Wildlife!
I’m so used to thinking of Manhattan as a barren slab of concrete, that whenever I hear birds or see some other sign of wildlife, I think there must be some sort of mistake. The other day, after a bout of sticky, hot weather followed by thundershowers, I saw a GINORMOUS dragonfly clinging to my window sill. It was the size of my freaking hand. Really, that thing was more dragon than fly, and if there hadn’t been a pane of glass between the two of us, I probably would have run far, far away. But since I was safe, I took a good, long, fascinated stare.
This morning, over coffee, Thomas and I decided to go to the beach. We threw stuff in bags and caught the ferry to Sandy Hook. The water was deliciously chill. We saw a poor seagull with a missing foot (but he was an otherwise healthy bird, and nice and plump) and wondered how that had happened. And there were plenty of jellyfish in the water (my husband calls them “meduses”—as in: Medusa, the Greek mythological character with snakes for hair. “Une meduse” is the French word for jellyfish, and he can never remember the English one). My fingers brushed against one in the water—EEEEK. I don’t like touching slimy, maybe stingy things in the sea. But it didn’t sting me. Maybe it was dead?
So that’s it for this week: prehistoric dragonflies, a crippled bird, and dead jellyfish. Oh, and also: a lovely day at the beach.
Leave a Reply