It's time for Lunchtime Sightings, all things strange and wonderful encountered while crisscrossing Middlesex County during the workday:

1. This morning alongside Mystic Lake, a large and spry racoon loped across the road, at 8:30am, broad daylight. That whole stretch of Mystic Valley Parkway is rife with (usually) noctural critters: I once saw a huge possum standing over a storm drain there, its eye glinting red in the headlights!

2. I will give an honorary shoutout to Mama Wild Turkey and her brood of chicks, who live in the woods at Nat's office park in Westford -- he's spotted them several times in the last week, more updates as events warrant.

3. Similarly, I spotted a family of geese, with near-fullgrown goslings, on Rt. 2 the other day -- and I committed the Massachusetts sin of stopping on an onramp to let them skitter across the road. They seemed very conditioned to dealing with traffic -- I guess when you subsist on median-strip grass you have to stay pretty alert. I literally waved at them, as if they were human pedestrians, to let them know it was OK to cross! They got the message: one parent in the lead, one parent behind the line of chicks hissing and flapping to get them to hurry up. No wonder this book is set in Boston...

4. Now for human exploits: at the Roche Brothers supermarket, a large green SUV stopped dead in front of me, blocking the way forward and to turn right. The driver then opened her door, stuck out her hand to wave me around, and simultaneously began rolling forward...hmmmm. I turned right, parked, and then saw the same woman zoom into a handicapped space, still with the driver door open, hop out and run inside the store. You guessed it: no handicapped plate or placard. Nice.

5. To make up for this weirdness, I had a Perfect Radio Moment on the way back to the office: the ever-trusty Julie Kramer on WFNX's Leftover Lunch played this list back to back: "The Girl With the Curious Hand," "Boys Don't Cry," and one of my favorite Replacements songs, "Merry Go Round." Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhh...