BROOKE BARKER
We are not alone when walking home from a nightclub or a 24-hour restaurant. Night animals are all around us: in the sky, in the bushes, and, sometimes, right on the sidewalk.
Indeed, one night when leaving a party on First Hill at around 11 p.m., I was stunned to see a pack of eight or so huge raccoons amble out of the courtyard of an apartment building like it ain’t no thing and walk down the sidewalk like they paid taxes, too. First Hill is a very dense neighborhood. It has no big parks or orphaned spaces. Where in the world did these big mammals come from? At one point, they turned into an alley that looked to them much like a street lined with restaurants looks to us—it was lined with small and large trash cans.
