Living Wild in Los Angeles County

You've all been patient while I've been working on the Elaine Viets "Tour by Proxy" Project, and I appreciate that. If you are in the San Diego area, I also hope you'll join me, Randy Hicks, and other authors as we do our part to support Elaine on Saturday, May 12, at 10:30 AM at Mysterious Galaxy Books 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite 302 San Diego, CA. And if you can't show up, consider ordering a copy of Murder With Reservations from your own favorite bookstores.

So I am still putting in a lot of time for the project for Elaine and writing and getting ready for the grand opening of the new Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab and all kinds of other stuff. Today I also found time to walk the dogs in our local park. (They usually get night walks.) It was a beautiful day to be outdoors.

For those of you who think the LA area is nothing but concrete and cars -- well, mostly, you're right. But we have our enclaves of wildlife here, too -- both local and imported. And we make celebrities of our wildlife. Yesterday both Reggie the Alligator and the Three Bears of Bradbury made the local evening news.

Reggie isn't a native, but we are an area that enjoys a population with roots from just about any place you could name. Reggie's living in Lake Machado, a place you'll hardly recognize as LA County if you click on that last link. There are those who want us to believe Reggie is blogging and selling his own "official" (puh-leeze!) gear. But the blog is a nice way to keep up with the news on this LA-based gator.

Black bears (even ones that look brown) are native to California. And bears in Bradbury shouldn't be such a big surprise. It's been hot, the people in Bradbury have ponds and pools, and put their trash out today, all of which makes it really attractive if you are foraging in a fur coat. Which should not be unexpected in Bradbury, because it's in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Which could get me talking about how much wilderness is actually part of the big county of Los Angeles, and that could lead me to talk about why I decided to set Nine there and make the protagonist a member of the LASD.

I won't do that just now, but I feel so much better actually bringing all of this around to talking about books again....


Photo above is clearly neither an alligator nor a California Black Bear. But global warming going unchecked, I fully expect to hear any day now that someone in LA has found a polar bear in his backyard pool. This photo is used courtesy of Monica Mueller, from morguefile.com.