Call me a city boy (which I am), but I still get excited about seeing a rabbit on my way to work. I don’t know how or where these things live in the city, but they’re pretty numerous. This was taken with my phone, so excuse the poor quality:
Today is graduation day at the University of Chicago. I don’t know who the speaker is, but I might wander over and check it out. Unlike other schools (like Harvard, which shamed itself by giving Oprah an honorary doctorate of law), the U of C confers honorary degrees only on scholars. And the traditional post-graduation treat, offered at tents on the quad, is strawberries and champagne. Maybe I can cadge some noms, too.
Good ol’ U of C – went there in 1946,for 2 years, under RMH’s 2 year/3 year plan. Dont recall strawberries and champagne, our potables were found at the UT….. but it was an inspiring place and no doubt accounts for much of my iconoclasm. Is Foster Hall still there?
I’m a bit of a country boy, who found himself living in a city around age eleven. I get a burst of satisfaction every time I see wildlife in the city. We don’t often get rabbits in our cities, but I do sometimes get koalas in my back yard.:)
We seem to be overrun with bun rabs this spring (in Milwaukee). Maybe our coyote population is slumping?
There were a bunch of baby bunnies in a baby bunny nest in my compost heap this year!
Well, I live on the outskirts of suburbia with the country beckoning at my doorstep and the mountains stretching over there to the right. Occasionally in Main Street, if I pass early enough, I can catch an orange fox scampering by. Too fast for the camera lens though.
Bunnies also live in the desert where the small plants are dressed up barbed wire and the bushes would be softer if they were bags of nails . No, really, that stuff can hurt you and your vehicle badly even if you just touch it. The cactus, even the thorns there of, are actually the soft delicates. City life might be uncomfortably cushy for those bunnies.
It’s not uncommon to see rabbits in the metro areas here in Arizona. For some reason, they seem to be more common around retirement communities. And rabbit-friendly areas also seem to be popular with quail.
I understand there are also foxes and coyotes with established populations inside city limits. I’ve never seen any, but I’ve heard more than one report from people who should be trustworthy on such things.
I’ve also seen small raptors (most likely Harris Hawks) a few times. There’s a crow that migrates through here every year that I see for a day or two. And bats at dusk are not uncommon. (I’ll be putting in a bat house eventually with the hopes of seeing more of them.)
Most of the rest of the wildlife, though, is some combination of arthropods, vegetables, and bipeds….
b&
We have a lot of red tailed hawks in NYC. I get to see the Washington Square Park family fairly often. The new little ones just fledged last weekend.
http://urbanhawks.blogs.com/urban_hawks/2013/06/washington-square.html
Your earlier take on “honors” ala Feynman is still on the money, Jerry. When I was at the UofC as a postdoc in 1985 (in chemistry) my mentor at the time (the late Jeremy Burdett) described the political machinations that went into angling for honorary degrees even there. The case he described was pretty unsavory, even if the person politicking for the degree was without question an outstanding chemist and scholar.