At 6 a.m. Sunday, after being warned by a neighbor that everyone in the area had to clear out, Daly rang up his daughter in Brentwood to give him a hand loading up the "ark." Some friends hauled the hay and feed in pickup trucks.

Three hours later, the animals were safely encamped at Daly's 5-acre mansion in Bel-Air, which sits across the street from the Bel-Air Country Club.

"I brought 50 chickens, 10 ducks, 150 pigeons, 10 sheep, 10 goats, plus another one who just had two babies, two donkeys and one miniature horse," said Daly, who drove a sport utility vehicle filled with pigeon cages. His daughter Linda took the wheel of a horse trailer full of sheep, goats, donkeys and the little horse.

Daly's horse trainer took his four other horses to board elsewhere.

"It took me a little longer than I had thought to load them all because the sheep and goats have minds of their own," Daly said.

Early this morning, however, the danger passed, and the Dalys herded the animals back into his "ark" for a trip back to the ranch, depriving the temporarily amused children of his Bel-Air neighbors of the kind of backyard petting zoo they only get to enjoy three or four times a year at their classmates' birthday parties. (And there's no pleasing some of the brats, as one was heard to grouse, "What you can't afford a couple of fucking llamas? Lame.") But for a few, precious moments, the oddly soothing bleats of those happy goats made everyone forget about the conflagration that could yet imperil their weekend beach homes.

• Studio veteran crafts a fire story with a happy ending [LAT]

"Basically, all the paparazzi are still out there trying to get their Britney shot," said one resident of the beachy burg. "They don't even care much about the burning houses."

Indeed, gripes about Britney have been permeating Malibu like so much ash, said the source, who overheard Mel Gibson's wife, Robyn, venting to a fellow local. "She was like, 'It's so annoying that people are more concerned about if Britney Spears's house was burnt'"—so far, it's escaped any damage—"'than their own well-being.'" Mad Max's wife, who was forced to evacuate along with the couple's twin boys, went on to say that the situation said horrible things about "people's priorities."

"Basically," said the source, "Britney needs to get the fuck out of Malibu."

This isn't the first resident of a tony Los Angeles enclave to verbalize their frustration over the riots that follow the singer wherever she goes. Still, when Mrs. Mel Gibson, Duchess of the Dominion of Malibu, is reduced to getting her sugartits in a bunch over the media's trivial obsession with her gum-snapping, latté-chugging neighbor—as beach-dwelling Malibu Americans are sent fleeing from their burning homes—it signals to us that something is truly off-kilter with the current state of disaster-exploitation tabloid journalism.

• Malibu Is Up in Smoke—About Britney's Paparazzi Problem! Ejected From Abode, Mel Gibson's Wife Grouses [NYObserver.com]

• KABC 7 [abclocal.go.com/kabc]

If we had to pinpoint the exact moment of the briefing in which Schwarzenegger won our devotion, it would be when he crumpled up a scripted statement about how he planned to "terminate" the wildfires and, somewhat nonsensically, "crush them, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women," realizing that we no longer need to be reminded of his glorious Hollywood past to follow his lead, just hear honest, direct, and calmingly monotone words letting us know he's got things under control. By the time he stepped away from that podium, we were prepared to hop in our car, race to Carbon Beach, and spend the rest of the day standing atop David Geffen's 3,000 square-foot poolhouse with a garden hose, ready to beat back any flames threatening to consume his compound. That's the mark of a born leader.

We'll meet the rest of you there once you finish watching the video.

• KABC 7 [abclocal.go.com/kabc]

• Windblown fire razes oceanfront houses [LAT]
• Suzanne Somers' Home Destroyed in Fire [TMZ]