LION EYES: With mountain lions appearing from...

LION EYES: With mountain lions appearing from Fillmore to Thousand Oaks (B6), state game officials have had their share of false alarms. There are the folks who call in after spotting coyotes (they’ve got bushy tails) or bobcats (with no tails at all). . . . But the mountain lion seen prowling near North Ranch on Monday morning was the real thing--a fawn-colored beast, slinking like a cat, its tail “darn near as long as its body,” says Patrick Moore, of the Fish and Game Department.

GARDEN FRESH: It didn’t make any sense for the Ojai Valley Inn, set among avocado groves and vegetable farms, to keep trucking in produce from Los Angeles. So folks at the inn have decided to start their own two-acre organic garden, raising corn, tomatoes, beans, pumpkins. . . . “Our goal is to do it all,” says Kevin Finch, the inn’s food and beverage manager. What the inn can’t produce, it hopes local growers can supply. The garden will also be laced with walking paths for guests to watch and, possibly, join in the work. “It’s a great guest activity,” Finch says.

LONG HAUL: Talk about your long commutes. Elaine Freeman flies in from Tucson for her job as a consultant in Thousand Oaks. Michael Wesner lives in Moorpark, but works for an accounting firm in Chicago. . . . Experts say commuter marriages can be stressful on couples (Valley Business, Page 3). But Freeman, who moved when her husband’s job took him to Arizona, says she likes it. “I still have my job and my friends here, and then I have these new friends and this new life in Tucson.”

RADIO O.J.: Starting this morning, KVEN radio will become the only Ventura County station to provide gavel-to-gavel coverage of the O. J. Simpson trial. Unsure whether to air the trial, the news-and-talk station asked listeners Monday what they thought. . . . About 600 called in, but were split down the middle. “So I had to make the tough call,” says David Loe, the station’s president and general manager. Loe says the AM station will run the trial “as long as people want it, as long as it’s compelling. . . .”