animals

Lately, I've felt the need to tell people about animals. Here's a quick list of recent animal correspondences and communications:

1. In Northampton, eating pizza after Cat Power, I interrupted a perfectly normal conversation to point out a bird carcass:



2. This year, for my annual Battle of the Boyne poem, The only thing I could think to write about were the Red Deer in Enniskillen. Usually, the poems have to do overtly with politics or familial history, but not this time. Nope, all I wanted to write about was staring down a captive deer in Enniskillen.



3. Last night, I wrote a message to Martyn. All it said was "very loud owl outside."

4. Also last night, I interrupted Melissa's schemes to get me rich so that I could tell her about the white dog wolf thing that I nearly hit on the drive over. I stopped the car. The thing was unscathed. I rolled down my window to tell it to get out of the road and go home. It circled my car, approached the window, and then—paws on the window sill—stuck its face in, smelling my left temple and ear. It got down and sauntered off into the woods.

5. At the pet store the other day, I saw something quite alarming. Some of you know that I have a near-paralizing fear of dead fish. I opened my car door and was about to step out when I saw one of those little baggies in which they package sold fish. It was on the hot pavement. There was water in the bag, but there was no fish!