Marin's 2-Pound Bigfoot

There's a furry beast lurking in Marin's darkest corners, living in self-made tunnels snaking through the County's densest brush and chapparal. It's that shadow you can't quite see, that fleeting "what was that?" as you turn the corner on a lonely trail, the phantom of Pt. Reyes.

Okay, perhaps I oversell a bit. After all, this "beast" weighs in at a modest 1 to 2 pounds, has almost no snout and a little wudge of a tail, and, even if it stands on its hind paws, would probably not be able to sniff your knee.

It's a beaver, a mountain beaver to be exact, which isn't really a beaver but a muskrat-size rodent with large teeth, dull brown fur, and a propensity for soft greenery like the young cow parsnips and fern fronds poking up all over Pt. Reyes National Seashore right now. As a lifelong resident of Marin, I'd never even heard of these little critters, scientific name Aplodontia rufa phaea, but I prefer mountain beaver or another endearing nickname, "ground bear." That moniker would fit the little bundle that I saw scurrying across the trail as I climbed up the Drakes View Trail on Mt Vision at Pt Reyes last weekend.

Apparently I'm very lucky to have seen it. The mountain beavers at Pt Reyes are a very select subspecies of mountain beaver--they aren't found anywhere else. And they were almost wiped out by the 1995 Vision Fire; apparently retreating to a little burrow carved out of blackberry brambles and coyote brush isn't a good place to retreat in a wildfire. Of the roughly 5,000 individuals that called Mt. Vision home, less than 20 were estimated to have survived. Less than 20. Maybe I saw one of those hardy (or just lucky) originals. Maybe one of their babies, or grandbabies. All I know is I hope to see more. Marin needs more ground bears and mini-Sasquatches.