It’s Saturday, February 28th, and you can expect heat that threatens to hit 88 degrees in Downtown L.A. — the temperature record for this date set in 2020.

Hiking, biking, or driving LA’s mountains can be extremely dangerous during the winter season. So, in a way, can posting a picture of them online.

Recent heavy precipitation in Southern California has been followed by clear skies, which inevitably bring a monsoon of photos of snow-capped mountains looming over the Downtown L.A. skyline to our social media feeds – followed by plenty of comments accusing the photos of being fraudulent.

“Mountains aren’t that close - AI folks,” responded Threads user @kathyfulton_bpp to a dramatic tableau by Stephen Velasco.

“Images like this crack me up,” added @rusticchicana in response to a glamour shot by Steve Baughman. “They give the impression that Downtown Los Angeles is right up against the mountains, which it’s not.”

After posting a viral snap of Mount Baldy improbably looming over Newport Beach, photographer Mark Girardeau shared a follow-up video saying he’d been met with an onslaught of comments referring to the image as “Mount Photoshop,” along with “a lot of death threats.” (The video then follows Girardeau onto a boat as he performs a comprehensive demonstration of how he got the shot).

So are these images reflective of our geographic reality? Or are they a scam to mislead outsiders? How far are the mountains from the City of Los Angeles, really?

The answer, technically, is that the mountains are WITHIN the City of Los Angeles. Some of them, at least. Mount Lukens, the highest peak within the city borders, stands at 5,075 feet of elevation from sea level and almost 1,800 feet over surrounding neighborhoods in Sunland-Tujunga – looming over City of L.A. residents even more than Mammoth does over its neighboring towns.

Maybe you’d prefer to interrogate the distance between the mountains and the city center. Lukens is about 15 miles from Downtown L.A – that’s the same distance between the foothills of the Rockies and Denver, a city much more often thought to be “right up against the mountains.”

If we’re talking about downtown’s proximity to the region’s highest peaks, Mount Baldy – technically Mount San Antonio, the tallest in L.A. County at 10,064 feet – is about 40 miles from downtown. That’s quite a bit closer than Mount Hood is to downtown Portland (more than 50 miles) or Mount Rainier to Seattle’s Space Needle (about 70) — to cite two postcard-ready skylines that seldom generate complaint.

Baldy also rises more than 6,000 feet over the land immediately around it, making it what topographers call an “ultra-prominent peak”: one of only about 1,500 on the planet. Portland and Seattle’s peaks are more ultra-prominent, though. Mount Rainier, rising 13,210 feet over the flats under the Cascade Range, is actually the most prominent peak in the contiguous United States, which is why you can see it from Seattle on the roughly ten weeks a year that it isn’t too cloudy.

So L.A. has a very credible resume when it comes to being a mountain city. And to be clear, most social media responses to the photos have acknowledged and celebrated L.A.’s adjacency to snowy peaks.

Said @sgt_shrapnel_the_can_corso, a Threads account for a dog, in a reply to Baughman’s photo: ​​”I love how far spread out we are and we are all enjoying the same beautiful view.”

Cesar Gustavo Diaz, a 25-year-old Los Angeles man, was sentenced this week to 45 days in jail for capturing a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk in a Whittier park, successfully convincing it to drink a “Lime ‘Rita” flavored alcoholic beverage known as a Buzzball, and posting the result to Youtube with the caption “Hanging out with the homie.”

Being classified as a toxin in an animal abuse case is the newest phase in a rapid rise in prominence for Buzzballz, a line of ready-to-drink cocktails that come in spherical cans, flavors like Berry Cherry Limeade and Pink Lemonsqueezy, and colors not found in the natural world. The powerful orbs, which cost $3.50 at Ralphs with a loyalty card, are now America’s leading canned cocktail over 10% ABV (they clock in at 15%).

California has been especially hit hard by the ready-to-drink revolution, potentially at the cost of alcohol options that underpin some of its local economies. Wine magazine Vinetur reported last year that while wine consumption in the state has dropped by 14% in the last five years and beer by 9%, canned cocktail sales have nearly doubled over the same period.

The current condition of the hawk, which Diaz also convinced to pick up a joint in its beak to create the appearance of smoking it, is unknown – it was no longer in Diaz’s custody when he was charged. Diaz has been released on time served and is now prohibited from possessing any animal for five years.

You may have read that the Catalina Island Conservancy, which owns 88% of Catalina Island, is advancing a plan to kill all two thousand mule deer on the island over the next five years, in an effort to restore the island’s native ecology before it is eaten beyond repair.

But who do you contract with for a job like this? The answer, according to the Conservancy’s 1,000-page “Restoration Management Permit,” is White Buffalo, Inc.: a Connecticut-based nonprofit that calls itself “the leading expert in population control of white-tailed deer.” 

The “Deer Management” page of White Buffalo’s website offers a few possible clues to the particulars of the Catalina project – in particular the company’s “sharpshooting” service, which the Conservancy is reported to have enlisted.

How are the deer “managed,” exactly? According to the company’s list of sharpshooting protocols, they are primarily “shot from a vehicle with a rifle during the night with the aid of spotlights,” although some deer are “shot over bait from a tree stand with a rifle during the day or at night.”

What happens next? “Deer are euthanized with a single shot to the head to ensure a humane kill and that deer do not exit the authorized property.” 

What are their rates? For sharpshooting, costs can range from “$200 to $400 per deer,” with the caveat that “processing is an additional $70-$125.”

“Typically,” the site adds, “all meat harvested is donated to area food shelters for distribution.” But the Conservancy’s meat harvesting plan, according to the permit, is that processed mule venison “may be recovered and used for the California Condor recovery program, depending on funding.”

Save the Catalina Island Deer, a coalition formed to stop the deer elimination campaign, have dedicated a page of their website to evidence of White Buffalo’s “horrendous practices,” contending that the company’s killing methods are “inhumane.”

SATURDAY MORNING: The third annual Lantern Paw Festival, a Lunar New Year-themed gathering of pet-friendly vendors and activities, will take place this Saturday at Blossom Plaza in Chinatown from 10 to 3. This year’s festival will offer pet CBD products, apparel, and photo opportunities in celebration of the Year of the Fire Horse. (Fire horses presumably not welcome.)

SATURDAY NIGHT: Almighty Opp – an arguably high art, arguably waking nightmare puppet show that has been staged on the corner of Elmwood and Western in Koreatown since 2003 – has a show this Saturday night. According to this puppet it’s sold out, but tickets for shows on the last Saturday of every month are available on the Almighty Opp website.

SUNDAY MORNING: An abandoned Sizzler and an adjacent office building on Miracle Mile will be repurposed into painting and performance exhibitions this Sunday from 11 to 6, right next to a continuing art flea market in a former 99-Cent Store that attracted thousands of guests and an LAPD response on its opening night last Sunday.