A Bounty of Spring Things

For years I lived in places where the annual snowfall was measured in feet. By mid-March you were gasping for spring, the way you might gasp for air.

Here in the Valley, you don’t develop nasty symptoms as you wait for spring to arrive. But that doesn’t make it any less sweet. Sweet is probably the wrong word. Spring tastes like asparagus, fiddlehead ferns and artichokes--fresh rather than sweet.

My New York friends continue to insist that Southern California has no seasons. Wrong! We don’t have slush in spring the way they do, but there is evidence everywhere in the Valley of renewal and rebirth. Among the spring things happening locally or involving the Valley and its residents:

Celebrating newborns at the L.A. Zoo.

This time of year, even people other than middle-aged women have the urge to coo over any passing infant. The Zoo in Griffith Park has had the good sense to capitalize on this seasonal tendency by staging an “Everybody Loves a Baby” event.

As Zoo spokesman David Cooley explains, the zoo is drawing attention to its youngest generation from Saturday through April 16.

Huge signs featuring baby rattles will greet visitors to the zoo and special birth announcements will be posted at the exhibits. There are a lot of babies to celebrate. They include Ariel and Kazoo, 5-month-old generuks--hoofed animals native to Africa and related to the gazelle.

And then there are the chimps. The zoo produced three chimps in the past year--Jean, now 10 months old; Jake, 9 months; and another animal that died. The births made headlines when it was learned that they had been fathered not by the zoo’s alpha male, but by Shaun, a randy 13-year-old who had impregnated three different females.

“He was a wild man,” Cooley concedes. “He’s becoming the dominant male. Let’s put it that way.”

Other notable newcomers include 3-month-old maned wolf pups, Melosa and Rico. Native to South America, these black-furred wolves are endangered, Cooley points out. And then there is Aziza, a 6-month-old Masai giraffe.

“She was born in typical giraffe style, dropping six feet headfirst--kavoom!” Cooley explains. Not to worry, though. Aziza was up walking later that day.

The zoo has also designated an honorary baby--its 17-year-old Indian python whose name is Baby. Its moniker is an example of zoo humor at its most puckish--Baby is now 15 feet long, weighs 240 pounds and is a major handful. “It takes six people to move her around,” Cooley says.

Mushrooms in the mountains.

This time last year I went into the Santa Monica Mountains with chef Jeff Kramer to hunt the big, beautiful yellow mushrooms known as chanterelles. A gifted amateur mycologist, or mushroom guy, Kramer showed me how to look under the “duff”--the leaves that accumulate at the base of the oak trees that support chanterelles--for the much prized, pumpkin-scented fungi. Times photographer George Wilhelm and I found armloads of them. We even managed to avoid the omnipresent poison oak.

This year is a different story.

“It’s very tough this year,” Kramer reports. “I’ve only collected four, compared with 2,000 pounds last year. The season hasn’t taken off yet and I doubt that it will.”

As he explains, last spring was a banner one for chanterelles, in part because of the heavy El Nino rains the year before. This season we didn’t have the late December-early January rainfall that makes for a good crop. And last year’s long, unusually fecund season has depleted the mushrooms. “They’re tired,” Kramer says. “They need to regenerate.”

A personal chef who lives in Agoura, Kramer says that, while there are few chanterelles out there (he won’t reveal his favorite hunting spots), there are plenty of other mushrooms. Among his favorites, Amanita velosa, also found around oak trees. “It tastes like a grilled shrimp,” he enthuses. Kramer is so fond of the variety that he incorporated it into his e-mail address: velosachef@earthlink.net. But he emphasizes that only experienced mushroom hunters should look for velosas. It is in a family that includes a number of deadly mushrooms.

The prizes that bloom in the spring tra la.

The tradition is to reward last year’s good work this time of year. Thus, the Academy Awards on Sunday. We in the Valley are very proud to have a movie named after one of our major east-west streets in contention. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia” was nominated in three categories--original song, original screenplay and supporting actor for Tom Cruise’s performance as a misogynistic guru. Should the film win one, I propose putting a tiny Oscar on every street sign on Magnolia Boulevard.

Also short-listed for glory this spring is Sherman Oaks writer Robert Crais, whose “L.A. Requiem” is one of five novels nominated for the Edgar for best mystery published in 1999.

Named for Edgar Allan Poe, the Mystery Writers of America Awards will be announced May 4 in New York. “I’m going to be waiting by the phone,” says Crais, who will not be able to attend. Instead, he will be out promoting his new book, “Demolition Angel.” “L.A. Requiem” is the eighth book in Crais’ series featuring private eye Elvis Cole and his laconic sidekick Joe Pike.

Crais cracks wise with the best of them, but “L.A. Requiem” is something deeper and darker than the earlier books--all of which are worth reading.

As Shelly McArthur, dean of mystery booksellers in Southern California, says of Crais and “L.A. Requiem”: “He’s always been huge here. We sell hundreds and hundreds of a Crais. But this is the book that broke him out everywhere. Anyone who wasn’t already a Crais fan became a Crais fan with this book.”

A former TV writer, Crais sold rights to the book to Columbia Tristar and will write the screenplay. “I’m working on the next Elvis Cole now,” he says. As for “Demolition Angel,” it’s about a new protagonist, a former LAPD bomb technician named Carol Starkey who “was actually blown up and killed on the job. She was clinically dead and was resuscitated.”

A perfect theme for the season of rebirth.

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Spotlight appears every Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.