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A man was fatally shot Monday in the 300 block of North California Avenue.

Three people were killed and nine others wounded in shootings Monday across Chicago.

In the day’s most recent deadly attack, a man was fatally shot in East Garfield Park, police said.

He was outside about 3:05 p.m. in the 300 block of North California Avenue when someone fired shots at him from a vehicle, Chicago police said.

The 42-year-old was struck in the abdomen and arm, police said. He was taken to Stroger Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Another man was fatally shot early Monday morning while standing with a group of people in Chicago Lawn on the Southwest Side.

The man, 24, was shot about 12:40 a.m. in the 6300 block of South Campbell Avenue when someone, possibly inside a silver sedan, fired at him, police said.

He was struck in the upper chest and transported to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn where he died, police said. The Cook County medical examiner’s office has not yet identified the man.

There was no description of the shooter and no one in custody, according to police.

A person was killed in a shooting in West Pullman on the Far South Side, police said.

Officers responded to a call of a person shot about 8:35 p.m. in the 12200 block of South Halsted Street and found a male unresponsive with multiple gunshot wounds to his chest, Chicago police said.

He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The Cook County medical examiner’s office hasn’t released his identity.

In nonfatal shootings, Chicago police are investigating whether road-rage led to a shooting Monday morning that wounded a woman in Gresham on the South Side.

The woman, 40, was driving in the 1300 block of West 87th Street when a silver minivan she didn’t recognize cut her off, according to police.

Someone inside the van opened fire, striking the woman in the chest at about 10:50 a.m., police said. Another bullet was lodged in the woman’s car door.

Paramedics took her to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, where she was listed in “serious but stable” condition.

A 15-year-old girl is in critical condition after being shot Monday in Washington Park on the South Side.

She was walking a dog about 3:40 p.m. in front of a store in the 6100 block of South King Drive when a male on foot opened fire, striking the girl in the chest and arm, police said.

The girl made her way down the street before collapsing, police said. She was taken to Comer Children’s Hospital in critical condition.

Police said it wasn’t clear if the girl was the intended target. No arrests have been reported as Area One detectives investigate.

A woman was shot in West Pullman on the Far South Side.

About 4:25 p.m., the 59-year-old was in the 11700 block of South Elizabeth Street when she was shot in the wrist, police said. She was taken to Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn in good condition, police said.

A man was hurt in a shooting Monday in East Garfield Park.

About 5:55 p.m., the 31-year-old was grazed by a bullet in the 500 block of North Central Park Avenue, police said. He took himself to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was in good condition, police said.

Hours later, woman was shot in Rosemoor on the South Side.

She was inside of a residence about 8:40 p.m. in the 10100 block of South Rhodes Avenue when a male she knew opened fire, striking her in the leg, police said.

The 40-year-old was taken to Roseland Community Hospital in good condition, police said.

A man was shot in Englewood on the South Side.

The 18-year-old was on the sidewalk about 9:30 p.m. in the 7200 block of South Sangamon Street when someone opened fire, striking him in the abdomen, police said. The man was dropped off at Holy Cross Hospital, and later transferred to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was in good condition.

A man was wounded in a shooting in Morgan Park on the South Side.

He was walking about 8:05 p.m. in the 10900 block of South Peoria Street when someone opened fire, police said. The 26-year-old was struck in the hand and took himself to Roseland Community Hospital, where he was in good condition.

A man was wounded in a shooting in Back of the Yards on the South Side.

He was outside about 11:05 p.m. in the 5400 block of South Halsted Street when someone fired shots from a passing gray SUV, police said.

The 22-year-old was struck in the hip and taken to the University of Chicago Medical Center in fair condition, police said.

In the day’s first reported shooting, a man was shot early Monday morning at a gathering in Back of the Yards on the Southwest Side.

The 31-year-old was outside at gathering about 1:30 a.m. in the 5400 block of South Marshfield Avenue when someone inside of a passing white sedan fired shots at him, police said.

He was struck in the arm and went to the University of Chicago Medical Center where he was listed in fair condition, police said.

Fourty-eight people were shot, 8 fatally, over the weekend in Chicago.

Read more on crime, and track the city’s homicides.

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Moon Alert

There are no restrictions to shopping or important decisions. The moon is in Leo.

Aries (March 21-April 19)

Your kids might be more of a handful because they’re a bit rebellious. Nevertheless, be vigilant because this is also an accident-prone day for your kids, as well as an accident-prone day for sports in general. A social event might be cancelled or — you might receive a surprise invitation. Go figure.

Taurus (April 20-May 20)

Something will interrupt your home routine today. Let’s hope it’s not a broken appliance. (Happened to me.) It could be a minor breakage or someone unexpected might knock on your door. Something will be different. Get dressed.

Gemini (May 21-June 20)

Be careful and be mindful because this is an accident-prone day for your sign. We’re talking verbal accidents or physical accidents because something unexpected will change your daily routine. On the upside, new ideas, new faces and new places might be stimulating. (Hopefully not a hospital.)

Cancer (June 21-July 22)

You are never casual about money, which means it is in your best interests to keep your eyes open because something unexpected will affect your cash flow, earnings, or possessions. You might find money; you might lose money. Perhaps something you own will be damaged or lost? Forewarned is forearmed.

Leo (July 23-Aug. 22)

The moon is in your sign at odds with unpredictable Uranus, which can make you hasty, impulsive, careless and quick to jump to conclusions. (Yikes!) No matter what you do today, you’ll have a strong craving for excitement. (Don’t do anything you will regret.)

Virgo (Aug. 23-Sept. 22)

This is a restless day for you. You feel vaguely distracted by something, and you might not even know what it is. (Or you might know.) Fortunately, this is a fleeting influence that will pass quickly. Tomorrow is a solid day with a brief moon alert midday. Relax.

Libra (Sept. 23-Oct. 22)

A friend might surprise you by saying or doing something you least expect. Or possibly, you will encounter someone new who is unusual in some way — avant-garde or Bohemian? (Or maybe you are Bohemian and they are conservative?) It’s all relative.

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

You might have difficulty dealing with a parent, supervisor, boss or the police because authority figures will be a source of surprise for you today. (“Busted!”) If something happens, be cool. Do not be lippy. Never forget the power of courtesy.

Sagittarius (Nov. 22-Dec. 21)

Something will surprise you today. For starters, travel plans might be changed or canceled. Alternatively, you might suddenly have to travel when you did not expect to do so. School plans might change along with medical and legal schedules. Stay alert.

Capricorn (Dec. 22-Jan. 19)

Be mindful in all your discussions about shared property, taxes, debt, insurance issues and inheritances because something unexpected will affect these areas. Therefore, stay on top of your game so that you don’t lose money. Remember: What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away.

Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 18)

Because you feel so independent today, you might do the exact opposite of what someone suggests, or you might reject what someone says simply because they said it. (By nature, you are a rebel who marches to the beat of your own drum.)

Pisces (Feb. 19-March 20)

Today is full of a few surprises. Therefore, be careful with your pet because one of your surprises might be related to your pet. Avoid accidents. Your health might also be the source of a surprise. However, you can expect the unexpected with your job or any work that you do. Computer glitches and problems with technology are likely.

If Your Birthday Is Today

Actress, comedian, writer, producer Tina Fey (1970) shares your birthday. It’s fortunate that you have high energy because you are multitalented and fascinated by many things. You are compassionate, caring and genuinely interested in others. You are both practical and impulsive. At this stage in your life, you’re entering an entirely new cycle. It is a time of new beginnings and fresh starts. Open any door!

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Maybe city should rethink its short-sighted rat-removal program

Imagine you’re a human (hope that’s not a reach), and saber-toothed tigers are stalking you when you leave the house, and you don’t have a weapon.

Here are some stats on saber-toothed tigers: eight feet long, 600 pounds, seven-inch fangs and heads like basketballs. They ate big mammals but have been extinct for 10,000 years. Phew!

But my point is that a saber-toothed tiger would be to you as a house cat is to a songbird.

We like songbirds, don’t we? The little fellows in your backyard?

Cardinals, robins, thrushes, wrens, swallows, warblers, nightingales?

Birds repopulate quickly, but since 1970, North America has lost a quarter of its bird population — roughly 3 billion birds — to all kinds of trauma. Count climate change, pesticides, loss of habitat, collisions with glass buildings, windmills and cars as part of the reason.

Then there are cats.

Cats — those pets we Americans absolutely love, to the tune of roughly 100 million of the little preciouses — kill, according to the American Bird Conservancy, 2.4 billion birds a year in the U.S.

No, not all the deaths in that total are songbirds. Migratory birds, waterbirds and raptors are in jeopardy, too, from many forces.

But house cats (about 18 inches long, 10 pounds on average) when let out are pure lurking death for the type of bird we see and hear on a daily basis. Indeed, as the Conservancy states, “Predation by domestic cats is the number-one direct, human-caused threat to birds in the United States.’’

Remember, 2.4 billion birds. Think about that. It’s seven times the human population of the U.S., year after year. And almost 70% of that carnage is from outdoor, unowned cats.

This is why the well-intentioned release in Chicago of feral cats for rat-killing purposes is as dimwitted as it is pie-eyed.

You see, loose cats might kill a rat or two, but they’ll kill approximately 18 birds in the process. Rats are tough, nasty, disgusting, stealthy. Birds are sweet, chirping, well, sitting ducks.

It is true Chicago has been declared the ‘‘rattiest city’’ in the U.S. for the sixth straight year by the Orkin pest-control company, and we must do something about our vermin population.

But not this way.

Sure, it sounds good, this so called Cats at Work program. The Tree House Humane Society, which bills itself as ‘‘Chicago’s oldest cage-free cat shelter,’’ is placing 10-15 neutered and feral — read: homeless — cats in various locations around the city and has been for almost a decade.

The society provides a small outdoor, heated house, water and food to the ‘‘owners’’ of these street cats that otherwise likely would be euthanized.

The program is nice for the cats — 1,000 of which have been placed so far — but birds? Not so much.

In fact, studies have shown cats are not all that interested in rats. They’ll snag mice and chipmunks and shrews and voles and frogs and rabbits. Rats? Maybe.

But birds? Now that’s dinner!

The problem here is that cats are, per the Journal of Nature Communication, ‘‘natural born killers.’’

An article I’ve saved from the October 2016 issue of Smithsonian Magazine entitled, “A Plague of House Cats,’’ states baldly that cats are ‘‘the world’s most devastating invasive species.’’

The reason is that house cats, once from the Near East, while partially domesticated, retain all the killing tools of big cats. They haven’t undergone the deep metamorphosis that dogs and pigs and other domesticated animals have. They have retractable claws, sharp teeth, can climb trees and jump like panthers.

They can see in the ultraviolet, hear in the ultrasound and have an incredible understanding of three-dimensional space that allows them to judge the height of sounds.

Oh, and they always — always — land safely on their feet. Did you happen to see the cat that jumped from a flaming fifth-story Chicago apartment the other day — and walked away? There you go.

Nor does it matter if the outdoor cat wears a bell, is well-fed, is a tabby, solid color, furry or sleek. Cats want to kill something. All the time.

Pest control gone wrong has a long history. Consider harlequin ladybirds, poison toads, mosquitofish and, my favorite, the Asian mongoose, introduced to Hawaii to eat rats, even though it prefers — that’s right — birds instead.

You cat lovers never have to worry about cats dying out, by the way. They can breed at six months, and it’s estimated one amorous pair, unimpeded, could produce 354,000 descendants in five years.

So let’s stop rats some other way. Please?

And folks, keep your house cats in the house.

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Bronzeville Lakefront will take years to complete, but it could get underway in months.

It’s good to see a $3.8 billion plan to revitalize the largely vacant former Michael Reese Hospital site take another step forward.

A successful turn-around of the dormant Bronzeville tract could be just the kind of grand slam the South Side needs after decades of occasional base hits and some absolute strike-outs in attempts to bring transformative development south of Roosevelt Road.

The city’s Community Development Commission voted last week to sell the land to developers GRIT Chicago for $97 million. The group plans to build residences, offices, retails space and a medical research facility on the site.

The Chicago Plan Commission approved zoning for the project’s $600 million first phase in February.

“The redevelopment of this large parcel will bring a vacant, tax-exempt site back into use,” a report from the city’s Planning Department said. “The project will serve as a catalyst for continuing development along the South Side and south lakefront.”

An albatross unleashed

The former Reese campus has long represented one of Chicago’s biggest development blunders — a 48-acre albatross the city killed and hung around its own neck in 2009 when the Daley administration paid $90 million for the site and wrecked it in a failed bid to win the 2016 Summer Olympics.

An original 1909 main hospital building was lost in the demolition, as were a nice collection of modernist structures and landscapes that had been part of the hospital’s postwar expansion.

But under the development team of GRIT Chicago, the currently barren-looking acreage bounded by 31st Street, 26th Street, the Metra Electric tracks and Vernon Avenue would blossom into a new community of 7,000 residences, 8 million square feet of office, retail, research facility space and 10 acres of parks and open space.

Called Bronzeville Lakefront, construction on the project’s first phase could begin later this year.

The 500,000-square-foot medical research facility, called the Chicago ARC Innovation Center, is planned for the initial phase. To be operated by Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, the facility is especially intriguing given that Michael Reese Hospital was a medical pioneer in its prime.

It would be good to see some medical research firepower return to the site.

And in many respects, it’s also good that the city and developers see the building of Bronzeville Lakefront — gosh, that is a soulless, developer-driven name if there ever was once — as a long-term project, rather than a quick-fix development slapped up over a few seasons.

“It’s going to take a while to get this thing built; there’s a lot to do here,” Scott Goodman, managing director with GRIT partner Farpoint Development, said during a virtual town hall meeting last year.

“We think it could take up to 20 years. We hope a lot less time than that, but there will be a lot of benefit to it,” he said. “The indirect economic benefit for the entire region will be over $8 billion [over 20 years].”

Expensive, but potentially worth it

If there is a point of concern involving Bronzeville Lakefront, it’s the amount of taxpayer funds needed to help get the multibillion project to completion.

The city gets to pocket $96.9 million for selling the site but then has to shell out at least $31 million to clean up buried radioactive waste left behind by a uranium processing plant that operated on the north end from 1915 to 1920.

The city is also on the hook for $60 million to cover the cost of building new streets on the site. The Lightfoot administration said it would likely seek federal funding to help pay for the work.

Still, we looking forward to seeing action. We can imagine this project becoming a catalyst for making things happen on other large and long-abandoned sites on Chicago’s South and West sides.

Send letters to [email protected].

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