What’s in an e-mail address?

For years I’ve postponed changing my e-mail address as it appears at the bottom of this column. But as I use it less and the other one more, I forget to check the old one, leaving some messages from readers unanswered, and I’m awfully sorry about that.

This address is the sort that just begs for an explanation, and since mid-winter is the time of storytelling, here’s a story that became an email address and a wonderful forever memory. The e-mail address to use if you actually want to reach me is This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , and our hero is blessed with continued freedom and slow fish.

Five years ago I fell in love with Lockhart, a California sea lion at the Northcoast Marine Mammal Center. A yearling, he should have weighed a couple hundred pounds, but he had eaten fish that consumed toxic kelp. He had domoic acid poisoning. Found emaciated on the beach, he had refused food and water. In sea mammals, domoic acid poisoning looks exactly like amphetamine psychosis. He sat on the concrete, snout pointed at the sky, weaving back and forth like a mesmerized cobra.

Trapped in his mind while his body wasted away, he gazed sightlessly into the spring sky, ceaselessly weaving his head as if looking and listening for distant help. But help didn’t come in a form he could recognize, though it wasn't for lack of trying on the part of staff and volunteers. When we fed the spring crop of pups we tried to feed Lockhart, but the weaving didn’t stop until he collapsed.

Eventually he looked like a lumpy fur bag on the concrete. Lanni, the center director, told me he was dying. We didn’t touch the animals unnecessarily, but with a dying animal, rules don’t always apply. After the pups were fed, I’d squeeze drops of water into his mouth and wipe baby formula of ground fish and salmon oil on the scarred lip that gave him a built-in grin. I tried to coax him back to a world of ocean and fish. He was, after all, an adolescent with his whole life before him.

And then one day I came in for the 4 o’clock feeding to find a note of warning on the board in large letters. “Beware! Lockhart is awake!” He began eating pounds of fish several times a day and it required three people to take blood tests. Lockhart was once again a very dangerous wild animal.

On the day he went home, every volunteer was on Pebble Beach to celebrate. Lockhart lurched out of the crate, looked directly into a camera, then rippled into the sea. He never looked back.

It was one of the most rewarding days of my life, as well as the day I set up an emergency e-mail account. Lockhart filled my mind and heart, which is why my email address is This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . I hope to hear from you, and I’ll remember to check my mail.