Annals of Urban Wildlife—My Latest Encounter
Urban wild among us. Raccoon feeding on contents of bounteous trash can in near dark @ 106th St in Riverside Park. pic.twitter.com/6LPYZlQNhM
— Philip Turner (@philipsturner) June 1, 2014
Walking in Riverside Park tonight at dusk, at about 106th Street, I heard a scuffling nearby. Before I could actually walk up to the source of the noise, I spied what was making it: a raccoon feeding noisily on the contents of a decidedly full trash can. I stood a few minutes and took some pictures. Unconcerned about me, the animal kept angling for ways to get at the food scraps in the can. At first it was pulling stuff thru the steel mesh, then it got up on top of the can, dipping its head and torso in for maximum effectiveness. Quite a show of nimbleness. I was reminded of the time a couple years ago when I saw a baby skunk at the West Harlem Piers in Riverside Park at 125th Street, and my friend, CBC Radio 3 host Grant Lawrence saw a white sturgeon in his hometown of Vancouver, British Columbia. Here’s what I saw tonight:
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- This is what it was doing when I first heard it: pulling food thru the steel mesh of the NYC trash can.
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- It looked around, but didn’t seem disturbed that I stood observing it for several minutes.
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- Nimble is as nimble does
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- It was larger than a big house cat.
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- All in.
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- As the night came one, I used my flash one time.
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