Here’s an exciting new blog to check out: City Creatures, a place of insightful writing about animals (and their human neighbors) here in Chicago’s urban and suburban environments. This is a project of the environmental non-profit organization, the Center for Humans and Nature, that will support and complement a book and art exhibit of the same name.

As a contributing author to the project and the blog, I’ll be writing about the Bubbly Creek ecosystem on Chicago’s Near Southwest Side and the many animals, past and present, that exist in that damaged yet resilient landscape — from the herons and other birds that find food and shelter within the creek’s waters and riparian zone; to the carp swimming below the surface that harbor bio-accumulated toxins in their tissues; to the decades-old offal from the millions of processed cows and pigs that was once dumped untreated into the waters of Bubbly Creek, and which is still slowly decomposing within its sediments.