Raccoons take up residence in Kendall Square

Don't want to see any squirrel nuts, huh?

a tree a hundred yards away that echoed across my South End block: an unearthly howling, screeching, death-match racket that went on for a good ten minutes.

I spotted a raccoon strutting across my street the other night for the first time ever, with that weird hunched-back walking-on-tippy-toes posture. I'm still seeing bunnies in my building's courtyard, nibbling on our grass and not too nervous about the humans walking by, a lockdown holdover that I expect won't last. I'm not a sentimental man, but damn, them little ones are cute.

Always surprised to see wildlife in the hood that isn't a brazen rat with a "WTF are you looking at?" attitude. My favorite local Wild Kingdom moment from some years back was the seagull just overhead, flying straight down the middle of Washington Street toward Dudley / Nubian Square with a giant slice of pizza in his beak, its grasp perfectly centered on the crust, that big triangle hanging straight down. I was too slow on the draw to get a phone vid, alas. That might have been a viral clip, Boston's answer to Pizza Rat.