Checking each square around a point in a JPanel grid

Question

I have a Zoo (JPanel grid) full of animals (Arraylists). I wrote the nearBy(x, y) method to return the coordinates of any nearby animals in a 3x3 grid around X & Y, but realized my implementation would only cover 3 squares.

    public int[] nearBy(int x, int y) {
       int[] pair;
       int[] grid = new int[]{-1,0,1};
       for(int i; i>grid.size(); i++) {
           if(z.at(grid[i],grid[i]).size()>=1) { //See At method in Zoo
               return pair[] = new int[]{grid[i],grid[i]}
           }

           else{
            return pair[] = new int[]{x, y};
           }
        } 
    }

import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;

import java.util.*;

public class Zoo extends JPanel {

    // zoo grid size
    public static final int ZOO_ROWS = 30; // grid height
    public static final int ZOO_COLS = 40; // grid width
    // screen size is the zoo grid sizes * SCALE
    public static final int SCALE = 30;

 
    public static Random rand = new Random();

    //

    private int width, height;
    private ArrayList<ArrayList<LinkedList<Entity>>> grid;

    public Zoo(int w, int h) {
        // initalize the grid using ArrayLists for the rows and colums and LinkedLists for the cell stack
        grid = new ArrayList<>(h);

        for(int y = 0; y < h; y++) {
            ArrayList<LinkedList<Entity>> row = new ArrayList<>(w);
            for(int x = 0; x < w; x++) {
                row.add(new LinkedList<Entity>());
            }
            grid.add(row);
        }
        width = w;
        height = h;
    }

    public void paintComponent(Graphics g){
        super.paintComponent(g); 
        setBackground(Color.GREEN);

        // draw cell grids
        g.setColor(new Color(0, 200, 0)); // dark green
        for(int y = 0; y < height; y++) {
            g.drawLine(0, y * SCALE, width * SCALE, y * SCALE);
        }
        for(int x = 0; x < width; x++) {
            g.drawLine(x * SCALE, 0, x * SCALE, height * SCALE);
        }

        // draw Entities
        for(int y = 0; y < height; y++) {
            for(int x = 0; x < width; x++) {
                for(Entity e : grid.get(y).get(x)) {
                    e.draw(g);
                }
            }
        }


    // get a list of Entities at position x, y in the grid
    public ArrayList<Entity> at(int x, int y) {
        int atX = wrap(x, width);
        int atY = wrap(y, height);
        // ArrayList constructor copies references from the passed LinkedList
        return new ArrayList<Entity>(grid.get(atY).get(atX));
    }

}

I've tried bruteforcing it with if statements, but it's clunky and inefficient.