She lowered her eyes, and suddenly saw the fox. He was looking up at her. His chin was pressed down, and his eyes were looking up. They met her eyes. And he knew her. She was spellbound–she knew he knew her. So he looked into her eyes, and her soul failed her. He knew her, [...]
In Virginia during the sixties and seventies, with a little concentrated looking, I could consort with eastern mud turtles, spotted turtles, elegant eastern painted turtles, snapping turtles, eastern box turtles, and even, I believe, although we lived rather east of its range as depicted in Petersen’s Eastern Reptiles and Amphibians, the occasional Terrapina ornata, the [...]
On a warm Virginia day I walked to the Eastern Seaboard Coastline double tracks near our house and came to a small pond lying between the track grade and the woods. A stand of wild irises grew in the water, along with rushes, green bubble-beaded algae, and sedges. It was a small habitat not entirely [...]
Saturday night, my husband and I made a last minute run to the only grocery store within 22 miles before it closed at 9 p.m. On the return trip, I drove with the SUV’s highbeams on, because we live on a country road whereon we’re likely to come across animals on the pavement, everything from [...]
I live in the Pittsburgh area, in the suburbs. Several mornings ago I was up a little earlier than usual, and the sun seemed to be coming up later than usual. I had the opportunity to watch out my kitchen window as dawn came to my neighborhood. Looking one direction out my window gives me [...]
I love stories like this.
The “Wow-ee!” response of the scientists involved would make for an interesting study, as well as the “maybe it’s the first example of invertebrate tool use but maybe it isn’t” facet of the story.
Everything is smarter than we think and has the prospect of becoming smarter, including us, if we could [...]
Satan and the snake had watched each other for a long time before either spoke. It was mid-morning—it was always mid-morning—and the breeze was pleasant and warm in the thick tangles of shining dark leaves. The snake, a long purple shadow, was hanging in negligent coils from a branch of the tree hanging with blue-spotted [...]
by Tyler Chadwick
The crow lays roadside,
fully dead, its swollen body
trimmed with grass. Its head,
cropped with beads of dew,
cocks awkwardly to one side,
the top eye muting the sky
in a flat, milky gaze, beak
cracked in perpetual “caw,”
though no sound escapes
save the rasp of leaves
tripped by the wind
through this wooded suburban lull.
___________________________________________________________
Originally published in Black Rock & Sage [...]
October 2, 2009. This morning, as I walk down the road toward Crossfire, I barely avoid stepping on a small, silver-and-grey-winged butterfly sitting on the pavement, trying, I think, to warm itself after our first night of ice-on-the-dog’s-dish cold. The insect’s coloration matches that of surrounding gravel. Only its thin wings and their accompanying shadow [...]
Why? Because it fits.
When she woke at sunrise, she squirmed out of her sleeping bag, stood up, opened her car door, and draped the bag over it to dry off millions of pinprick dewdrops that had bloomed on it during the night. When she turned to face the dune at the canyon rim, her attention [...]