Wild Life

...You got the lips that I’m mad about/ I got the lips that’ll knock you out/ C’mon wild one, be wild about me....


The Questing Sniff slips his leash to chase a neighborhood cat. It's a bold cat, and needed chasing. I had no idea the dog could slide from his collar at will. It's a trick he's been saving for An Occasion.

A tiny lizard, a skink, (I think!) plays on the cobbled apron of the Root Beer Float booth. It is striped and brownish, except for the tail, which is a startling neon blue, as though the skink had purchased it afterwards, for vanity. An upgrade. The lizard version of a boob job.

Mime Camp (extra posh this year: saucer chairs and carpet and a large plastic tote for a coffee table) has been adopted by a toad, presumably the Common American Toad, though he looks more like the Fowler's toad. There is some hybridizing between the two, which might account for his appearance. I say "his" though I have no way of determining the gender of this specimen. He seems undisturbed by our humanity and hops contentedly near our feet, hiding under our chairs with his backside tucked under the edge of our rug. Why a toad's butt should be colder than the rest of itself is beyond me. Just another herptological mystery.

Two striped spiders build webs near our home every night. Every morning, the webs are gone. One hangs on the corner formed by our porch roof and its endmost support. The other attaches to the crepe myrtle bush at the bottom, and to the night sky at the top. I was so surprised and thrilled to see this web stretch to infinity that I had to work most dilligently to not be disappointed when I at last spotted the spider spinning down from an overstretched electrical wire.


(Wild One; Bobby Rydell)