On my walk the other night, I stepped on an acorn on the sidewalk by the house next door to me, and realized why I’d been seeing deer every single night brave enough to come into the yards on this block. It’s the acorns.The ones from my neighbor’s tree and other trees have fallen, and they’re great big ones. In previous years when there was a big acorn yield, I could look out my bedroom window and watch a crowd of deer eating for over an hour under the tree next door.

Because of odd circumstances my hours recently have been that I’m awake all night, and I finally go for my walk sometimes at 2, 3 or later in the morning. I run across the deer so often that now I can smell one before I see it — there’s suddenly this awful rank odor, like piss and musk, and I look around, and there’s a deer in a yard staring at me.

The deer generally run away to the woods just past this block, an area called Edgewood Park. None of the woods in town used to be called anything, but about the time I was in high school the local authorities suddenly began putting up wooden signs designating some area “Beechwood Park,” “Edgewood Park,” and so on. We scoffed at this at the time, because we just called it “the woods” and knew exactly what we meant. Most of the woods around here are connected (partly because the wild growth keeps reclaiming any undeveloped area, or any area that gets neglected).

Frogs have been out a lot, too, on my block. They can move fast when they want to, but when I actually see them they act like rocks and won’t move from the sidewalk or road even if you nudge them. They are hard to see — grayish like the sidewalk — so I’m hoping I don’t accidentally get a shoeful of squished frog. Last night I encountered 2 (did not squish). Also saw one of the rabbits who are regularly in all our yards at night. No skunks, thank goodness. The wildlife tally is really growing, though. And when I’m back inside and it’s about 5 am, there’s a bunch of strange bird cries that makes me think we have seagulls or something moving through this area. I haven’t been able to see what kind of bird is making the cries.