The owls can raise anything from 1 to 12 chicks in a summer season. To survive, their young will have to quickly learn to negotiate the dangers of city life. Longer hunting trips are sometimes necessary as open land disappears. But so long as the city can still provide food and shelter, these owls will remain a part of the urban landscape.

A few hundred miles south of Silicon Valley, another city has grown up on the edge of the desert. This is Bakersfield, California. It sits on an underground reservoir of water, enabling its residents to live in a suburban Eden. This modern day oasis has provided sanctuary for a rare animal, one that emerges at night.

The San Joaquin kit fox is one of the smallest and rarest foxes in the world. Yet remarkably, it flourishes on Bakers field’s busy street corners.