[essay in the quotidian]
Last night Daphne left her phone at the froyo place in the mall; it had been our last stop of the evening, a kind of compensation to the girls for tagging along as we badgered an old friend into trying on and ordering some spectacle frames rather more flattering to his features than the standard-issue Wayfarers he affected. When she found her phone—her lifeline to Instagram, to her various virtual pets, to her constantly-phoning and -texting friends—was missing, she was in tears. So we phoned the phone, & a few minutes later the young woman at the froyo place (it was late, but they were still cleaning up) phoned us back.
I walked over to collect it earlier today, rejoicing in a slightly cooler than lately (only in the upper seventies) and overcast day. I've been walking a lot lately—more on that later—and welcome any opportunity to pursue a pedestrian errand within a mile or two. And on the way to the mall and back, maybe a two-mile walk, I saw:
•At the pond in our neighborhood, the Muscovy duck and her brood of ducklings, grown out of the incredibly-cute-and-fuzzy stage, but still charming as all get out: not yet developing the red wattles that distinguish their parents.
•Also at the pond, what must have been a foot-and-a-half to two-foot turtle, scooting about just under the surface. Never got a decent look at him.
•Loads of the usual tiny lizards, and one or two foot-long, bright green iguanas. The population has bounced back after the killing winter a few years back; on my usual walk from the parking garage to my office at Our Fair University, I regularly come eye to eye with three-foot specimens.
•Sprawled on the sidewalk, and most definitely dead, a six-inch lizard of unidentified variety. His skin, on his limbs, tail, and head, was bright green; his body, a periwinkle blue.
•And finally, on the walk home from the mall (starting to sweat a bit, which always reminds me of Frank O'Hara), a four-foot Great Blue Heron wading in the canal, who cast an imperious and uninterested eye my way, then resumed scanning the murky water for lunch.
