In some ways, Monday had the feel...

In some ways, Monday had the feel of Christmas, what with reports of a reindeer in the waters off Zuma Beach, white stuff falling on the Santa Ana Freeway and gifts being unwrapped in a San Dimas home.

The reality was somewhat different:

It was not a “reindeer”--as some motorists on Pacific Coast Highway had said--but a 130-pound doe that ran into the ocean after it was apparently spooked by a dog. The white stuff on the Santa Ana Freeway turned out to be cotton that had spilled from a vehicle.

And the early gift-opening was the work of an intruder in a San Dimas home. The residents, awakened by the chirping of their pet birds, found him when they came downstairs about 3 a.m., said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy F. L. Sherman.

The visitor fled but deputies, working from a description of the getaway car furnished them by the family, later arrested a 30-year-old Covina man and booked him on suspicion of burglary.

Deputies said the suspect, Benny Burgess, was unloading seven stolen gifts from the trunk of his car at the time of his capture, including some he hadn’t had time to unwrap.

In 30 years of producing the Sunkist Invitational track meet in Los Angeles, Al Franken thought that he’d heard every conceivable alibi from an athlete begging out of the event.

But he received a new one the other day from Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.), who regularly competes as a sprinter in the seniors category.

Noting that the meet is Jan. 20, Cranston explained: “I’ve got to be in Washington. That’s Inauguration Day.”

The press room in the federal courthouse has a new feature, courtesy of defense attorney Stephen Yagman: a courtroom sketch of Police Chief Daryl F. Gates.

Yagman purchased the sketch from veteran artist David Rose and donated it to the press during a Christmas party there.

Noting that the press room walls are decorated with memorabilia, Yagman said: “I thought it would be appropriate to add to the collection a memento of that trial.”

The sketch was made a few weeks ago during a rare appearance on the witness stand by Gates at a trial on a police brutality lawsuit brought by an East Los Angeles man represented by Yagman. A federal court jury, holding that the chief sanctioned the procedures used by his officers, eventually ordered Gates to personally pay more than $170,000 to the man’s family. (The city has appealed the decision).

Rose, the artist, said he was “flattered” by Yagman’s donation. “I hope the chief feels the same way and comes up to the press room to see it,” he added.

That’s unlikely.

A department spokesman said Gates would have no comment on the sketch.

If City Hall’s latest design contest succeeds in luring a company here to produce electric vehicles, no one will be able to accuse Los Angeles of contributing to the trend toward “muscle cars.” You know, the zero-to-60-in-6-seconds babies.

Plans for the first line of electric cars call for them to be designed with the capacity to accelerate from zero to 30 miles an hour in 13 seconds. Flat.

Figures from the Los Angeles Board of Realtors show that the median sales price of a single-family home in November climbed to $425,000 for the affluent areas that it serves, including Los Feliz.

Those numbers put into sharp relief a line from the 1944 movie, “Double Indemnity,” in which the narrator (Fred MacMurray) refers to a two-story mansion owned by the femme fatale (Barbara Stanwyck) in the Los Feliz area.

“This one,” MacMurray says in awe, “must have cost somebody about thirty thousand bucks.”