Do you ever see wild animals?

I live in a place where the wildlife apparently read the zoning laws and decided they apply only to everyone else. We’ve got the standard cast of fur-covered mischief. Coyotes that look like they’re late for a meeting, foxes acting like they’re better than me (they are), raccoons who believe my trash cans are an all-you-can-eat buffet, and other woodland freeloaders living their best lives while I’m just trying to get to work without stepping in something that growls.

But then there are the rarities, the kind of creatures National Geographic won’t film because even they have standards. Exhibit A: the elusive On-Demand Friction Technician. For the uninitiated, that’s the local corner prostitute, who’s somehow simultaneously nocturnal, diurnal, and fueled entirely by cigarettes and bad decisions. You don’t see them so much as you sense them, like a glitch in the matrix or the smell of Axe body spray on a humid day.

Then we’ve got the Unauthorized Street-Level Acquisition Technician, which is just a fancy résumé title for the Circle K hoodrat who thinks shoplifting is a personality. These majestic goblins usually travel in packs, loud enough to scare off the coyotes but not smart enough to scare off anything else. They appear suddenly, like Pokémon encounters, but instead of battling you, they just ask for a dollar and yell at their cousin on speakerphone.

This is the wilderness I live in. Forget bears and mountain lions. I’ve got urban cryptids running side-quests on the sidewalk while the raccoons judge us all.

Tech-tinkering geocacher who questions everything and dodges people on a purpose. Introverted agnostic, punk at heart, and a self-taught dev who learned things the hard way because nothing else ever sticks.