I live about five minutes' drive from downtown Seattle. Around here there are squirrels till hell won't have it. I once watched a brilliant bit of strategy by a couple of squirrels rifling a waste can where someone had tossed some French fries. They very cagily outwitted three crows and a seagull, all after the same snack, by cooperating in some very clever diversionary tactics.

Crows, however, are so smart they're downright spooky sometimes. Lousy musicians, though. They all play the oboe and they only know one note.

My wife had just parked the car one afternoon and was coming into our apartment when down the sidewalk came raccoon with a string of little ones following behind her.

I was looking out the office window one afternoon and saw what I could have sworn was a bald eagle flying toward the downtown area. I checked with the resident bird watcher, and he told me that there is a brooding pair of them out at Discovery Park (northwest corner of the city). He told me that they sometimes get tired of their diet of fish and head downtown to dine on city pigeon, of which there are multitudes.

Can you imagine sitting on one of the benches across from the downtown library and eating your lunch when a bird only slightly smaller than a B-25 suddenly swoops down from on high and grabs one of the pigeons playing around your feet?

One day several joggers who frequent the three and a half mile path around Green Lake in the north part of the city freaked out and called animal control. There were alligators in Green Lake!! Animal control came to check out the reports (there having been several) and discovered a pair of caiman about three feet long lurking in the bullrushes at the south end of the lake. Probably a couple of exotic pets that someone had dumped because they'd grown too big to handle.

Lot's of non-bipedal wildlife in the inner city if you know where to look.

Don Firth

P. S. I was thinking at the time that, were it not for dogs and small children, it wouldn't have been a bad idea to leave the two caiman there. Around Green Lake, goose poop is a real problem.