I may have mentioned being on a walk a while back and coming upon what I thought were two cats along the side of my path. It turned out to be a cat and an opossum; just standing there like they were sharing some gossip. I couldn’t believe it.
Tonight as I was walking out around dusk, (and while I’m at this point in the day, isn’t crepuscule a word that should be on the same list as moist and phlegm and lugubrious?) an enormous raccoon comes walking out of the tall grass accompanied by a deer. They walked onto the middle of the sidewalk, stopped to observe my approach, and then turned together and walked back through the grass into the woods.
This is just what I need, woodland creatures making me feel inadequate and out of place.
It’s as if these wildly different animals are figuring out something that those of us with shared language skills cannot.