quasify

I got home around 1:30 last night and couldn’t find a parking spot on my street (typical on a Friday) so had to park a few blocks over. During the walk home there was a generally negative vibe in the air - more cops circulating and more angry people floating around than usual. Warmer nights bring everyone outdoors, I guess. Two mid-forties drunks were pissing in the rat alley behind the burrito place on my corner. Someone had gotten sick inside my building and hadn’t cleaned it up, and the third floor was exploding with overdrunk shriekers. I couldn’t get to sleep due to more typical collegiate jackholes swearing at each other on the street. Altogether an unpleasant night to be in town.

This morning it became clear that things could have been much worse. An hour before I got home someone pitched off a balcony on Price Road (luckily, surviving). This is about 100 feet from where I was parked. Ninety minutes after that (just about the time my swearers were getting riled up), two blocks east of me on Linden Street a 25 year-old was fatally shot by one assumes a less loquacious adversary. Both of these incidents speak toward why sometimes on weekends I just prefer to stay away from home, which is in part how I ended up with this weekend’s highlight.

I packed the dog up this morning and headed up to my parents place even though I knew they weren’t there. I was loading some of my crap from their basement into my car when I looked up and saw a tall, skinny coyote ranging down the hill towards this odd little lowland flood-zone green space we’ve got up here. I gave chase and tried to get an urban wildlife POTD - unfortunately, the dog was in tow (thus negating stealth factor) and the camera was still set with the manual settings from the night before (so the color was bizarro off). And who am I kidding I couldn’t even visually identify him after the fact in the one frame he’s definitely in (thus, my use of Z’s helpful photoimaginillustration). Regardless, he was big and awesome and made me homesick for a place where seeing a non-domestic megafauna isn’t something to get all up and excited about.