“It was fun,” she agreed, heart pounding away, adrenaline still pumping. “Fuck, I just…wish we could have done more. Jesus, you’ve turned me into a criminal.”

He laughed, quietly, and took her hands, pulled her gloves off for her. Oh, she was in love with him, wasn’t she? Yeah. She smiled down at their hands, then back up at him. He gave her a half-grin, handed her the gloves, and peered out past her once more.

“Let’s wait a minute,” he said. “Fuck the cops.”

‘Even a freeway is redeemable’: world’s largest wildlife crossing takes shape in Los Angeles

A wildlife crossing across the 101 freeway will connect two parts of the Santa Monica mountains for animals

the Guardian

Above the whirring of 300,000 cars each day on Los Angeles’s 101 freeway, an ambitious project is taking shape. The Wallis Annenberg wildlife crossing is the largest wildlife bridge in the world at 210ft long and 174ft wide, and this week it’s had help taking shape: soil. “This is the soul of the project,” says Beth Pratt, the regional executive director, California, at the National Wildlife Federation, who has worked on making the crossing become a reality over the last 13 years. She says she’s seen many milestones, like the 26m pounds of concrete poured to create the structure, but this one is special. “To be able to put my hand in that soil and toss it on and know that we’ll be putting milkweed plants that will flourish for monarch butterflies, or picturing the first mountain lion paw print on that soil,” she says, fills her with hope. “It is wonderful to watch this habitat take shape.” The plot is a native wildlife habitat that connects two parts of the Santa Monica mountain range, with the hopes of saving creatures – from the famous local mountain lions, down to frogs and insects – from being crushed by cars on one of the nation’s busiest roadways. With nearly an acre of local plants on either side and thick vegetated sound walls 12ft high to dampen light and noise for nocturnal animals as they slip across, it’s an unprecedented feat of engineering. Imagination, too. The project began in 2022 through a public-private partnership that brought together many organizations to cover the $92m in costs, according to Caltrans, the state transportation department. Research shows that wildlife crossings save money because it limits animal interactions with vehicles.