Sometimes while driving through the neighborhoods for other reasons you find odd things that add up to little glimpses of life in the forgotten parts of Detroit. Here are a few random ones:

People here sure don’t like this house. They’ve broken in, stripped everything of value from it, smashed its interior to pieces, spray-painted taunts on it and then set it on fire a few times for good measure. They’ve also ignored the owner’s numerous “stay off” admonitions written graffiti-style in spray-paint.

That clearly didn’t work, so the owner let it be known, as seen on the house’s back end, that this is simply “not funny,” which is actually absolutely funny.

Could the inner city be any more gloomy than it is in winter? Here’s a prairie on the east side, cast in mist and shades of grey, where two ring-necked pheasants forage for food in an empty field, by an empty van, left next to an empty house.

They’re skittish little critters, though they shouldn’t be; with few natural predators down here they’re breeding freely like high schoolers. Maybe they’ll eventually be more like the not-at-all-shy pigeons in spots like Capitol Park, who’ve become feathered panhandlers thanks to the generosity of and domestication by nature-oriented street people and eccentrics armed with loaves of day-old bread.

Here’s a neighborhood snapshot: it’s 2 p.m. on a Thursday afternoon, and someone’s stepped away from their workspace here, leaving their tools spread out on the street, including the most popular thing in many a Detroiter’s tool bag: a 40 oz. of beer. What better idea when you’re placing yourself partially under a multi-ton vehicle, held up by a flimsy jackstand, than to get a buzz going. But that’s how you keep it real!

Unfortunately, this scene illustrates the all-too common realities out here – if you’re drinking in the daytime during the week, you probably don’t have a job. And if you regularly drink during weekday afternoons, chances are nobody’s going to give you a job. Multiply this by thousands and try to figure out how all that fits into the so-called Next Detroit.

This is one soggy bunny. All over the city, where a young person has been killed violently, memorials spring up at the place of death, most often consisting of dozens of stuffed animals lashed onto a telephone pole. Some displays grow thick over time, as well-wishers add to the memorial and write their sentiments on the fabric.

This one is simply sad. Either the person had few loved ones, or their friends and family couldn’t afford to spring for an extravagant memorial like the ones seemingly every few blocks on the side streets. Or, they felt that one sad rabbit is telling enough, signifying that another little kid was killed in the city, at this spot, a death unknown outside the neighborhood, apart from by a few passersby who know what this means.