Large sections of the San Gabriel Mountains are uninhabited by this species, while locally, in the chaparral belt near water, ring-tails are common. Many reports of ring-tails were received from owners of cabins and homes who reside in the canyons at the Pacific base of the mountains. Because of the distinctive appearance of this animal it is likely that many of these reports were accurate. The reports testified to the presence of ring-tails in San Gabriel Canyon, Dalton Canyon, Palmer Canyon and San Antonio Canyon. Hall (1927:41) lists specimens from San Antonio Canyon. Kenneth Hill of Upland told me that ring-tailed cats often have been trapped above that town near citrus nurseries that are regularly irrigated. This species probably is not present on the desert slope of the range.
The only specimen that I took was a female weighing one pound and fourteen ounces. It was trapped on March 24, 1951, among granite boulders, beneath scrub oak and bay trees, near the mouth of Icehouse Canyon, at 5500 feet elevation.
Procyon lotor psora Gray
Raccoon
The raccoon was one of the most common carnivores in the San Gabriels and was found on both slopes of the range. Tracks were noted and one old male was trapped at the base of the Pacific slope foothills at 1900 feet elevation, and raccoons were captured at several localities from this point up to 5500 feet in San Antonio Canyon. They were noted on Blue Ridge at about 8000 feet elevation foraging around the camp grounds. On the desert slope they occurred down to the lower edge of the pinyon-juniper belt, for example near the mouth of Sheep Creek Canyon.
Sign of raccoons was most often found near water; tracks, however, indicated that these animals, along with other carnivores, used fire roads for traveling through the chaparral. In a small draw one-half mile east of the mouth of Thompson Canyon two raccoons were trapped although the only water was a series of small, disconnected seepage pools beneath the valley oaks.
A raccoon freed from a small steel trap in San Antonio Canyon concealed itself in an unusual but extremely effective manner. When released the coon splashed up the middle of the small creek nearby to a place where some dead alders had fallen over and shaded the water—here the animal squatted down in the stream. The raccoon was mostly submerged, its tail was floating, and its back and the top of its head and snout were above water. With most of its body under water, and with the maze of alder logs above casting a broken pattern of light and shade, it was well hidden. When closely pressed the raccoon hid in the same manner several times before it disappeared up a rocky draw into the scrub oak brush.
In the autumn of 1951, raccoons fed on grapes at the Sycamore Valley Ranch one mile south of Devore. The one specimen (P. C.) saved, an old male from 1/2 mi. W Palmer Canyon, had remains of beetles in its stomach and weighed slightly more than 13 pounds.
Family MUSTELIDAE