• Cat Urbigkit posted an extraordinary sequence of photos showing a coyote and a badger hunting together (tiny amt of background here). Coyote and badger are important characters in western Native American myth – sometimes they cooperate, sometimes the trickster coyote tries to take advantage of badger and occasionally he succeeds.

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• A very interesting post at The Atlantic by Emily Badger (I’m not making this up – check the by-line) on urban coyotes in Chicago and some speculation on what predator will citify next. I’m voting Black Bear – as Emily mentions, it’s already happening out west and in addition bears are happy omnivores & they’re well into exurban spaces here in the east (apparently Provincetown has an entire week during which they honor bears *grin*).
• And proof that bears are here in the semi-rural east (aside from the bruin the dogs rousted out of my back yard a couple years ago) – we had a bit of excitement at work yesterday. There was a bear cub running around the grounds; no sign of mama bear, but everyone came inside for a bit. Baby bear was convinced to reverse direction: back to the woods and away from the highway he was originally pointed at. S/he seems small, but my knowledge of ursine development is pretty dang sketchy.

The cub came off the tree, made a break for it, got scared and…

…went back up the tree for a bit.

I wasn’t the only one snapping pics.