Things that go bump in the night

Last night I was on my way to my friend Emily's apartment when I stumbled across something unusual--even by New York standards. It was just past dusk, dark enough that it wasn't light, but not quite middle-of-the-night dark. I was walking along Central Park North (aka 110th Street) on the North side of the street--as I didn't want to walk too close to the park at this twilight hour--when something caught my eye in the middle of the sidewalk. At first glance I assumed it was a dog, but then I realized there was no owner with it. As I walked closer I then thought maybe it was a cat that had escaped, but I then realized it was a little too big to be a cat. I had a moment of panic when I thought maybe it was one of those mutant rats that you hear about in the subway that grows to gargantuan proportions, but then realized that even a mutant rat couldn't grow that big.



I was about 15 feet from it a woman walked out of her apartment building and looked to the right, and then looked at me and said, "Oh that damn raccoon is out here every night." I looked at her in disbelief and said, "that's a raccoon?" Upon closer inspection I realized that it was indeed a raccoon in the middle of a Manhattan sidewalk eating, what else, pizza! I thanked the woman for enlightening me and hightailed it across four lanes of traffic, as I would rather tussle with a NYC cabbie than a giant raccoon.