Excerpt from Wild in the City
by Megan Hansen
At first glance, a vacant lot in a city might seem lifeless. But look closer. A dragonfly dances around a puddle. A frog darts from a drainpipe to snatch the dragonfly. From the rooftops, a hawk swoops down to grab the frog. Cities might have been built for humans, but wildlife is everywhere! When you think of wildlife, you might picture bears lumbering through the forest. But many animals have adapted to the sewers, parks, and alleys of the “concrete jungle.” These areas provide a natural habitat for many species. Wild animals need food, water, space to hunt or hide, and a place to raise young. A city offers all of these.
The rooftops abound with winged wildlife. More than 200 bird species are found in the city, including blue jays, robins, doves, finches, crows, gulls, and woodpeckers. Peregrine falcons and ospreys nest on skyscrapers and bridges. New Yorkers also love to watch butterflies. Each year, thousands of monarch butterflies pass through the streets during their fall migration to Mexico. And let’s not forget nature’s insect control: bats. These winged mammals can eat eight mosquitoes, flies, or moths a minute. With up to 500 bats living in a single church belfry, that’s 240,000 bugs an hour—gobbled up! . . .
What about the city’s tiniest wildlife? Although you might not like to think about them, cockroaches are amazingly well-adapted to city life. ese insects can live for two months without food, and haven’t changed much since scurrying around with dinosaurs millions of years ago. No wonder they seem unstoppable! Earthworms are another urban crawler. These marvelous little wrigglers gobble up dead leaves, food scraps, and garbage, and turn them into rich soil. Without worms, the trees, grass, and flowers of Central Park would not grow.
Sometimes New York gets unexpected visitors. As the forests surrounding New York f ill with more and more people, wild animals are forced to find new homes. New Yorkers have spotted coyotes, white-tailed deer, and gray foxes in the city. A black bear was spotted wandering past a high school just 20 miles away from the city. And in 2009, a 30-foot long humpback whale swam into New York Harbor. Biologists, engineers, and politicians work hard to make sure city wildlife stays healthy and interacts safely with humans. A special nest for four eaglets was constructed in New York’s Inwood Park. Bald eagles, which were once endangered, can now be spotted flying over Central Park. So the next time you’re in New York (or any other big city), take a moment to look up, look under, and look closer. You’ll find a world of wildlife!
Yo-Yo Ma has been playing the cello since he was a young boy. He gave his first concert at the age of five. Because of his talent, hard work, and creativity, today Yo-Yo Ma is one of the world’s finest cello players.
Yo-Yo Ma rocks his cello from side to side. He draws the bow across its strings. He concentrates completely. He seldom looks to see where to place his fingers. He throws his head back. His eyes close, his glasses reflecting the bright lights of the stage. His face is a mirror of the music he draws out of his instrument. During these moments Yo-Yo Ma feels at one with the music, with the other musicians, and with his audience. 
Listening to Yo-Yo Ma play the cello in concert is magical. He springs onto the stage with youthful energy. He greets the audience and the orchestra with a warm smile. Taking up his cello, he cradles the large instrument in his arms. The audience grows quiet. Soon they are drawn into a story he tells using his cello. 
Yo-Yo Ma loves making connections—to other kinds of music, to history, and to people. That is why his music appeals to so many different kinds of audiences. People like his sunny personality as much as they like his great talent. He travels the world bringing music and joy to people’s hearts. . . . 
Yo-Yo Ma was born to Chinese parents in Paris, France, on October 7, 1955. His father Dr. Hiao-Tsiun (hee-ow-shun) Ma was a violinist and music professor. His mother Marina was a singer. Yo-Yo has a sister who is four years older named Yeou-Cheng (yochung). The words “Yo” and “Yeou” both mean “friendship” in Chinese. . . . 
Yo-Yo was surrounded by music as an infant. Singing, playing, and listening to music was as natural as breathing for the Ma family. His mother had been trained as an opera singer. She sang in a beautiful, strong voice. His father played the violin. His sister played piano and violin. His parents played records of classical music for their children. 
Yo-Yo’s parents helped their son develop his musical talent. When he was very young, Yo-Yo could sing in tune. Yo-Yo began piano and violin lessons when he was three. His piano teacher was amazed at how quickly he learned. Dr. Ma taught his son to play the violin. He noticed that Yo-Yo did not seem very interested in it. . . . 
One day Yo-Yo’s father took him to the Paris Conservatory of Music. In the corner was a large double bass. It is a stringed instrument that is about twice the size of a cello. The double bass is so big that some adults stand up to play it. Yo-Yo stopped and looked at the huge instrument. He pointed to it and said excitedly, “That’s what I want to play!” 
Yo-Yo told his father he did not like the sound the violin makes. “I want a big instrument,” the three-year-old said. The double bass was way too big for such a little boy, so Dr. Ma got Yo-Yo a small cello instead. 
Years later Yo-Yo offered another reason why the violin did not hold his interest. He said his sister Yeou-Cheng was “a fantastic musician, and I probably thought I could never play as well.” 
Dr. Ma was Yo-Yo’s first cello teacher. He had a special way of teaching. He did not start with easy pieces of music. Instead he taught Yo-Yo how to play music by one of the world’s greatest composers, Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach wrote long, difficult pieces of classical music. . . . 
The method Dr. Ma used to teach his son was simple. He gave very short lessons. Each day Yo-Yo only had to learn two measures of music. A measure is a few notes of music. Several measures make up a larger piece of music. Dr. Ma insisted that Yo-Yo learn each measure perfectly. That meant Yo-Yo had to memorize the notes. Then he had to practice them over and over. 
Every day Yo-Yo would learn two more measures of a Bach suite, a long piece of music. Soon he learned to recognize patterns in Bach’s music. Yo-Yo liked learning longer pieces of music this way, because he did not have to practice very long. After he learned every measure, he put them all together. He played beautiful, complex pieces of music. 
Many young cello players find it difficult to memorize music. Yo-Yo explained why his father’s method made it easy. “When a problem is complex, you become tense,” he said. “But when you break it down . . . you can approach each element without stress.” 
Dr. Ma said Yo-Yo played “like a shining star.” He had a good memory, and he concentrated better than most children his age. By the time he was five, Yo-Yo could play three Bach suites by heart. That year, he gave his first public recital at the University of Paris.
The First People had only four lights to illuminate the world: white light from the eastern mountains, blue light from the southern mountains, yellow light from the western peaks, and darkness from the north. These lights were dim and much too far away to bring heat. 
The people wanted more daylight. “We barely have enough to see,” they complained. 
So First Woman sent Glowworm, Fox Fire, Lightning Beetle, and Firefly to the four corners. they would give more light when it was needed. 
But the First People were still not satisfied. “These lights are too small. They flicker on and off and are of little use to us. We do not have night eyes like Owl or Bat!” First Woman kept trying to please her people. She consulted Fire Man on his glowing mountain. He offered to make the land around Fire Mountain bright, but he warned her that the light would not cover all the lands and there would be smoke. 
The people liked the brightness, but they were still not happy. “We do not like the heat and the smoke that comes from Fire Mountain. The heat scorches the earth and we are choked by the smoke,” they grumbled. 
Eventually, First Woman had an idea for a different way to send light to Earth. She asked for a large, flat piece of the hardest rock available. After a long search, the people brought her a slab of quartz. It took a lot of hard work and a lot of help for First Woman to carve the quartz into two wheels. 
Once the wheels were ready, First Woman and First Man decorated them as faces with symbols of the powers they each had. They decorated the first wheel with a mask of blue turquoise to give light and heat. They attached red coral to the earlobes and around the rim. On each side was a horn to hold male lightning and rain. On the rim, they placed bird feathers—cardinal, lark, and eagle—to fly it through the sky and spread the rays of heat and light in the four directions. This was the Sun wheel. 
When it was time to decorate the second wheel, First Woman said, “We do not need more heat and light. This one will carry coolness and moisture.” She and First Man used white shell to create a face, with a band of yellow pollen on its chin and a rim of red coral. This wheel had feathers, too: magpie, nighthawk, turkey, and crane feathers to bear its weight. Its horns held female lightning and so winds. This was Moon wheel. 
“This Sun wheel and Moon wheel cannot stay here,” declared First Woman. “We must place them in the sky!” First Man suggested they carry the disks to the top of the highest mountain and fasten them to the sky with darts of lightning, which the people did. 
Now the people had light, heat, coolness, and moisture all coming from the sky. But still they found something to complain about. Because the Sun always stayed in the east and never moved, one side of the land had an unending summer, and the other side had a winter that lasted forever. “This is not right,” they whined. 
First Man agreed. “The Sun must move across the sky, but how can it travel when it is only a stone and has no spirit?” At that moment, two ancient, wise men stepped forward and offered to help. “We will give our spirits to the Sun and the Moon so they will have life and power to move across the sky.” One entered the turquoise disk and he was called Jóhonaa’áí, or Sun Bearer; the other entered the white disk and he was called Tl’éhonaa’áí, or Moon Bearer. 
Once the Sun and the Moon were following their paths through the sky, the people returned to where First Woman had carved the wheels. the blanket where she had worked was covered with many small stone chips of every shape and size, plus stone dust from the cutting. 
“These white stones must not be wasted! We will use them to make more lights in the night sky,” exclaimed First Woman. So again, they worked with their flint knives, chisels, and stone hammers to shape the stars. 
To this day, the Sun, the Moon, and the stars created by First Woman, First Man, and all the people remain in the sky where they give light and heat by day and luminous, sparkling patterns at night
Sitting on a log in a slow-moving stream, a crowd of turtles bask in the sun. They are not afraid of hungry hawks or coyotes. Their hard shells protect them. 
So how did turtles get their armored suits? 
Turtles are reptiles, in the same family as snakes and lizards. But unlike snakes, turtles have a hard shell on the outside. A turtle’s shell is made of living bone—it’s part of the turtle’s skeleton. Muscles attach to the shell in the same way your muscles attach to your bones. So turtles can never leave their shells. 
For the last 200 million years, turtles have looked pretty much the way they look today. But 220 million years ago, a turtle ancestor called Odontochelys semitestacea did not quite have a shell yet. It had an extra-wide backbone and flat ribs that grew in a round, open shape. This fossil and other clues suggest that turtle shells evolved from backbones and ribs that expanded and grew together to form a solid bone shell. 
Turtle shells have three parts. The top, over the turtle’s back, is the carapace. The bottom, protecting the turtle’s belly, is the plastron. The plastron is also bone. Connecting these on the sides are the bridges. Together, these parts create an incredibly strong shell that protects the turtle from predators. 
When you look at a turtle’s shell, you don’t see the bare bone. Over the bone, turtles grow a thick layer of keratin, the same material your hair and fingernails are made of. This keratin forms plate-like sections called scutes. The square or hexagon ridges on a turtle’s shell are the scutes! Scutes protect the bone and also give turtle shells their color. 
Bone is alive, so a turtle’s shell grows as the turtle grows. New thin layers of scutes push the old layers up. This makes stepped ridges that give turtles their rough, scaly look. You can see from the ridges how much the turtle has grown. 
Not every turtle has scutes. So-shell turtles, pig-nosed turtles, and leatherback sea turtles grow a thick layer of leathery skin instead.
Lalainya Goldsberry is a biologist who cares for turtles and other small animals at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago. Some of the turtles live inside the museum, for kids to look at up close. Wild turtles live in a lagoon in back. 
Lalainya loves to look at turtles. If you do too, you may notice that they are not all the same shape. Some have big, round, dome shells. Others are almost flat. Some are smooth. Some are bumpy. All these different shapes are suited to how the different turtles live. . . . 
Pancake is a spiny softshell turtle, one of the species that does not have scutes. Spiny softshells live most of their life in fresh water. Their flat shape and leathery shell help them swim fast and burrow into the sand at the bottom of the water. 
Box turtles get their name from their best party trick—they can close themselves up like a box. The secret is a hinge on their plastron. When a box turtle sees danger, it pulls its head and legs in close to its body and folds up its plastron at the hinge, shutting the shell up tightly. In winter, box turtles have another trick. They hibernate under the ice. They breathe by absorbing oxygen from the water through the skin in their butts. 
Patsy is an alligator snapping turtle. These big turtles lure fish into their mouths with a tongue that looks like a wiggling worm. To catch a fish, snapping turtles have to stay very still for a long time. Patsy has a rough, craggy shell with thick scutes. This helps her look like a rock as she waits patiently to catch her dinner. In fact, alligator snapping turtles often have moss growing on their shells, just like real rocks!
Many turtles have a lighter color on their plastron. Bob the Blanding’s turtle is a good example. Bob is dark brown on top, and pale yellow on his chin, neck, and plastron. When a Blanding’s turtle swims, predators looking down into the water see the turtle’s dark top, which blends in with the dark water. But predators swimming below the turtle see the yellow parts, which blend in with the light shining down into the water. This type of camouflage is called countershading.
Everyone was quiet as a disgruntled-looking man stepped down from the cab, alone. . . . 
“I don’t know what you’ve got in there,” said the man, hunching his shoulders. “Supposed to be a horse . . . well, he was when I loaded him anyway. A real handful. Only just managed to get him in the van and that was nothing compared to the ride here. Thought he was going to kick the van down. Better you than me, son,” he said, climbing into the van before Tom had a chance to reply.
There was a frantic whinny and the sound of drumming hooves reverberated around the stables as Chancey pranced down the ramp. He was certainly on his toes, but he didn’t look like the sleek, well turned-out horse that Tom remembered seeing last season. He was still unclipped and his shabby winter coat was flecked with foam, as feverishly he pawed the ground. No one knew what to say. 
Eventually, Rosie managed to pipe up with: “Are you sure it’s the same horse?”
“Of course it is,” Tom snapped, unable to keep the disappointment out of his voice. “He only needs to be clipped and he’ll look fine.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Jess muttered under her breath. 
“Shouldn’t he have been clipped already?” said Rosie. She was always looking things up in her Pony Club manual and was sure that she had read that horses should be clipped before January, or their summer coat would be spoiled. 
“He probably should have been, still that won’t be too much of a problem,” said Nick kindly. “Now come on everyone, stop crowding him and get back to what you were doing. Take him to his new home, Tom.” 
Tom approached the horse and took the halter that the man offered him. Chancey jumped skittishly from side to side, rolling his eyes and flicking his tail as Tom led him off. 
“Poor Tom,” said Rosie. “He was so excited about that horse. Still, even though Chancey isn’t very good-looking, I’m sure he’ll be an absolute dream to ride.” 
Tom didn’t know what to think. When he had seen Chancey last season, he had been one hundred percent fit, his muscles rippling under his glossy chestnut coat. Tom was sure that he hadn’t been mistaken, he was definitely the same horse. 
Tom picked up the things that the van driver had le in the middle of the stables. ere was a saddle and bridle, a dark blue New Zealand blanket and a box full of glossy grooming brushes that looked as though they had never been used. Putting them in the tack room, he grabbed an old body brush and curry comb, and hurried back to Chancey’s stall. He would have to be quick if he was going to be able to give Chancey a quick grooming and get home in time for lunch. Tom opened the door slowly, careful not to startle him. 
“Come on, boy. Let’s get you cleaned up and give you your lunch. I bet you’re hungry after that awful trip,” he crooned. 
Chancey seemed to have settled down a little and nuzzled Tom’s pockets inquisitively. Tom fumbled around for a mint. The horse’s lips were as soft as crushed velvet as he gratefully accepted the offering. 
“That’s better,” said Tom. “I thought you’d taken an instant dislike to me, and it’s very important that we’re friends if we’re going to spend the whole summer together.” 
“Hey, now hang on a minute,” said Tom, as the nuzzling turned into frantic chewing. “I’m sure my jacket doesn’t taste that great and I won’t be getting a new one if you eat it either.” Gently, Tom pushed Chancey’s nose away. 
“I’ve got to go home for lunch in a minute,” Tom went on, giving him a quick rubdown. “I’ll be back at two. Nick has said that we can join the 3 o’clock class. Are you listening?” 
Chancey wasn’t paying any notice. Already bored of all the attention, his head was buried deep in a bucket of pony pellets as Tom bolted the door of the stall and set off for home. 
Lunch was something that Tom’s mother insisted upon. If he was going to be at the stables all day, she said that he must at least come back at one to eat. He was careful to obey her, if only to keep her from going on about the amount of time he spent at Sandy Lane. 
Larry lives in a fishing village on the coast of Maine. White gulls soar above his house and perch on the roof top. From his window he can see the harbor full of fishing boats. . . . 
Larry’s father is a lobster fisherman and owns one of the lobster boats. He fishes for lobsters all year round, even in the winter, if weather permits. But winter storms are hard on boats and traps, so at least once a year a lobsterman has to overhaul his gear. Every spring Larry’s father has his big boat hauled out of the water, and then he and Larry work on her. . . . 
They paint their lobster trap buoys too in the spring. Larry’s father paints his buoys red and yellow and black. Every lobsterman uses different colors so that he can tell his buoys from the others. . . . 
Soon everything is ready. One morning early in May they make their first trip out to set their traps. It is still dark when they eat breakfast and put on their yellow waterproof pants and jackets and their black hip boots. Larry helps his father carry the gear down to the dock. There they load the big boat with as many traps as she can carry. Then Larry’s father starts the engine, and they chug out of the harbor. . . . 
They pass beaches where clamdiggers are digging for clams. They pass rocky islands where seals bask in the sun with their babies. Some of them dive into the water and swim after the boat with only their heads showing above the water. Larry throws a herring to one of them and she catches it. 
Then Larry takes the wheel while his father pushes the traps overboard. The lobsters hide deep in the cool, green water among the seaweeds and rocks. They hide there with their long feelers waving and their big claws ready to catch any fishes that swim by. . . . 
Larry and his father come to a little cove where long streamers of brown kelp grow so thick that they can look down and see them waving in a great, dark tangle, like a jungle under the water.
“There must be lobsters down there, for sure,” Larry says. “This is where I want to set my trap.” 
They push the trap over . . . and down it goes, down, down, down, until it disappears among the kelp . . . and only the yellow buoy with black and white stripes floats on top to mark where the trap is. 
They set each trap in a different place. They make many trips back to shore for more traps. All day long they drop the traps over the side of the boat, one by one. Some they drop far out to sea and some along the rocky shores. Then as darkness falls over the water they head back home. 
Next morning Larry and his father go out in the boat again, this time to haul their traps. Larry reaches over with the gaff and hooks each buoy out of the water. . . .
When they pull up Larry’s trap out of the tangled kelp, they find three big lobsters in it. They weigh Larry’s lobsters and one is a whopping four-pounder, the biggest they have caught so far. 
“We’ll keep track of all the lobsters you catch,” his father says. “Then when we sell them, I’ll put aside the money for you, and by the end of the summer you ought to have enough to buy something you want. Maybe you can save up for a skiff or an outboard motor.” 
“But let’s not sell these three lobsters,” Larry says. “I want to have one for supper tonight, and you and Momma can eat the other two, because they’re the first lobsters I ever caught in a trap of my own.” . . . 
And when Larry climbs into bed that night he lies awake a while. He thinks about all the many different kinds of fishing, and he says to himself, “I could fish with nets for herring or mackerel, I could work on a big dragger catching redfish or flounder or haddock, I could be a tuna fisherman, or even a clamdigger; but of all the kinds of fishing there are, I think lobstering is the most fun . . . and besides I like lobsters, so I’m going to be a lobsterman when I grow up!”