What beauty this is.

There was a daylight raccoon out in the park today. I was out biking and saw two people standing together, staring at something, so I followed their gaze and spotted it myself. I stopped to talk, and we watched it stick its head into a hollow in the tree trunk, at the juncture of two large branches. Not napping. Moving around a bit. Sticking its head into a hollow in a tree.

During early spring.

Baby bird season.

The three of us agreed that if that was what was happening, it was sad for us, but it was also exactly what it was for the raccoon and the birds. No ethics in nature. Just survival. Hawks grabbing pigeons in the air is amazing to watch and good for the hawk and bad for the pigeon. I said to them that nature's many things, and "kind" isn't one of them.

Not long after that, I watched the local pigeons grapple with each other, one pigeon grabbing a second bird by the beak to force it off the ledge to have the last seeds in the tray all to itself. Tamed, and now feral, and a bit of wildness left in it.

This Monday, there were two cats out and about at the local independent grocery. One was fine with human contact, the other, not so much. They're doing fine for themselves adjacent to people. A few minutes after the raccoon, still in the park, a dog lunged at me while I was biking past. Something deep inside of it responding to external stimuli.

Even in Manhattan, things can get a little wild.