wild kingdom?

first, on one of the warmest days of the year so far, i took a break at lunch to go get me some chipotle tacos. the place was packed and took forever to get through the line and order my lunch. seeing the volume of people in the place i knew getting a table would be difficult, so i got my tacos & root beer to go and walked back towards work to eat near a fountain in a shady portion of pioneer court.

i was on my third and final taco when out of the corner of my eye i saw some company come waddling up towards me. now, i'm used to shoo-ing away downtown pigeons while eating lunch outside. but it's not every day that there's a mallard duck on the lunch scrap prowl.

now, your common pigeon is usually just plain annoying. they're everywhere, swooping in and wandering around the ground, pecking at a dropped fry just before pecking at a dropped cigarrette butt and twitching away at the slightest of movement in their direction.

i've seen ducks swimming in the chicago river and sunning themselves on it's banks, but rarely in the city do i see them move too far away from the water. but today here i was, a hundred yards away from the river, and here's a web-footed duck waddling my way. and it was no random waddle like the bird-brained pigeon, this duck had his sights on me and knew what he was doing.

i had just finished my second of three tacos when i saw the bird. and yes, i had let some lettuce and cheese fall to the ground, so i figured that's what the duck had zoned in on. but as i started to eat taco three, i realized the duck wasn't paying any attention to what was on the ground. i honestly believe he wanted the taco in my hand. and this brave duck waddled right up to me, practically right at my feet, and extended it's neck up toward me with its bill opening like it was ready to gobble up some food.

i was shocked at what i was witnessing. if it was a pigeon, all i'd have to do is lift a foot and the bird would move away. but not this duck. i took some lettuce and threw it a few feet away, and the duck was unfazed... i think he really wanted steak, the little carnivore.

i looked around, hoping there was someone around witnessing this, but there wasn't. i wished i had a camera to document this for posterity. but i didn't. and it was starting to freak me out. i stuffed the remaining half of my tacos into my mouth and grabbed my garbage wrappers and stood up to throw them away in a nearby trash can. when i turned around again, i noticed the duck had jumped up on the corner stoop where i had just been sitting and it was looking right back at me.

creepy!

and now, just moments ago i was taking orrie out for his last walk to the park for the day, and as we were walking down Monroe we crossed paths with another wild animal: a raccoon. orrie spotted him cross the street about a quarter of a block ahead of us. normally, orrie flips out when he sees things like squirrels and rats outside. but i think this one even kinda puzzled the border collie a bit. "what the hell is that" is what the look in his face said to me as we walked a little bit closer.

the raccoon definately knew about us, and high-tailed it up a nearby tree. i watched him for a while, and orrie soon lost interest and ended up doing the business to which we usually need to attend to on our last walk of the night.

after all that was done, i started walking back toward home, keeping an eye out in the tree that the raccoon had crawled up. again, i wished someone else would come by to share the moment with, but in a city of millions of millions of people once again there was NO ONE around.

what was fun about the raccoon was i kept looking at him, and he kept looking at me. i was fascinated, but i started to wonder if the animal was as curious about me (and my dog) as i was about him or if we were frightening the hell out of him. eventually, the little furry thing in the tree even let out a big long yawn (i think raccoons are nocturnal, so i doubt the little guy was tired, but perhaps it had just woken up recently and was still shaking the cobwebs out from his attic).

after a while i figured it was time to let the little thing go about it's own business and i started to walk away, occasionally peeking over my shoulder to check out what it was doing. sure enough as we were about thirty feet removed from our previous location i saw the raccoon climb down from the tree, and it was actually following us. we were on the other side of a fence, so i wasn't worried about some kind of rabid raccoon terror following us home. but sure enough, it starts climbing the fence. spry little bugger it was. and this fence is twenty-five feet tall, and the raccoon kept climbing all the way up until it was up perched at the height of the fence. it was a really cool sight to behold, a raccoon sitting atop a fence, basking in the glow of a streetlight with the loop skyline right behind it.

so, there you have it. wild kingdom in chicago.