City Creatures
Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness
- Contents
- Review Quotes

Introducing City Creatures · Dave Aftandilian and Gavin Van Horn
1. Backyard Diversity
Up Not Out · Janice F. Meister
Keeping Chickens · Terra Brockman
Holding Backyard Chicken · Colleen Plumb
Consumes mi dolor . . . mi muerte (You consume my pain . . . my death) · Alma Domínguez
Looking Up · Melinda Pruett-Jones
Fieldguide · Mark Crisanti
Falling Apart · Tom Montgomery Fate
Five Squirrels Froze · Susan Hahn
The One That Hums · Kendra Langdon Juskus
Mysterium Opossum · Lea F. Schweitz
Raccoon · Amy Newman
Fox · Cannon Dill and Brett Flanigan
The Fox · Amy Newman
A Eulogy for My Friends · Steve Sullivan
Prayer for the Squirrel · Martha Modena Vertreace-Doody
Murder · Maskull Lasserre
Asha: jewel of the Nile · Xavier Nuez
The Western Scarab · Ed Roberson
Visits from a Messenger · Nora Moore Lloyd
The Oracle of Wasps · Patricia Monaghan
2. Neighborhood Associations
Chicago Wildlife · Johannes Plagemann
Keegan’s Story · Martha Modena Vertreace-Doody
Zoo Woods · Martha Modena Vertreace-Doody
Hubbard Street Murals · Leslie Berish, Augustina Droze, Ricki Hill, Chris Jones, Neil Shapiro, and the Hubbard Street Mural Project Volunteers
A Tale of Two Squirrels and One City · Joel S. Brown
Noble Horse Stables · Brooke Collins
Rooftop Beekeeping · Kyle Gati
Pigeons · David Hernandez
DH + BH · Camilo Cumpian
Civitas Canis lupus familiaris · Michael S. Hogue
Y ora pa onde chingaos · Alma Domínguez
Aquí se hace tarde demasiado temprano · Alma Domínguez
Wanting Was an Alley Cat · Susan Hahn
Ferrets · ROA
Kiskinwahamâtowin (Learning Together): Outdoor Classrooms and Prairie Restoration at the American Indian Center of Chicago · Eli Suzukovich III
Owl · Brooks Blair Golden
The Red Fox Who Toys with the Dead · Brenda Cárdenas
Remaking Our Covenants of Life and Death on the Dunes Commons · J. Ronald Engel
Nikki: (hiphop) dancing queen · Xavier Nuez
Crickets · Jill Spealman
The Boarding Stable · Joseph Kayne
3. Animals on Display
Dolphins at Play · Gregory J. Auberry
Train to the Zoo · Joan Gibb Engel
Puma · Carlos Ernesto Uribe Cardozo
Bridging the Divide: Pondering Humanity at the Zoo · Andrea Friederici Ross
Bushman, Field Museum · Colleen Plumb
Nature on Pause · Peggy Macnamara
A Museum of Change in Illinois · James Ballowe
Chicago Mammals, Field Museum · Colleen Plumb
A Living Taxidermy · Rebecca Beachy
Happy Birthday · Sonnet L. Schulz
Six Sketches at the Field Museum · Benn Colker
Playing for Life: Learning to Care about Nature at the Hamill Family Play Zoo · David Becker
Field Museum, Drawer of Bluebirds; Field Museum, Drawer of Cardinals; Field Museum, Drawer of Meadowlarks · Terry Evans
4. Connecting Threads
Flock · Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee
Migration: A Bird’s and Birder’s Eye View · Joel Greenberg
Birds Spotted While Hiking Wooded Isle, Hyde Park, Illinois · Diana Sudyka
The Song of Northerly Island · Wendy J. Paulson
Wildlife Comes to Lake Shore Drive, Endangered Species · Michelle Kogan
A Siege of Herons: Nycticorax nycticorax · James Ballowe
Orchids and Their Animals · Stephen Packard
Massasauga Rattlesnake · Blake Lenoir
The Last Roundup: Observations on a Local Population of the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake · Stephan Swanson
Snake 2 · Julie Meridian
Butterfly Collection · Julie Meridian
Letting the City Bug You: The Artistic and Ecological Virtues of Urban Insect Collecting · Andrew S. Yang
Untitled · Arthur Melville Pearson
Being Unseen: The Gift of Oppiella nova · Liam Heneghan
Soil: Alive with Life · Sharon Bladholm
The Indomitable Water Bear · Alex Chitty
Burnham Centennial Prairie, Lake Shore Drive · Martha Modena Vertreace-Doody
Visitations · Elise Paschen
Extinct Animal Series: Schomburgk’s Deer, Golden Toad, and Pink-Headed Duck · Jiha Park
5. Water Worlds
Stroll · Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee
Washed Up on the Shores of Lake Michigan · Curt Meine
The Alewives · Todd Davis
Alewives · Colleen Plumb
The Fanciful Fairy Tale of Freezing Frogs · Jill R iddell
Pescado Blanco en Río Chicago (White Fish in Chicago River) · René H. Arceo
Heavy Water · Kim Laurel
Canoeing through History: Wild Encounters on Bubbly Creek · Michael A. Bryson
Riverwalk Gateway, the South Branch of the River · Ellen Lanyon
Riverwalk Gateway · Ellen Lanyon
The Fish in the Cage · Todd Davis
Pond Reflection · Eleanor Spiess-Ferris
Flood · Eleanor Spiess-Ferris
Calumet: Requiem or Rebirth? · John Rogner
Bubbly Creek · Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee
6. Coming Home to the City
Untitled · Molly Schafer
Great Migrations: Immigrants to the Indiana Dunes, from Grandparents to Great Blue Herons to People of Color and Conviction · Gary Paul Nabhan
Desenredando Fronteras (Unraveling Borders) · Hector Duarte
Eye and Cardinal · Tony Tasset
“Hardy, Colorful, and Sometimes Annoyingly Loud”: The Hyde Park Parakeets · Dave Aftandilian
Flock of Pigeons · Jyoti Srivastava
Endangered Species · Mary Cross
Pigeon! · Andrew S. Yang and the Small Science Collective
Sheka’kwa and the Skunks of My Re-Rooting · Marynia Kolak
Care Bare · Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee
Nature Calls · Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee
Above All · Kendra Langdon Juskus
Untitled (I Promise to Forget You) · Steve Seeley
Coyotes: The Ghost Dogs of Chicago · Stanley D. Gehrt
Wolf with Birds · Nikki Jarecki
Ghost Species · Brenda Cárdenas
Tickling the Bellies of the Buffalo · Gavin Van Horn
Indiana Dunes · Blake Lenoir
Recommended Resources
About the Contributors
Artwork Credits
Index
After reading City Creatures I was left feeling the strong collective impact of all of those voices. The stories were informative or intimate or funny or sad or all of these things. What I found most unique and unexpected was the book’s emotional content. I was touched. I literally laughed and cried, diving forward into each new story, genuinely interested to hear about the next person’s wildlife experiences."
Art: Art--General Studies
Biological Sciences: Conservation | Ecology | Natural History
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