You tell me, but I have a hunch that everybody involved in the saga of recalled Cotati Councilman George Barich – including Barich himself – knows that Tuesday’s overwhelming vote puts him  back where nature intends for him to be.

That is off the City Council and back in the gallery, where he can reprieve his character as a lone-wolf council watcher, gadfly and critic. The roguish Barich was born to the role.

His election to the Cotati council last year took him out of his element as an unrestrained Town Hall Don Quixote and made him a lawmaker liable to rules of conduct  and to limits of the sort that he violated when he wrote a classic George Barich letter of discontentment – but this time on City of Cotati letterhead – and fired it off to the President.

Barich is an outdoor dog who doesn’t like rules and who fulfilled an important function for Cotati when he was barking at the people inside City Hall. Voters restored the natural balance when they put him back outside.