The Urban Pantheist

Alex's new house! She's been there a few months, but I think this is one the first pictures I've taken that shows a lot of it. Alex and Alexis are suspending Jim with a stick. Alexis and I came over to help chip out some ice and ameliorate the dogs' cabin fever.

Sunrise pigeons on a West Roxbury billboard.

My friend just bought a house in West Roxbury. She was horrified to discover cockroaches in and around it! At my insistence she captured one, and I identified it as an Ectobius cockroach, probably the Mediterranean spotted cockroach E. pallidus, but also maybe the dusky cockroach E. lapponicus. In either case, these are not pest cockroaches—the Latin name Ectobius translates to “lives outside,” which is what they do most of the time. They get into houses about as often as earwigs and maybe a little less often than ladybeetles. Both Ectobius species in New England are native to Europe.