A wet night reshapes the park's internal logic. Coyotes and barn owls both hunt heavily by ear, tracking the small seismic signals of a mouse moving through grass, and a soaked landscape muffles that signal — which means the animals work harder and range wider, pushing their activity earlier into the evening rather than waiting for full dark. The result, for anyone who walks the park at twilight after a rain, is that the usual invisible ecosystem becomes briefly legible.

The coyotes here are not new, and the people who track them aren't new either. There's a loose community of early-morning joggers, dog owners, and dedicated wildlife watchers who have built something like a neighborhood watch around the park's nonhuman residents — sharing sighting reports in online threads, noting which trails are active, arguing cheerfully about which camera angle catches the den near Spreckels Lake. After a storm, that network twitches to life earlier than usual.

The thing to notice, if you go out tonight, is not the animals themselves — those you may or may not see — but the behavior of the people looking. Someone stopped at the tree line, phone held low so the screen glow doesn't ruin the moment. A couple standing very still near the edge of the meadow. The particular patient posture of people who have learned to wait.

Tomorrow morning, when the path dries out, you'll see the tracks pressed into the mud along the western footpaths: the neat, straight line of coyote prints, the herringbone stitch of bird feet near the puddles. The park will look the same as it always does. The evidence will be there if you know what to read.