Hearts that long to be free recognize each other and how fragile both of these things are, hearts and freedom. Flaco is a fellow traveler and each time he takes flight so do we. An owl over Manhattan is quite a magnificent thing. I will ask my nephews if they have seen or heard of him. Thanks for that story. 

I've lived out in the Massachusetts suburbs for quite a while. Not exactly the country, but in towns with a more country than city vibe. Right now, in a spot where all that is across the street is 40 acres of forest. The nights are dark and the days are quiet. In spots like this the likelihood of interaction with wildlife goes way up. Even in my old neighborhood, which was much more residential with neighbors all around, I would have frequent close encounters. There was a groundhog that would come and sit with me and my cat while I read. He tended to come out whenever I did. Odd, and how I first discovered him was I fell asleep reading in my chair, and when I woke, I heard a sort of snort. I looked down and the cat was stretched out asleep and between he and I was this fat groundhog, that also appeared to have been napping. I looked at him, he looked up at me, I think I said "You've got to be kidding me." and when I did he rolled over on his back as if to say, "Rub my belly." which I did not. 

I had planted blueberry bushes in the yard and when I would come out in the morning to have my coffee, he would come trotting out, run a few laps around my fire pit, and then go over and lay on his back under the blueberry bushes helping himself to the fruit like some chubby little emperor. Definitely not an elegant little creature but he seemed to feel we were roommates. 

There was also at one point a mother skunk with a tribe of baby skunks, they seemed to live in a neighbors yard but they would come out at night and make the rounds. My yard, I believe, was always a popular stop because of the blueberry bushes. So, one night I am out and taking some photos of some unusual activity in the sky. It was late and nobody was around. I am standing in the middle of the street, focused on the sky watching what is happening, and not paying too much attention to what is going on around me. I am slowly moving a few steps every few seconds as I am trying to find good spots to take photos and video of what is going on. Which entailed some unusual lightning and balls of light moving rapidly around the sky seemingly unrelated to the lightning. As I am doing this, I feel something moving around my legs and across my feet. I think it is the cat, but when I look down, it is the litter of baby skunks and mom. Just sort of joyously playing at my feet. They seemed completely enthralled with running around, over, and grabbing hold of my pantlegs and feet. I decided to standstill and let them do their thing as I took my photos and video. When I turned to head back to the house, they happily formed a line and followed me. At this point I thought I did not want them to walk up to my front door, so I sat down on the curb and they all gathered around me. I sat there thinking about how I was going to handle this while looking up at the sky. Thankfully, mom eventually led them off toward a neighbor's house.

One of my favorite encounters also came late at night. I had fallen asleep in a chair on my front porch and woke at maybe two or three in the morning. I heard some odd animal noises I had not heard before. So, I get up and walk out into the street to find two incredibly gorgeous foxes playing on the front lawns of the neighborhood. Just beautiful animals. I sat down on the curb to watch them. Eventually they spotted me and ran at me, stopping about 10 or 12 feet from me. We sat and observed each other from that distance in silence, then I did the thing humans do, and spoke to them. This caused them to move, slowly as if they were encircling me. When I stopped talking they stopped. If I talked some more they moved some more. We never got closer than ten feet from each other, but they seemed to enjoy meeting me. I would later learn there was a hillside down near the railroad tracks that was full of fox dens. 

I was most famous in that neighborhood for a squirrel I had named Archie. I met Archie through my cat, Plutarch. One June day, I was in my living room and heard dishes rattling in the dining room. I thought it was Julia. In the dining room there were all kinds of dishes on the shelves around the room. I got up and walked into the dining room, the cat, Plutarch, was laying on the floor. He looked up at me. Suddenly I heard a dish rattle and I look to my right and there is a squirrel, lifting the lid off one of the covered dishes, checking to see if there was anything good to eat in it, I imagine. I look down at the cat, knowing he is responsible for this mayhem. He seems not to mind my annoyance at all. I turn and look back at the squirrel, who is continuing to make his way around the room rifling through dishware. I say, "Oh no, this is not happening." and the squirrel turns to see me there and comes bounding over to me, perching on the back of a chair with his hands/paws out as if asking for me to give him something. 

"Come on, you guys take this outside!" I say, again looking down at the cat who stared back nonplussed. He does however get up and head for the sliding door to the deck, which in the morning I would leave open for him so he could come and go as he pleased. This, of course, allowed him to bring his friend into the house with him. The squirrel followed him, thankfully, and the two went out onto the deck where they began to wrestle like madmen. I closed the sliding screen door as I observed this noting the two of them must have been buddies for a while. 

Turned out, the squirrel would come every morning when the cat went out. He would lay on a branch in a big tree and watch for the door to open and then he would come running down. I started to feed him peanuts and after a while he began knocking on the screen slider. He would just show up bang on the slider to get someone's attention, I would open the slider and he would stand there with his hands out. I would hand him a nut, he'd take it and run off, and be back two minutes later banging on the door. 

Eventually, Archie, I had named him, began participating in pretty much everything that went on in the yard. The neighborhood kids, primarily a gang of girls aging 8 to 13, were always hanging out at my house. We'd be in the backyard and Archie would come down to join in. He would sit on a railing or on top of the pergola watching what was going on. The girls would ask who he was and I told them he was Plutarch's friend. Then I showed them that you could hand him a peanut and he would take it from you. Needless to say, Archie got pretty big. The girls would come to my house and take turns feeding him. As squirrels do, he'd take the nuts and go stash them for winter. Eventually, Archie started to bring me stuff. I guess as a way to repay me for all the hospitality I showed him. Sitting on the deck one morning he ran up to me with an entire slice of pizza hanging out of his mouth. He dropped it at my feet and stood looking at me, his tail twitching in excitement. I looked at him and the pizza, scratching my neck and pondering what to do. Did he expect me to eat it? I thanked him, took the pizza and brought it in the house, he ran off. I dropped it in the trash. I went back out and sat back down with my coffee and within a couple minutes he comes bounding back up with another slice of pizza. I was impressed that a squirrel could carry an entire slice of pizza, but Archie was pretty large for a squirrel at this point, so he handled that no problem. I assumed he was getting the pizza out of someone's trash. 

This was not the only time he brought me pizza. He would bring it and leave it by the sliding door when I was not around, leave a slice on the railing of the deck on occasion, and a few times he would leave it sitting on top of the pergola. Perhaps his thought was, he did not want this guy with the peanuts to starve but he always seemed quite pleased with himself when he did this. He knew how to find pizza and obviously he knew that people ate pizza. It was an interesting relationship.