Fairmount Hill

Mike Ball reports on his neighbor on Fairmount Hill in Hyde Park, who once again rented an aerial lift to put up his Christmas decorations yesterday:

He doesn't have that many trees on his smallish lot, but he strews multi-color lights down every single limb.

Then closer to the ground, he does every bush, shrub and apparently anything that doesn't move out of the way.

Boston Police report arresting a Roxbury teen on Dana Avenue last night following a foot chase from the scene of a possible armed home invasion around the corner on Washington Street.

Police say Feneli Morales, 18, of Roxbury, faces charges of unlawful possession of a firearm and discharging a gun within 500 feet of a house. Police say officers investigating a possible armed home invasion on Washington Street spotted him and chased him to a yard on Dana, where, police say, they found Morales packing a loaded firearm, duct tape and clothing.

Police flooded the area along Truman Parkway looking for another suspect, one resident reports.

Innocent, etc.

A concerned roadrunner sends up a flare from Fairmount Hill in Hyde Park:

There are coyotes all over the place up here.

Illustrating the complaint is a high-quality photo of an eviscerated rabbit.

Mike Ball is astonished to read in the New York Times that "the increasingly rare New England cottontail rabbit" can only be glimpsed in tangled thickets. Astonished because a family of cottontails are regular visitors to his front yard in Hyde Park's Fairmount Hill:

A family of them has an odd attraction to our newspapers. When I got out a 5:30 or 6 a.m., I sometimes see one or two or three of them nosing about our papers. So far, they haven't opened the plastic bags or shown us their favorite sections. I assume the oddity of two or three of the parcels tossed at the base of the sidewalk that attracts them. Perhaps they wonder if there is food involved.

Regardless, when I trot the 50 or so feet, they do notice me and hop slowly out of reach. They aren't in any hurry though.

Well ...

Our resident wildlife expert, Jef Taylor, explains:

Boston bunnies are almost all Eastern Cottontails. NE cottontails are different species, found out in the sticks.

The Bulletin reports it got so bad one evening, Williams Avenue residents dialed 911, because they couldn't get anybody at City Hall.