gaming computer was locked up with the barking dog and cat.

The Safe House (#388)

My neighborhood, which is flat with sidewalks, became super popular for trick-or-treating about a decade ago. Families drove in from other areas of LA, parked at the nearby schools, and made the rounds. I was thrilled, especially once our son Dalton decided I was “not allowed” to escort him tick-or-treating anymore. I’ve never met a holiday I didn’t like, but the elaborate costumes and piles of candy make Halloween one of my favorites.

Because dogs go insane over door knocking and doorbells (and we always have at least one dog), my friend JM and I sit at the bottom of my porch on Halloween night, wearing witch hats and handing out candy from a huge cauldron. Last night, I even had my K-Pop Demon Hunters playlist and speaker ready to blast the second we saw any members of Huntr/x or the Saja Boys.

Andy, who is not a holiday person, was happy to raid the cauldron, take all the Reese’s, and watch TV inside.

Generally the cauldron is emptied of candy by 8:30 PM. Until last night.

We had far fewer tick-or-treaters last night than last year or the year before. No one parked in the school parking lot, either.

Much to my sorrow, there was only ONE Rumi from K-Pop Demon Hunters.

We told every kid to take whole handfuls of candy. If they passed us again, we insisted they take some more. We pushed candy on every parental escort.

We flagged down adults walking their dogs AND the UPS driver, reverse-robbing them by demanding they take candy.

The horde of teens that usually comes by to mop up (maybe with a single mask or wig shared between 5 adolescent males) never showed.

We were ready to pack it in, cauldron still more than half-full, when a minivan finally stopped right in front of us. And sat there for a full minute.

JM and I saw a flap of black fabric, perhaps a Dracula cape, caught in the rear passenger door. There was movement in the car, maybe the twinkle of sparkly fabric briefly catching the streetlight.

We held our breath, like you do when you’re afraid to startle a wild animal.

Finally, the minivan disgorged a mass of costumed kids: an inflatable capybara jockey, a walking tombstone, something requiring glittery orange veiling, and more that I can’t remember because I was entranced by the capybara.

Those trick-or-treaters were bit taken aback by the enthusiastic cheering from two middle-aged white women. We had to encourage them to take as much candy as they wanted, which they did. It still wasn’t as much candy as I wanted them to take (but probably it was more than Dalton the candy hoarder wanted them to have).

Even though there were elaborate decorations and lights on all down the block, most of the group immediately returned to the minivan. Only the capybara jockey tried the house next door (yes, the one belonging to my infamous, asshole cop neighbor).

No one answered.

After the cabybara jockey returned, the minivan drove away. JM and I stared at each other, confused.

JM asked, “Um…why just your house?”

“I know, right? Every other house on the block looks like an infestation of Halloween inflatables and I just have the wreath you made me. I didn’t even do a jack-o’-lantern this year, since Andy thinks it’s a waste of money to buy food for decoration.”

Shaking my head, I looked back at my porch and its minimal fall decor.

And saw the flag I hung out months ago.

A white and red flag that reads "ABOLISH ICE"

I barely notice that flag any more. But I’m glad someone else did.

An Envelope of Appropriation (#385)

No white woman appropriated the Chinese custom of giving lucky money (“lai see” in my husband’s Cantonese-speaking family) as fast as I did when I married Andy. All my debutante mother’s admonitions against giving money as a gift? Gone the second I realized that a pretty red envelope with gold designs was the perfect way to class up cash.

Cash is much more practical than gift cards. You can spend cash on anything, or save it. But gift cards? There’s NO WAY you ever spend the exact amount on the gift card. Corporations profit from expired cards, damaged cards, unredeemed balances, and sometimes fees. Starbucks, for example, gets about 10% of its revenue from unredeemed cards (from everyone except my husband and Coffee Kate). Stick it to corporate overlords and give cash instead!

I have countless nieces and nephews (thanks to over a dozen siblings, half-siblings, step-siblings, ex-step-siblings from various parental units’ divorces and marriages) who get lucky money on their birthdays. Our son Dalton has lobbied for cash gifts since he learned what money was (age 3). Dalton’s friends and coaches, even the non-Asian ones, learned to look forward to seeing red when they open a greeting card.

I buy my red envelopes in bulk. Yes, I know that most actual Chinese moms, like my MIL Sunny, get them for free from the bank when withdrawing cash for Lunar New Year or weddings or birthdays (stamped with the bank’s logo, of course, BUT IN GOLD). Back when Andy and I got married, however, our bank didn’t have red envelopes. I bought a variety of designs online: the nieces on the swim team got fish, the nephew who demanded orange juice got oranges, and the nephew who loved pink got red and pink peonies. I even splurged on some bigger, more rigid envelopes for weddings (the better to keep shiny new bills crisp and unbent).

While red envelopes haven’t gone mainstream in California (yet), there’s a Hawaiian custom that has: graduation leis. I’d never seen a graduation lei on the East Coast, but when I got my MFA in Los Angeles, flower leis were everywhere. Since then, high school graduations have morphed into a lei arms race in California. There are real flower leis, fake flower leis, candy leis, money leis, and even Happy Meal leis.

I’ve been at graduations where the leis are piled so high all you can see are the graduate’s eyes. Not one to miss out on the fun, I created a lucky money lei by braiding red yarn and gold ribbon, punching holes in red envelopes (with cashed tucked inside), and then attaching them to the lei with artificial daisies. (Then I warn the recipients to guard that lei with their life.)

SoCal high school graduation leis (mine has the red envelopes with flowers in the center)

When Andy’s nephew graduated, I had his lei all planned out: a kukui nut lei (to acknowledge his family’s history in Hawaii) with lucky money attached by red and gold ribbons. I sent Andy a reminder to leave work early and pick up cash on the way home. Lucky money is, ideally, the largest denomination of bills possible. As my husband is notoriously frugal, I texted him specifics: “I have 3 red envelopes on his lei, and, YES, each should be no less than a fifty!”

Andy brought home a bunch of crumpled twenties.

The ancestors wept.

The white wife insisted on stopping at an ATM that would let her choose hundreds. She may have also berated him the whole way there: “What is wrong with you? I’m not even Chinese and I know anything less than a hundred is shameful!”

Andy’s response was a shrug and, “It’s not like I got cash when I was growing up.”

“But when your mom gives Dalton lucky money, it’s always new, crisp hundred-dollar bills!”

“Crumpled twenties spend the same,” was all Andy said.

Until I returned from the ATM with a pile of Benjamin Franklins.

“How many hundreds are you giving him?!” he huffed, accelerating out of the parking lot with significantly more speed than necessary.

“You had your chance to get him fifties and you blew it.”

“But it’s only high school! And he’s got two younger siblings. You’re setting an expensive precedent.”

“Listen, Scrooge, I’m not giving him all of them. I had to get extra bills in case the ATM gave me old or ugly ones,” I explained. “See? This one is folded up in the corner. I can’t use that. And this one is creased! Only pristine bills make the cut.”

Andy remained horrified over the amount of lucky money in that lei.

Same as my southern ancestors, I expect.

But I like to think the Chinese ancestors were as pleased as our nephew.

Me assembling the #1Wong Nephew’s lei on the freeway.

 

LA Is Not Okay (#381)

Los Angeles is never quiet. The county has about 10 million people. Less than half of them speak English at home. There are so many races and religions that not everyone sleeps in on the same holidays. We have 80 school districts, accommodating everything from Jewish High Holy Days to Asian Lunar New Year.

LA County was designed to include many mini-cities, connected by the Pacific Red Car. But since car and oil companies have spent over a century working against public transportation, we’re now mainly connected by freeways. The LA-centric Valentine’s Day card reads: “I love you so much I’d take the 134 to the 101 to the 405 to the 10 for you.* (*Excluding rush hour.)”

The immensity of Los Angeles is hard to explain to non-residents. Until you’ve spent 20 minutes descending over the lights before a night landing at LAX, you probably can’t fully comprehend that LA County is geographically larger than Delaware and Rhode Island combined, and just a little smaller than Connecticut. It has more people than 40 states in the U.S.

Even during the early days of COVID, LA wasn’t quiet. In fact, I ran into more folks than usual when walking my dog early in the morning.

Which made last week eerie.

My windshield after turning on the wipers to get the ash off.

Los Angeles was quiet. There were mornings where Tankie and I saw no one as we walked through our neighborhood.

All we saw were red skies. Falling ash. And smoke.

And yes, of course I was wearing a KN95.

The air quality improved dramatically over the weekend in our area. Sunday morning I woke up to a “good” air quality rating, with minimal particulates.

The sun was shining, the sky was blue. From our hillside in southwestern Los Angeles county, I couldn’t see any smoke.

And yet it was still so, so quiet.

Because everything was canceled. And no, not in the way the MAGA meatheads scream about, which is actually consequences for celebrities being misogynistic, racist, or transphobic.

Local events were canceled. All youth sports were canceled. Grammy events were canceled. Premieres were canceled. The announcement of Oscar nominations was postponed.

Everyone stayed home—unless they were a first responder (including incarcerated firefighters, who you can support here), an animal rescuer, a reporter, or an asshole content creator flying drones into Quebec water bombers.

The screen of Watch Duty, which shows the fires and your location (blue dot)

We spent the week glued to the news, social media, and the literally life-saving new app called Watch Duty, sifting through an INSANE amount of disinformation lies as we tried to figure out what was happening.

And then figured out how we could help.

While also answering calls and texts from every single out-of-state friend and family member who couldn’t remember our address or use Google maps to discern how far away we were from the fires.

I have an enormous family. They are also a very smart family. And yet most of them still checked, individually, to make sure I was nowhere near the fires. It was an absolutely heart-warming pain in the ass.

As I explained to them, I am okay. Physically. Mentally, like every other Angeleno, I am a mess. I am one “Their dog survived the fire!” reel away from tears at all times. I am also one fucking MAGA misinformation meme about how the Black woman mayor of Los Angeles CITY (not the county) is somehow personally responsible for draining the reservoirs of all the surrounding cities from throwing my phone at any house flying a Trump flag.

I am constantly, easily distracted. I started this post 6 days ago. I lost the original draft because I hadn’t saved it when it was “Document 1” and my computer updated overnight. Since then, I’ve managed maybe a paragraph a day.

Like everyone else in SoCal, I deal with a lot of ash. While the air quality has improved, the dirt blown by the initial winds and subsequent fires’ ashfall will continue to cover our streets and sidewalks until it rains. If it rains.

Right now, it looks like even our normally rainy February might be dry.

Our hillside. A picture I took in January of 2023 on the left, January 2025 on the right. Can you tell we’ve had no measurable rainfall for months?

But thanks to fire crews and trucks from all over California, Oregon, and Utah, the Palisades and Eaton fires are gradually being contained. New fires have been put out. Help and support have come from all over the world.

Thanks for making me cry some more, all you kindhearted jerks.

Seriously, though, I appreciate all those who cared, worried, and donated. Which is pretty much everyone except Donald Dickhead Trump and the Californian Republicans who ditched their burning state to go kiss his ass at Mar-a-Lago.

Oh, and billionaire Elon Musk? Keep your incredibly generous donation of 3 rust-prone, rolling dumpsters cybertrucks—supposedly earmarked for one sheriff’s station that lost power.

Teamsters and locals are handling these issues much faster.

 

For those wanting to help, the best way is to donate to the organizations doing good work on the ground here: World Kitchen, the California Wildfire & Disaster Relief Fund, the Pasadena Humane Society, and the Sante D’ Oro Rescue Group.

Here are two of my favorite nonprofit groups that are rescuing and moving animals from LA to help our local shelters make more room: Best Friends, Dogwood Animal Rescue.

Other ways you can help? Stand up for legislators who stand up against fossil fuels.

Clap back against disinformation. 

And never stop caring.

A Living Christmas Tree (#379)

When I was a kid, my mom insisted on a live tree at Christmas. Not  a tree that was once alive and had been cut, either. Our trees all had a root ball wrapped up in burlap. After Christmas, we planted Robert the blue spruce, Julie the white pine, Douglas (the Douglas fir), and several others in the front yard of our Washington, D.C. home. Our parents divorced and our family moved out decades ago, but three trees are still there. They’re now taller than the house.

Photo of childhood home now (thanks to Big Brother)

When Andy and I moved into our house, we got a 5-foot tall Monterrey pine in a pot as our first tree. After Christmas, we planted the tree in our backyard. The second year, we got another Monterrey pine Christmas tree and planted it in the empty parkway next to our driveway.

We had a few years without trees while Baby D was a toddler, and then while we were traveling for the holidays. Once we stayed home for Christmas, though, Baby D demanded a tree. We had no more space to plant trees, so we got cut noble firs. They were beautiful and smelled lovely, but I hated killing a tree for the holidays.

I consoled myself with the fact that our first two Christmas trees grew very fast—and very tall. Those pines provided homes for many birds and shade in the hot SoCal summers. When our asshole cop neighbor attempted a McMansion, I was grateful that I could look at evergreen branches instead of the Chino Hills tract house he built within 5 feet of the property line.

Baby D grew up climbing our backyard tree and loved it.

Dalton doing science experiments under the tree. The edge of Andy’s garden on the left.

Andy, on the other hand, grew to hate the tree. He had turned a good chunk of our backyard into his vegetable garden. Within a decade, the Monterrey pine was “stealing all the sunlight!” Even though we had the branches thinned, Andy sulked when his garden did poorly and talked about selling his little greenhouse, “because I can’t grow anything with that damned tree!”

I told my husband to get a grip and wait until Baby D was older. Once Baby D became a teen, we had one last Christmas party where Dalton and his friends climbed all over the tree. And then, as much as it hurt, I hired professional tree trimmers to remove it as Andy’s Christmas present.

I’m not sure which was worse: Dalton calling me “tree murderer” for a month or listening to asshole cop neighbor crow about how great it was that the tree was gone.

At least the other Monterrey pine was still a huge, beautiful tree.

Escaped Boss Cat pausing up on our fence in front of our second Monterrey pine.

Until the city cut it down, along with all the other trees around our house.

They eventually replaced those seven trees with two small magnolia trees and one Brisbane box tree. I watered and fertilized those trees diligently. The magnolias are still alive. The Brisbane box? Dead. And despite my complaints to the city, the dead tree has been sitting there for a year. (Probably because the city is out of money due to the 1 dollar out of every 4 in revenue going into the pension fund for our corrupt, racist, antisemitic police department.)

My evil plan was to get another living Monterrey pine for our Christmas tree and plant it on the parkway in front of our sidewalk (where the dead tree still sits). If we planted it at 4 AM on New Year’s Day, our tree-hating cop neighbor would be too busy sleeping off the usual holiday bender to notice. He’d probably think the city planted it.

And since he parks at least one of his six cars under it on most days, I looked forward to listening to him complain about the pine needles and sap landing on his precious vehicles.

Yes, I am that petty.

Unfortunately, Orchard Supply Hardware, which supplied us with our first two Monterrey pines, no longer existed. I searched all over and couldn’t find a single one in southern California. The best I could do were Monterrey pine seedlings.

But I found something else: “The Living Christmas Company.” This company brings you a live, potted pine tree in early December. You water it, decorate it, and celebrate with it. After Christmas, the company collects the tree. When the trees become too big to rent out at Christmas, The Living Christmas Company donates them to local communities or to be planted in the wild through the Urban Reforestation Project.

Live tree arriving

And one of the trees they offer? A Monterrey pine. While renting a live tree costs about $100 more than buying a cut noble fir, you don’t have to worry about transporting the tree home or dealing with the Christmas tree stand.

Best of all? You aren’t killing a tree. Instead, you’re part of growing a tree.

Our Monterrey pine arrived on Sunday. I’m calling him Milton.

Tankie with Milton

The Cat Who Lived (#371)

Our Boss Cat was determined to use up every single one of her nine lives. We thought she should be an indoor cat; she thought she was a big game hunter and bolted outside at every opportunity. We grew adept at using bags and purses to shield the doorway when entering. Thwarted, Boss Cat would hiss at us, assuage her rage by beating up our rescue dog Woofie, and plot her next attempt. She learned to lurk under Woofie and our other rescue dog Fey as they stood by the door. When we let them into the backyard, she’d streak out and over the back fence. The neighborhood got used to seeing me wandering around the block, calling: “Here, kitty, kitty!”

Sometimes she came back quickly (i.e., if she hadn’t eaten and I had chicken). Sometimes she didn’t. Then I’d usually find her on our morning dog walk, stalking other dogs on their morning stroll or chasing racoons down the sidewalk and up trees.

Juvenile raccoon in our orange tree. Beneath feline notice.

These fleeing racoons? They were twice her size.

In the evening, I’d once had to rescue her when she got stuck on a telephone wire.

Every neighbor with a dog had a story of Boss Cat terrorizing that dog. Including dogs who outweighed her by seventy pounds. Yellow Labradors fled from her. The famously aggressive terrier? She cowered.

Boss Cat once disappeared for an entire day. We put signs up all around the neighborhood and feared she was gone forever. Boss Cat returned at 1 AM, covered in grass and looking pissed as hell. There wasn’t a scratch on her. She ate three helpings of food and then slept for sixteen hours.

Boss Cat’s one injury came after she tussled with the lanky brawler cat Blackie. She wound up with an infected abscess. Which was getting off easy, since all the other cats Blackie attacked “looked like they’d been run over with a lawn mower,” according to one mauled cat’s owner. Boss Cat refused to accept defeat. After we’d spent hundreds at the vet and she’d healed, she snuck out and lured Blackie back to our yard just as I was setting out with Woofie. Blackie’s initial attack pounce turned into a scrambling, inglorious retreat—with both Boss Cat and ninety pounds of canine backup hot on his heels.

Blackie never bothered Boss Cat again.

So it wasn’t the neighborhood cats or dogs that worried me when Boss escaped.

It was the coyotes.

California was coyote territory long before white folks started shooting and poisoning them. I was thrilled to see them finally return. My neighbors? Not so much. Many of them had outdoor cats. “Missing Cat” signs began popping up. Our semi-feral cat colony disappeared. More than one napping cat was snatched off a porch on our block. Some cat owners brought their cats completely inside or built “catios.” Some would only let their cats out during daylight hours, with supervision or a leash.

All the other outdoor cats? Gone within a year.

Yet Boss Cat was still determined to escape. At dawn one morning, Boss Cat shot through my legs when I went outside to water plants. She paused on our front steps, giving me a triumphant, taunting look. She knew I could never catch her. If I tried to chase her, she’d just run across the street. Since our newest dog was in the backyard, I left the front door open as I hurried inside to dig up chicken scraps. Within thirty seconds, I heard an unfamiliar canine snarl. I sprinted for the front door.

Boss Cat was in the doorway, SLASHING A COYOTE IN THE FACE.

A hard right, a solid left, repeat. Because she had cleverly positioned herself in the doorway, the coyote could only snap at her from one direction. And because cats are unbelievably fast and Boss Cat never paused, the coyote was getting hammered.

I imagined Boss Cat’s internal monologue thusly: “Come at me, bro! You think you can take ME, motherfucker?! Think again! You are nothing to me, coyote! Nothing! I’ve made canines three times your size CRY and I will fuck you up!” BAM. BAM. BAM BAM BAmbambam!

Mr. Coyote fled. Boss Cat not the easy prey he expected and there was a big, loud human charging in (I was yelling, albeit incoherently). As soon as the coyote disappeared, Boss Cat stalked back inside. Her tail had puffed up to three times its normal size and her pupils were huge, but she’d taken no damage. For once, she refused food.

Boss on sentry duty that morning

Instead, she jumped up on the kitchen counter and glared out the window in the direction Mr. Coyote had fled. She lashed her puffy tail repeatedly before settling down to clean her paws and claws.

I guess the blood of her enemy was tastier than chicken.

I’ve yet to see a coyote on our block again.

The story of Boss Cat vanquishing the coyote went down the street. Various neighbors and kids, especially those who had lost cats, came by to gawk and/or pet her. Some brought treats. Boss Cat lapped up the attention and the food, and rightly so. She was a local legend.

She was the Cat Who Lived.

 

A Question of Coyotes (#370)

While coyote sightings are pretty common in Southern California, we didn’t see any in our neighborhood the first decade we lived here. Which seemed a little odd, because there’s a huge, undeveloped hillside that looms over the neighborhood.

We had plenty of outdoor cats and wildlife, though. Folks would leave cat food on their front porches for their outdoor cats. When I walked before sunrise, I often saw skunks trot down the sidewalk, turn up the walkway to a house, climb up the front porch, and help themselves to a bowl cat food.

Dog food thief

Andy and I once found a possum in our garage, inside a large bag of dog food. When we opened it, all the possum did was blink and continue eating.

We relocated the bag and the possum to our side yard and got a large plastic container for dog food the next day.

We also had hawks, falcons, owls, and plenty of small birds.

In semi-wild life, our neighborhood hosted a huge cat colony. Asshole humans would dump unwanted kittens at the park on the top of the hillside. The kittens would make their way down the hill to the house of an older woman who was a hoarder. She fed them, but ignored all her neighbors’ suggestions about contacting Fix Nation or any other TNR groups. The colony expanded exponentially. The Boomer neighbors complained about the overwhelming stench of cat pee. The bird population took a hit. The city refused to intervene.

Inevitably, a pair of coyotes discovered that our huge, grassy hillside was the perfect place to raise a family…and get take out from the surrounding suburbs.

The first time I saw them was probably on one of their early recon missions. At sunrise, I was walking down the hill with one of my dogs. Ahead of me, I spotted a loping canine that looked like a small German shepherd coming up the hill and thought, “Crap! A loose dog. How am I going to catch it—”

And then another, almost identical canine appeared behind it—with the exact same easy, but ground-eating, stride. They had no collars and giant ears.

I stopped immediately and told the dog to sit. He obeyed, and we watched the coyotes pass.

They never even looked at us.

Since then, I’ve seen the coyotes on the hill numerous times (my Instagram account is full of them). I never get tired of watching them hunt for gophers or lope in the brush. I enjoy hearing the young coyotes howling with the fire engine’s siren late at night, or yapping excitedly to let a returning parent know where they are. Those coyotes make our little part of Los Angeles wild and wonderful.

A lot of folks in SoCal fear the coyotes. Numerous motorists have stopped to warn me if they’ve passed a coyote. Which is kind, but also kind of ignorant. I’ve never had a dog under 75 lbs, and I am much bigger than my dogs. Every sane coyote (and we don’t have rabies in our area) gives us a wide berth because coyotes are not stupid.

Coyotes are usually less than forty pounds. Wild animals don’t have an ER; like other predators, they calculate the odds of injury in every single encounter. There is zero chance they’d try to take on two other, larger predators unless their den was being attacked. They generally stay away from humans, although my MAGA neighbors refuse to accept this. (And, yes, the coyote haters are inevitably MAGA.)

The MAGA cultists put up signs about “coyote attacks” in our neighborhood, but of course they don’t mention that the coyotes are attacking other animals and not humans. Arguments have raged at many SoCal city halls, with the MAGA crowd insisting on the right to kill coyotes. One city actually pays a ton of money to a problematic trapper who snares and kills them. When a third-grade class wrote letters protesting killing coyotes, MAGA supporters doxed and threatened the teacher. The school and teacher hired security.

And yet the psychotic MAGA meatheads insist that it’s the COYOTES who are the real danger to children.

“They could snatch a child right out of the street!” one neighbor insisted.

“If a toddler is in the middle of the street, especially in the middle of the night, a coyote is the least of their problems!” I retorted. While small children have been grabbed/ attacked by coyotes, that’s often on the idiot parent isn’t watching their child closely and has ignored warnings about coyotes in the area.

What the coyotes really want is a matchup with something much smaller: a rodent, a cat, or a small dog. Small dog owners have responded by buying coyote suits:

Story & Picture from The Atlantic

There are no suits for cats, however.

And there is no longer a semi-feral cat colony in our neighborhood.

But you don’t hear the MAGA Boomers thanking the coyotes for that.

When SoCal Gives You Lemons (#366)

If you have a square foot of land in Southern California, you probably have citrus tree. If you don’t, you might have one in a pot. If you don’t have one in a pot, all your friends with lemon trees are currently offering you free lemons (the oranges aren’t quite ripe yet).

Tis the season in SoCal.

Our lemon tree is loaded this year. Andy has made lemon pancakes and crepes with lemon curd multiple times in the last month.

Andy’s crepes with lemon curd

When Baby D had dental work done, Andy made him a lemon posset. (I thought possets died out in Victorian times, but apparently there’s a resurgence.)

When a friend asked me to bring a dessert for a New Year’s party, I figured I’d better use up some lemons. But what to make?

Then I remembered Lawyer Sis raving about her daughter’s addictive lemon cookies. Kickass Niece (who kicks ass in school, social justice, taekwondo, soccer, and baking) was apparently forbidden from making those cookies too often when the rest of the household stopped fitting into their clothes.

I hit Kickass Niece up for the recipe. She told me it was basically any sugar cookie recipe modified with extra sugar and two lemons. (My version of this recipe is at the end of this post.) I got to work.

The cookies came out super lemony (I suspect East Coast lemons are puny compared to ours).

Andy and Baby D tested them for me. They both shrugged.

Andy: “They’re good.”

Baby D: “They’re okay.”

I asked, “Where do they rank compared to my other cookies?”

Baby D said, “My cookies are the best, then chocolate chip, then maple rugelach, then chocolate cookies with white chips, then the cream cheese sugar cookies, then the candy cane and chocolate meringues, then these.”

Andy said, “The chocolate cookies are first, then D’s cookies, then chocolate chip, sugar cookies, then maple rugelach, then these.”

“So they’re last?!”

Baby D shook his head and said, “No, the oatmeal cookies with cranberries or raisins are last. Or the Berger cookies.”

Andy said, “No, the candy cane and chocolate meringues are last. DEAD LAST.” (Andy thinks chocolate and mint together are the devil.)

I sighed and wondered if I should have made different cookies—until I realized that Baby D was stealing the just “okay” lemon cookies off the cooling rack every chance he got. Cookie casualties reached the double digits before I started squirting him with the cat’s water bottle.

The lemon cookies didn’t look very impressive (even though I picked the prettiest ones for the party platter). But only a handful remained at the end of the evening. As we were leaving, I offered the remainder to the mom of one of Baby D’s classmates.

The mom said, “Actually, I think I will. Olivia’s got a cold and these might cheer her up.”

Her friend piped up with, “Oh, and I’ll take some for Janet.”

Olivia’s mom eyed her friend skeptically and said, “Janet?”

“You know, my imaginary friend who will get just as many cookies as your daughter.”

Olivia’s mom gasped in outrage and said, “I really am taking these for Olivia!”

“Suuuuuure,” said the friend.

We laughed and made our exit with an empty platter—which outraged Baby D, especially when he learned that we’d sent the last of the cookies home to Olivia.

He may even have sent Olivia an angry text about her eating the last of “his” cookies.

To which she responded: “What cookies?”

Olivia’s mom is so busted.

Lemony SoCal Sugar Cookies

Since folks on Instagram asked for the recipe:

Lemony SoCal Sugar Cookies (aka Kickass Niece’s Cookies)

  • 2½ cups (318 grams) all-purpose flour
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp salt (I used kosher salt ground finer with mortar and pestle)
  • 2 sticks (226 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
  • 2 cups (400 grams) granulated sugar, plus ½ cup (100 grams) for rolling
  • Zest and juice of 2 large lemons (maybe 3 if you are using puny East Coast lemons)
  • 1 large egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper.

In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt.

In a large bowl, use an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment on medium-high speed to beat the butter and 2 cups sugar until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add the lemon zest and juice and beat an additional minute. Add egg, egg yolk, and vanilla, and beat until combined. Gradually beat in the flour mixture.

Pour the remaining 1/2 cup sugar into a shallow pan or bowl. Using a small (1 tbsp) spring loaded ice-cream scoop, scoop out individual pieces of dough, drop them into the sugar, and roll them around until they are coated with sugar and roughly ball shaped. Place the dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, spacing at least 2 inches apart—these cookies will spread and flatten considerably as they bake.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the edges brown. (If you like softer, chewy cookies, cook less. Spouse prefers more caramelized and wanted them even browner on the edges.) Cool for cookies for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 4 days, assuming you don’t have a ravenous child who eats them all off the rack.

Hurriquake (#360)

We had a little excitement over the weekend. Historic excitement, even.

Southern California has its share of disasters. When I moved west, I knew I was trading in hurricanes, tornadoes, ice storms, blizzards, and locusts (or at least cicadas) for earthquakes and wildfires. (My son Dalton thinks this was a shit trade; he is green with envy every winter, when his cousins get “snow days” and have no school.)

My partner Andy thought he was leaving hurricanes when he moved from Hawaii. You know why? Because meteorologists have long said Southern California’s coastal waters were too cold for a hurricane to survive and the winds send storms back out to the Pacific.

Last week, Hurricane Hilary made a beeline for us. Thanks to the fossil fuel industry’s greed, the Pacific Ocean has warmed up quite a bit.

Now, technically, Hilary was downgraded to a tropical storm before crossing over from Mexico into the United States. So, yes, we still haven’t officially had a hurricane (let me get that out before white bros start “well actually-ing” the crap out of my comments section). But SoCal and its Maine-like water temperatures were supposed to be relatively safe from tropical storms, too.

Fuck you, Exxon.

Next up on our bingo card: ice-storm, probably. Courtesy of Shell and all the white men insisting on driving jacked up pickup trucks to prove their toxic masculinity. May all y’all drive those trucks into the rising waters and get swept away in a rush of double irony.

Even though meteorologists were always very clear that Hilary would only be a tropical storm by the time she reached us, a tropical storm still meant way more rainfall than SoCal usually gets. 4 inches of rain is a pittance on the East Coast. In SoCal, we get maybe 10 inches a year—4 inches is a DELUGE! In our inland deserts? Death Valley gets 2 inches annually.

So on Friday, Dalton and I cleaned out the rain gutters. (He’s young enough that climbing on the roof is exciting, plus he’s lighter than his parents and less likely to damage the shingles, plus didn’t you know conservatives are bringing back child labor?) After the city cut down the seven trees around our house, gutter-cleaning was far easier than in past years, but in the rain gutters Dalton discovered dirt, 3 drill bits, one entire rusted drill nose/ bit, and several metal cylinders (probably from our solar installation last year).

Meanwhile, Andy reapplied caulk around the roof vents. He tucked away all his pots and gardening supplies in the garage and shed. Any light furniture, yard signs, and cushions went into the garage.

We were ready for the worst, even as we watched Hilary’s projected storm track move further and further from the coast.

Normally, we get strong afternoon winds blowing in from the ocean. Saturday, those winds died. Andy informed me that this was typical pre-hurricane weather: hot, humid, and still.

SoCal’s nighttime temperatures normally drop as much as 20 degrees, thanks to our lack of humidity.

Sunday morning, as Hilary approached, was even hotter than Saturday afternoon. When I checked the doppler, the majority of the rain was passing to the east of us.

Occasionally the sky would spit, but we didn’t get light rain until about 11 AM.

It didn’t cool off a darn thing.

This was my phone yesterday.

At about 2:40 PM, the rainfall got heavier. As I shifted in my chair to look out the window, the house seemed to move. I had a split second to wonder if the barometric pressure changes were giving me vertigo before my phone started screaming “Emergency Alert!”

One flooding alert for Hilary.

And one for a 5.5 earthquake.

As SoCal social media alternated between gleeful “#Hurriquake” and gloomy “#FML,” thankfully someone in Los Angeles office of the National Weather Service quickly tweeted that a tsunami was NOT expected, post-earthquake.

Alas for #Hurriquanami.

The quake did no damage to us, since the epicenter was far to the north. (No injuries or serious damage, just a lot of broken glass in Ojai.) The worst storm systems went around us on both sides of the Los Angeles basin, proving once again that geography has an impact on weather. We finally got some cooler winds and heavier rain by about 7 PM.

Our area got about 2.5″ of rain in exchange for a few tree limbs down and loss of power. I invited neighbors to come by and recharge at our house (thanks to our powerwall), but power was restored before anyone got that desperate.

Palm Springs and Coachella Valley were far less fortunate.

Several school districts canceled classes today.

Our school district, however, is still on summer break.

Dalton is rather bitter about this: “That was probably the best chance to have school canceled for weather!”

“Give it time, dude. Our climate is heading for extremes. You could still get a snow day.”

“That will NEVER happen in LA, Mom.”

“They said the same thing about hurricanes once, buddy.”

The Wrangler (#358)

Save the monarchs!

King Charles in a huge crown.

No, not that one.

This one:

Orange and black monarch butterfly

Most Americans are familiar with the monarch, the most photogenic of the butterflies.

The caterpillar is distinctive:

The monarch chrysalis looks like jewelry, complete with droplets of gold. (It’s not really gold, it’s a cool illusion—possibly one that makes other creatures think it’s a dew-covered leaf.) The monarch’s annual, multigenerational migration from Mexico to Canada and back again is a staggering achievement for such a small creature.

Mercury News

There are two groups of monarch butterflies: the eastern monarch and the western monarch. There might be some comingling at the Mexican wintering grounds, but mostly each group stays on its side of the continental divide.

I didn’t think much about monarchs until my niece in the east did a Boy Scout project giving out milkweed seeds to help increase the population. Monarch butterflies only lay their eggs on the milkweed plant (though there many, many types of milkweed). Once the eggs hatch, the monarch caterpillars only eat milkweed leaves. Milkweed is, according to most other species, nasty. Toxic, even. It makes monarchs more vibrantly orange, as well as unappetizing to predators.

The milkweed seeds my niece distributed probably wouldn’t thrive in Southern California, but her project got me googling. I learned that a) SoCal is part of the overwintering grounds for western monarchs, and b) western monarchs aren’t doing so well, either.

Since my husband’s garden had taken over the center of our backyard, I suggested we put a butterfly garden in next to the garage, where the vegetable garden used to be. Andy agreed and ordered some native milkweed.

Milkweed is known as a weed for a reason. Milkweed cannot be contained. Milkweed popped up all over our back and front yard. I potted extra plants and gave them away.

But it wasn’t until Christmas a few years ago that I found chrysalises all over our back patio. Chrysalises on our planters, our table, our bench, and even under the back step. Why so many? Why then?

Maybe it was because that particular Christmas was very cold, with snowstorms closing the freeways around Los Angeles. The tachinid flies, parasitoids who prey on monarch caterpillars, survive best in temperate weather; cold might have wiped them out before they could lay eggs on the milkweed.

Or it could have been because we had lost our remaining dog that fall (I’ll write that post when I can do it without crying so probably never). Without a big dog with big paws running around, the caterpillars could safely cross the patio and find more visible spots for their metamorphosis.

And so began my life as a caterpillar wrangler. I put wooden trellises in on the edges of the butterfly garden. From December to March, if I spotted a caterpillar motoring across The Patio of Death, I put the caterpillar on the trellis, lecturing said caterpillar: “The trellis is a safe place! Make your chrysalis HERE.” I often saved the same damned caterpillar repeatedly.

Sometimes I wondered if saving terminally stupid caterpillars would be detrimental to the species as a whole. Unfortunately, the western monarch population was decreasing precipitously. In the 1980s 4.5 million monarchs overwintered on the California coast. Overwintering monarchs declined to 1.2 million in 1997, which dropped to 293,000 in 2015. In 2019, the numbers fell to 30,000.

In 2020, less than 2,000 monarchs were counted.

So yeah, every caterpillar mattered. Even the idiots.

Despite my wrangling, I still found caterpillars building chrysalises in Very Bad Places.

Seriously, Mx Monarch Caterpillar, does this seem like a safe place?!
Chrysalis relocation in progress

I learned how to carefully scrape off the silk holding the chrysalis to the rocker (or the door, or the bench). The silk is incredibly strong; if I could scrape off enough, I could run a needle and thread through the silk and tie the chrysalis to a trellis. My sewing kit became a chrysalis-transplanting kit.

Not every monarch could be saved. Some caterpillars got stepped on. Some chrysalis stems or silk broke. Parasites were always a problem. Butterflies often fell while their wings were drying—either into a spiderweb, or on their backs where they were helpless. If I spotted them in time, I might be able to help them safely to a flower or trellis. Sometimes butterflies emerged with deformities. Then all I could do was get them to a patch of milkweed or a marigold and hope they enjoyed their short lives.

In December 2021, the western monarch overwintering population rebounded to an astounding count of 250,000. It’s not possible for the 2,000 butterflies counted in 2020 to have created such a population explosion; biologists speculate that uncounted monarchs must have found many different overwintering sites, perhaps created deliberately by newly aware, backyard conservationists (and some created accidentally by milkweed doing its weed on speed thing).

In 2022, the winter monarch butterfly count climbed to 335,449.

I like to think some of those monarchs had ancestors that survived The Patio of Death and emerged from a chrysalis in my backyard.