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Briefs If It's Brown . . . What has Brown done for you? Charlie Brown, that is. While the famed "Peanuts" character may not have done much for you lately, he's made history for the city of Santa Rosa, bringing in epic numbers of tourists this summer--all of whom have, reportedly, come to see the 55 statues of the little round-headed kid scattered downtown. In July alone, the city saw over twice the amount of visitors--up to some 10,000. The "It's Your Town, Charlie Brown" exhibit is a tribute to Santa Rosa's late, great cartoonist Charles Schulz. According to the California Welcome Center based in Santa Rosa, aficionados of the cartoon bad boy have come from Singapore, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Taiwan and Australia. "Without a doubt, everyone wants to see the Charlie Brown statues," said Mo Renfro, director of the Welcome Center. While many people want to see the statues, some locals find them strangely menacing and have been disturbed by the Charlie Brown sightings at unexpected places and times. Bush Watch Though Gold Star mom Cindy Sheehan has left George Bush's Crawford Texas ranch to care for her own ailing mother, the protest lives on. Napa mother Summer Mondeau has traveled to Texas to carry on the antiwar fight. Sheehan's protest began Aug. 6 and is expected to continue during Bush's extended Texas sojourn. Mondeau, the mother of two young sons who does not have a child in the military, supports American troops but is opposed to the war in Iraq. A breast-cancer survivor who made headlines last year for trying to sell her bald head as advertising space, Mondeau is currently producing a book about Napa County for AnySoldier.com, a website supporting morale for soldiers serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. Animal Extraction Friends of the feathered ones, Animal Place, recently liberated 700 hens in Gilroy out of some 160,000 chickens on their way to the Colonel. The logical place to bring them? Marin County, of course. As part of the Adopt-a-Hen program, the Marin Humane Society has a fowl offer to folks who can give these chickens a second chance. The one-and-a-half-year-old hens run $5 each or are $2 a batch if you adopt five or more hens. The Humane Society demands that hen adopters have the right amount of space to have a chicken as a pet or "egg-layers only." You must apply for this adoption. For more information, visit www.marin-humane.org, call 415.883.4621, ext. 365, or visit the hens at 171 Bel Marin Keys in Novato. A hen application can be downloaded on the site. --Chip McAuley [ North Bay | Metroactive Central | Archives ]