Change is good. And today, here on LWON, I’m announcing a personal change. I’m coming out. As a vegetarian. Some of you may be surprised that I’m not one already. With my career focus on animals and conservation, and my adoration for all creatures great and small, it might seem wrong for me to eat […]
Animals
Across the street are two houses with two small yards, connected so they look like one, shaded by trees, one of which has a rope looped in it. The little kids come out of both houses, run through the shade into the dapple-spots of sunlight, disappear back into the shade, grab the rope and swing, […]
Two weeks ago, while sitting on the floor building a puzzle with my toddler, I heard a window-rattling thud. I figured it was the neighbor’s soccer ball hitting the glass door again, so I got up feeling somewhat ticked. When I looked out the window, the first thing I saw was an absolutely apoplectic male […]
It was a bird of confluences. Nameless, to us. Gray as cloud belly, large as raptor, with eyes streaked over black as if with a stick of charcoal. The first time I saw it, I stood shin deep in the narrow, clear Pitman River, steps away from the line of opaque jade water marking its […]
Oh my but it was hot. The sun stayed out, the humidity kept climbing, the air was flat-white and dense, walking through it took more effort than it was worth. The temperature was in the upper 90’s, heat index in the upper 110’s, and they stayed that way for days. A cardinal sat in the […]
I was in the Galapagos Islands in July, which felt a bit like traveling to another planet. At least, that’s what I’d imagine an interplanetary hop to be like. The land features are familiar and yet not quite—lava fields still sharp and freshly black or dotted with hopeful plant life, colossal rocks turned to sculpture […]
In the part of your mind that is still animal, still wild, you remember fight or flight; the possibility of paws holding you down, and the hinge of jaws upon you. The thought no longer goes through our minds the way it must have long ago. Sometimes, though, the memory returns. I was considering such a scenario years […]
We came back from vacation earlier this month to find that someone else had moved in. I didn’t realize it at first—the house seemed just as we had left it, and we were busy emptying the car and starting the laundry and repopulating the house with the things we’d taken with us. It was later, […]
