Suddenly Stripes

I love going up to San Simeon. I love the tide pools, the Coastal Discovery Center, Hearst Castle and the Elephant Seals. For all those reasons, I've been up there more times than I can count. At each visit, I enjoy the view of rolling hills and open fields that belong to Hearst Castle, Hearst Ranch and the Hearst Corporation. I had heard that there were zebra roaming the property, but I had never seen them.

This past Friday, while K's brother and sister-in-law were visiting us from Virginia, the four of us took the castle tour together. Apparently, I had never even mentioned the existence of the zebra to K, why would I? According to my own experience, the exotic herd was only theoretical. But from the minute pre-recorded tour bus cd announced their possible presence, K decided "I want to see the zebra!"

She must have made that announcement half a dozen times on the way from the castle's winding road to the public highway. I tried not to discourage her or mention how rare zebra sightings were. But privately I thought, "maybe we will see the zebra sometime in the next few years if we keep coming up here regularly, but probably not today."

And then suddenly, their stripey butts appeared on the hillside!


Actually, while we still speeding along in the car, it was difficult to tell that they were stripey. If we hadn't known about the zebras...if K hadn't been EXPECTING to see them, we might not have noticed them at all. We might have assumed they were horses, or even cattle.

Once we were standing on the hillside, the black and white pattern was obvious. But they were still too far away to make out the details, or get a very good picture.



Thankfully, since I became obsessed with identifying the local birds, I almost never leave the house without viewing assistance. So, we were able to see them very well through our binoculars, and even take a picture through them.


I didn't think photographing through the magnifying lenses would work, but it did. It took two people, though...one to hold the glasses still against the top of a fence post and the other to hold the camera at just the right distance from the eyepiece. With this careful arrangement, we were even able to apply the zoom. We ended up getting this pretty decent picture!


In total, we counted 43 animals. There are only about 80 in the whole heard. That sounds like a lot of zebra...but when you see forty-odd standing along the hillside, it doesn't seem like very many at all. It's difficult to believe that just under double the number we saw is enough to create a self-sustaining wild population.

I felt very lucky to see them. And even luckier to finish our day with a nice supper at Linn's restaurant in Cambria and a decadent desert that seemed to be inspired by our exotic friends.