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NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Have you ever looked out your window at night and seen a long pointy nose and two eerie green reflective eyes staring at you? Did you heart skip a beat? Did your dog go berzerk?

Not to fear, it’s just North America’s only marsupial, the Virginia Opossum (Didelphius virginiana).

Commonly just called opossum or “possum” for short, they are native to the Southeastern US.

They were introduced into California in the late 1890s to early 1900s at three separate locations; one near Los Angeles which expanded and soon colonized nearby Ventura County, one group intended for food near San Jose and one group near Visalia as an ill-fated fur farm.

Today, they can be found in most of the US states east of the Rocky Mountains and along the Pacific Coast north to Western Canada and south to Baja California, Mexico. Over time, they have successfully become part of California’s “wildscape.”

Unique traits

Opossums are about the size of a house cat with males, called Jacks, being slightly larger than females, called Jills.

In California, they are primarily gray with a white face, naked ears and tail but colors do vary throughout their range.

They are excellent climbers and fine swimmers, and use their tails and thumbs to grip and grab things. I suppose they might possibly be considered relatively eerie-looking seeing as their long, narrow snout hides an impressive number of teeth. The delightful pink nose at the end of it makes up for the 50 choppers hiding inside.

Shy, primarily solitary and rather slow moving, they are active mainly from dawn to dusk but that can vary depending on the temperature. Additional nocturnal amenities include sensitive whiskers, keen eyesight and sharp, well-developed hearing.

Opossums don’t wander too far from water and can often be found in riparian habitats, and other areas that provide cover and food such as nearby woodlands, brushy areas and agricultural properties.

Ever the opportunistic snacker, possums thrive in residential areas, which is probably why you may have seen one or two bumbling about your yard. They eat rotting and fallen fruit (which helps you not have to clean up as much), food left out overnight for pets, bird food, and have zero qualms about rummaging through a trash or compost bin.

Ranchers may find them undesirable though since they do consider chicken eggs worthy of at least a couple Michelin Stars.

However, they do make up for their table manners by providing excellent neighborhood pest control by gobbling up things we find icky. Favorites include spiders, snails, cockroaches, crickets, ticks, and mice.

Although they are not immune to it, their body temperature is too low to carry or transmit rabies. Due to lower body temperature, they are also resistant to viruses that we vaccinate our pets against such as distemper, parvovirus and forms of feline hepatitis. And, they are remarkably immune to rattlesnake and other snake venom.

Family life

Mating usually occurs twice in the Golden State, once in January to February and again in June to July.

Although up to 25 joeys may be born, the number that survive ultimately depends on the number of teats the momma has (usually 13).

The young are born helpless, blind and hairless. About the size of a honey bee, they must climb into the mother’s pouch and latch on to one of her teats where they will remain for 50 to 60 days.

Once they are grown enough to move out, they will leave the pouch but remain with mom for about four to six additional weeks, catching a ride on her back and learning important possum life skills.

Once they are independent and set out on their own only about 50 percent of those will survive into adulthood.

Most of them only live about two years in the wild; main predators include cats, dogs and owls but most casualties are human related such as vehicle strikes.

Play like a possum

If cornered or threatened, the possums first line of defense is showing off their impressive number of teeth. It’ll growl, hiss, excrete urine and/or feces and other stinky stuff and flee if able.

But, they’re generally slow. And, if pressure really mounts for them, they will enter a catatonic state, fittingly called “playing possum.”

They stare straight ahead or tightly shut their eyes. They can extend their tongues letting them flop out of their mouths, drool and dramatically slow their breathing. They can remain this way for minutes to several hours. Assuming they are dead, the predator often loses interest. Biologists have not yet determined if this is a voluntary or involuntary reaction.

Opossums have enormous beneficial and impressive qualities, and I think actually quite charming. They’d much rather take flight than fight so if you see one in your neighborhood, give them a nod of gratitude for ridding your garden of snails.

Kristie Ehrhardt is Tuleyome's Land Conservation and Stewardship Program director. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in biology from California State University, Bakersfield. Before Tuleyome she worked as a biologist up and down the Sacramento and San Joaquin Valleys for consulting firms and in the land conservation and mitigation banking industry. Tuleyome is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit conservation organization based in Woodland, California. For more information visit www.tuleyome.org.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Sheriff’s Office is continuing the investigation into the killing of a Clearlake man earlier this month.

Donnie Gene Cruise III, 37, was the victim of the homicide, said Lt. Corey Paulich of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

On the afternoon of March 10 Cruise was found unconscious with visible head injuries and a stab wound to his stomach near Clark’s Island and E. State Highway 20 in Clearlake Oaks, as Lake County News has reported.

He died hours later after being transported to Adventist Health Clear Lake Hospital for treatment.

Paulich said Cruise’s death was the result of the stab wound he suffered.

He said there is no additional information the sheriff’s office is releasing about the crime at this time.

“Detectives are still canvassing and interviewing potential witnesses,” Paulich said.

Authorities are asking anyone with information in the case to contact Det. Richard Kreutzer at 707-262-4233.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.

On Friday, in observance of National Women’s History Month, Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA), along with Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Jackie Speier (D-CA) and Mark DeSaulnier (D-CA) introduced a resolution to recognize March 21, 2021, as ‘National Rosie the Riveter Day’ to honor the millions of women who supported the war effort on the home front during World War II.

Between 1940 and 1945, the percent of women in the workforce jumped from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by the end of the war, nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

These “Rosies” took positions across various industries, but the aviation industry saw the biggest increase of female workers – with more than 310,000 working in the aircraft industry in 1943, representing 65 percent of its workforce.

Phyllis Gould, 99, of Fairfax, California, was one of the first six women to work as Navy-certified journeyman welders at the Kaiser-Richmond shipyards from 1942 to 1945, providing the weapons and ammunition to help end the war.

“During the Second World War, countless women answered the call of service by taking on new roles to support the wartime efforts at home,” said Rep. Huffman. “These ‘Rosies’ made tremendous sacrifices and contributions, redefining women’s role in the workforce, and setting a powerful example for women across the country. Decades later, they continue to inspire the generations who have followed in their footsteps. Their “We Can Do It” spirit in times of hardship is particularly inspiring as we persevere through the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. I have the privilege of representing some of these Rosies here in Congress and know the importance of continuing to honor them and the rest of these heroines for their bravery and service.”

“Rose Will Monroe, the original Rosie the Riveter, worked long hours at the Willow Run Aircraft Factory in Ypsilanti, Michigan building the bombers that helped us win World War II,” said Congresswoman Dingell. “A National Rosie the Riveter Day won’t just honor and celebrate her contributions to this nation, but all of the Rosies who walked into factories demanding to serve and protect their nation. I can’t wait to get this resolution signed and get these fearless women the recognition they deserve.”

“Rosies represent an important part of our nation’s history, both in the impact they had on the home front effort in World War II and for the future of women in the workforce. At the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, these dedicated women confronted gender and race discrimination while breaking barriers by taking jobs as riveters, welders, and electricians that were pivotal in supporting our country’s war effort. I am so proud that the Rosie the Riveter Historic Site celebrates their legacies right here in Richmond, and I am pleased to join my colleagues in paying further tribute to them with a national day of recognition during Women’s History Month,” said Congressman Mark DeSaulnier.

"There is no greater call in life than serving your community and country, and innumerable, brave women answered that call during World War II. These 'Rosie the Riveters' made many personal sacrifices, but their ‘We Can Do It’ spirit inspired a nation navigating the unique hardships of war to rise up and energize the war effort across the country," said Rep. Fitzpatrick. "As we mark the valuable contributions and triumphs of women this Women’s History Month, I am incredibly proud to join the effort to honor and celebrate these heroes with a National Rosie the Riveter Day. I’m especially proud to represent Levittown’s Mae Krier. I admire Mae for her continued, tireless efforts advocating on behalf of her fellow ‘Rosies’ for this long-time, well-deserved recognition."

“The home front years were one of the most challenging periods in American history, but our Rosie the Riveters rose to the occasion,” said Rep. Speier. “They built the weapons, vehicles and ammunition that helped win the war; filled vacancies across male-dominated industries; kept their communities afloat; and pushed for government reforms to support women and families. By defying stereotypes and discrimination, Rosies fundamentally changed the American workforce and society. A ‘National Rosie the Riveter Day’ would acknowledge the tremendous debt of gratitude we owe these American heroes.”

The bill is cosponsored by Reps. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), Julia Brownley (D-CA), Seth Moulton (D-MA), Brendan Boyle (D-PA), Adam Smith (D-WA), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Derek Kilmer (D-WA), Gwen Moore (D-WI), Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Dina Titus (D-NV), Brenda Lawrence (D-MI), Scott Peters (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Brett Guthrie (R-KY), Ashley Hinson (R-IA), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), and Grace Meng (D-NY).

When severe forest fires last year blanketed Oregon and California with a thick layer of smoke, the high concentrations of fine particulate matter spewed into the air created one of the worst air pollution events in recent history.

A large body of research has documented that breathing in these fine particulates has severe negative health impacts, leading to cardiovascular disease and respiratory illness, and, in some cases, death.

Exposure to fine particulates has also been linked to lower educational attainment and reduced earnings.

Now new research by the U.S. Census Bureau suggests that exposure to fine particulates not only harms those directly exposed but may also indirectly impact the economic health of their children and grandchildren.

In a recent U.S. Census Bureau working paper co-authored with Jonathan Colmer, an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, we explore the long-term and even the multigenerational effects of pollution.

Our findings: Pollution affects not only individuals exposed directly and those exposed while in the womb (“first generation”) but also the “second generation” or children of those directly exposed.

In other words, if a woman is exposed to pollution while pregnant, it may affect both the child she’s carrying and her grandchildren.

For example, according to the findings, children whose parents were exposed to less air pollution were more likely to attend college as adults and, consequently, have higher expected earnings.

To examine this, we first identified hundreds of millions of links between parents and children in the 2000 and 2010 decennial censuses. We then used the American Community Survey to measure whether the children later attended college and administrative records to identify where the parents were born.

By combining these stats with measures of outdoor air quality from the Environmental Protection Agency, we were able to measure exposure to particulate matter when parents (the first generation) were in the womb.



Effect of pollution

To examine what drives the effects of pollution exposure across generations, we first compared adopted second-generation individuals to biological children in the second generation.

We found no substantial differences, suggesting that the intergenerational effects of pollution exposure do not work through a biological channel.

But we did find that how much parents earn and invest in their children has an impact. When the first generation was exposed to less pollution, they tended to have higher earnings and spend more time on child-enrichment activities, suggesting that the effect on the next generation is driven by these parental investments.

Pollution and demographics

This research is especially important in light of several other recent papers that have shown there are substantial disparities in pollution exposure across different demographic groups.

A Census working paper from 2020 shows that African Americans were exposed to higher levels of particulate matter than Whites, although this gap has narrowed in the last two decades.

Another paper, recently published in Science, shows that while air quality has improved dramatically since the 1980s, the most polluted neighborhoods in 1981 were still the most polluted 30-40 years later.

Together, these results suggest that disparities in exposure to environmental hazards may be an important driver of differences in economic opportunity. Poor people are exposed to more pollution but pollution also harms the economic well-being of poor people and their children.



Connecting the dots with Census data

Census Bureau data is invaluable in the study of the connections between the environment, population and the economy.

To facilitate the use of this data, researchers in the Center for Economic Studies formed the Environment, Natural disasters and Energy Research Group, or ENERG. The group works to foster new innovative research and disseminate environmental insights produced from Census data with a goal of developing new public-use data products.

The research and statistics show how the environment — air and water pollution, a changing climate, and increasingly damaging natural disasters — affects America’s people and businesses.

An important part of this research is to understand how these effects interact with issues of environmental justice and the disproportionate environmental burden on disadvantaged communities. Answering these questions offers an exciting new opportunity for the Census Bureau.

John Voorheis is an economist in the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies.

The gas-giant orbiter is illuminating the provenance of Jovian polar light shows.

New results from the Ultraviolet Spectrograph instrument on NASA’s Juno mission reveal for the first time the birth of auroral dawn storms – the early morning brightening unique to Jupiter’s spectacular aurorae.

These immense, transient displays of light occur at both Jovian poles and had previously been observed only by ground-based and Earth-orbiting observatories, notably NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Results of this study were published March 16 in the journal AGU Advances.

First discovered by Hubble’s Faint Object Camera in 1994, dawn storms consist of short-lived but intense brightening and broadening of Jupiter’s main auroral oval – an oblong curtain of light that surrounds both poles – near where the atmosphere emerges from darkness in the early morning region.

Before Juno, observations of Jovian ultraviolet aurora had offered only side views, hiding everything happening on the nightside of the planet.

“Observing Jupiter’s aurora from Earth does not allow you to see beyond the limb, into the nightside of Jupiter’s poles. Explorations by other spacecraft – Voyager, Galileo, Cassini – happened from relatively large distances and did not fly over the poles, so they could not see the complete picture,” said Bertrand Bonfond, a researcher from the University of Liège in Belgium and lead author of the study. “That’s why the Juno data is a real game changer, allowing us a better understanding what is happening on the nightside, where the dawn storms are born.”

Researchers found dawn storms are born on the nightside of the gas giant. As the planet rotates, the soon-to-be dawn storm rotates with it into the dayside, where these complex and intensely bright auroral features grow even more luminous, emitting anywhere from hundreds to thousands of gigawatts of ultraviolet light into space. The jump in brightness implies that dawn storms are dumping at least 10 times more energy into Jupiter's upper atmosphere than typical aurora.

“When we looked at the whole dawn storm sequence, we couldn’t help but notice that they are very similar to a type of terrestrial auroras called substorms,” said Zhonghua Yao, co-author of the study at the University of Liège.”

Substorms result from brief disturbances in the Earth’s magnetosphere – the region of space controlled by the planet’s magnetic field – that release energy high into the planet’s ionosphere. The similarity between terrestrial and Jovian substorms is surprising because the magnetospheres of Jupiter and Earth are radically different.

On Earth, the magnetosphere is essentially controlled by the interaction of the solar wind – the stream of charged particles flowing from the Sun – with Earth’s magnetic field.

Jupiter’s magnetosphere is mostly populated by particles escaping from the volcanic moon Io, which then get ionized and trapped around the gas giant via its magnetic field.

These new findings will allow scientists to further study the differences and similarities driving the formation of aurora, providing a better understanding how these most beautiful of planetary phenomena occur on worlds both within our solar system and beyond.

“The power that Jupiter possesses is amazing. The energy in these dawn aurorae is yet another example of how powerful this giant planet really is,” said Scott Bolton, principal investigator of Juno from the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. “The dawn storm revelations are another surprise from the Juno mission, which is constantly rewriting the book on how giant planet’s work. With NASA’s recent mission extension, we’re looking forward to many more new insights and discoveries.”

More information about Juno is available at https://www.nasa.gov/juno and https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu.

Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at https://www.facebook.com/NASASolarSystem and https://www.twitter.com/NASASolarSystem.

LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Lake County Sheriff’s Office said it has arrested a Northshore man who stabbed an employee at a local gas station on Wednesday.

Moses Filburn James Reeves, 34, of Nice was arrested by the Mendocino County Sheriff’s Office on Thursday in Mendocino County for public intoxication, said Lt. Corey Paulich of the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

At 8 p.m. Thursday, Reeves was released from the Mendocino County Jail and placed under arrest by a Lake County Sheriff’s deputy for the assault that occurred on Wednesday afternoon at the Pomo Pumps Gas Station in Upper Lake, Paulich said.

Paulich said Reeves was transported to the Lake County Jail where he was booked into custody for the charges of assault with a deadly weapon and battery, with bail set at $25,000.

As of Friday evening, jail records indicated Reeves was no longer in custody.

Reeves was arrested for stabbing a male employee at Pomo Pump Gas Station during a Wednesday afternoon confrontation. The man suffered non-life-threatening injuries and was flown to an out-of-county trauma center, as Lake County News has reported.

Later that same day, authorities arrested Jerrica Marie Reeves, 31, also of Nice, who investigators had identified as the other suspect in the assault.

Anyone with information about the assault is asked to contact Det. Dean Preader at 707-262-4231 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.