Spotted Tail Quotes

Save yourselves!” Percy warned. “It is too late for us!” Then he gasped and pointed to the spot where Frank was hiding. “Oh, no! Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!” Nothing happened. “I said,” Percy repeated, “Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!” Frank stumbled out of nowhere, making a big show of grabbing his throat. “Oh, no,” he said, like he was reading from a teleprompter. “I am turning into a crazy dolphin.” He began to change, his nose elongating into a snout, his skin becoming sleek and gray. He fell to the deck as a dolphin, his tail thumping against the boards. The pirate crew disbanded in terror.

He loves me, and I reward his love by forcing on him something he hates. In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always to the empty spot and the court always moves after him. He is like a dog trying to escape his own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy, and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being king.

I’m stuck fighting. (Acheron) You’re stuck fighting. But you’re welcome to come share my beach any time you get tired of the brawl. (Savitar) Save me a spot. If this blows up in my face, I’ll be back with my tail forever tucked between my legs. (Acheron)

And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre’s eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre’s newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life.

Ridiculous!" Chrysaor's voice turned shrill. He didn't seem sure where to level his sword-at Percy or his own crew. "Save yourselves!" Percy warned. "It is too late for us!" Then he gasped and pointed to the spot where Frank was hiding. "Oh, no! Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!" Nothing happened. "I said," Percy repeated, "Frank is turning into a crazy dolphin!" Frank stumbled out of nowhere, making a big show of grabbing his throat. "Oh, no," he said, like he was reading from a teleprompter. "I am turning into a crazy dolphin." He began to change, his nose elongating into a snout, his skin becoming sleek and gray. He fell to the deck as a dolphin, his tail thumping against the boards. The pirate crew disbanded in terror, chattering and clicking as they dropped their weapons, forgot the captives, ignored Chrysaor's orders, and jumped overboard.

The Roach shakes his head. “I can learn from Jude’s example, though. I can ask for a promise. If we’re spotted, if we’re set upon, promise to go back to Elfhame immediately. You must do everything in your power to get to safety, no matter what.” Cardan glances toward me, as though for help. When I am silent, he frowns, annoyed with both of us. “Although I am wearing the cloak Mother Marrow made me, the one that will turn any blade, I still promise to run, tail between my legs. And since I have a tail, that should be amusing for everyone. Are you satisfied?

it is better for both parties to come together without arms and talk it over and find some peaceful way to settle it. —SINTE-GALESHKA (SPOTTED TAIL) OF THE BRULÉ SIOUX

as Joe Kraue, CEA of JotSpot ... puts it, "Up until now, the focus has been on dozens of markets of millions, instead of millions of markets of dozens.

I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say: Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay, He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or he moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always toward the empty spot and the court moves always after him. He is like a dog trying to escape its own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being king.

He saw that there was something alive in it, and went near enough to read a sign that said, TWO DEADLY ENEMIES. HAVE A LOOK FREE. There was a black bear about four feet long and very thin, resting on the floor of the cage; his back was spotted with bird lime that had been shot down on him by a small chicken hawk sitting on a perch in the upper part of the same apartment. Mose of the hawk's tail was gone; the bear only had one eye.

Three hundred types of mussel, a third of the world’s total, live in the Smokies. Smokies mussels have terrific names, like purple wartyback, shiny pigtoe, and monkeyface pearlymussel. Unfortunately, that is where all interest in them ends. Because they are so little regarded, even by naturalists, mussels have vanished at an exceptional rate. Nearly half of all Smokies mussels species are endangered; twelve are thought to be extinct. This ought to be a little surprising in a national park. I mean it’s not as if mussels are flinging themselves under the wheels of passing cars. Still, the Smokies seem to be in the process of losing most of their mussels. The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct. Bryce Canyon National Park is perhaps the most interesting-certainly the most striking-example. It was founded in 1923 and in less than half a century under the Park Service’s stewardship lost seven species of mammal-the white-tailed jackrabbit, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, flying squirrel, beaver, red fox, and spotted skunk. Quite an achievement when you consider that these animals had survived in Bryce Canyon for tens of millions of years before the Park Service took an interest in them. Altogether, forty-two species of mammal have disappeared from America's national parks this century.

One of the windows shatters with enough force to tear down the blinds, saturating my place with muted light. I see a red figure standing in my living room at the same time I spot the daggers flying toward me. I leap onto the edge of the sink and hear the triple thud of knives slicing into the kitchen wall—to the hilt. I

Even his sleep was full of dreams. He dreamt as he had not dreamt since the old days at Three Mile Cross — of hares starting from the long grass; of pheasants rocketing up with long tails streaming, of partridges rising with a whirr from the stubble. He dreamt that he was hunting, that he was chasing some spotted spaniel, who fled, who escaped him. He was in Spain; he was in Wales; he was in Berkshire; he was flying before park-keepers’ truncheons in Regent’s Park. Then he opened his eyes. There were no hares, and no partridges; no whips cracking and no black men crying “Span! Span!” There was only Mr. Browning in the armchair talking to Miss Barrett on the sofa.

Two motorcycles rumble in behind me and park in open spots. It's Pigpen and Dust. They're part of the volunteers tailing me and Violet until we're safe.

Getting back to the issue of the child," Tina said, harshing our buzz as visual, "I really think you should reconsider. He—" The phone rang. She picked it up, glanced at the caller ID. "We're kind of busy," I said, a little sharply. The phone was a whole thing between Tina and me. "But—" "If it's important, they'll call back." "But it's your mother." I practically snarled. The phone, the fucking phone! People used it the way they used to use the cat-o'-nine-tails. You had to drop everything and answer the fucking thing. And God help you if you were home and, for whatever reason, didn't answer. "But I called!" Yeah, it was convenient for you so you called. But I'm in the shit because it wasn't convenient for me to drop everything and talk to you, on the spot, for whatever you needed to talk about.

If you think the person you're following has spotted you, turn and have a nice chat with a stranger on the street. The stranger may think you're a lunatic, but the person you're tailing will think you're harmless.

To Bury A Star" "I pulled a star from the darkest corner of night and hid it within my bosom. When the Earth beneath my feet gave way, moist and fertile, I knelt to the ground and cupped the radiant treasure in my hands. In a shallow hole I buried it—layer upon layer of black dirt tossed upon the spot until it no longer glowed. This I did for you, my love. Now, come with me and see what has been born from a single wishing star. Hand in hand we walk to the same spot of dirt to find the black and fertile soil sucked dry, the color blanched as pale as desert sands. Look how a ring of white fire jumps and dances around the buried starling! We catch our breath, beholding what has sprouted from this magical seed. The illusion of twisted branches glowing in the darkness like tails of comets soaring skyward—tails of baby stars that shoot like fireworks from that ring of fire. Up, up, up they fly to light a neglected corner of the night. From a single wishing star a thousand more have been born. They are for you, my love—a thousand dreams destined to come true.

THE FORTRESS Under the pink quilted covers I hold the pulse that counts your blood. I think the woods outdoors are half asleep, left over from summer like a stack of books after a flood, left over like those promises I never keep. On the right, the scrub pine tree waits like a fruit store holding up bunches of tufted broccoli. We watch the wind from our square bed. I press down my index finger -- half in jest, half in dread -- on the brown mole under your left eye, inherited from my right cheek: a spot of danger where a bewitched worm ate its way through our soul in search of beauty. My child, since July the leaves have been fed secretly from a pool of beet-red dye. And sometimes they are battle green with trunks as wet as hunters' boots, smacked hard by the wind, clean as oilskins. No, the wind's not off the ocean. Yes, it cried in your room like a wolf and your pony tail hurt you. That was a long time ago. The wind rolled the tide like a dying woman. She wouldn't sleep, she rolled there all night, grunting and sighing. Darling, life is not in my hands; life with its terrible changes will take you, bombs or glands, your own child at your breast, your own house on your own land. Outside the bittersweet turns orange. Before she died, my mother and I picked those fat branches, finding orange nipples on the gray wire strands. We weeded the forest, curing trees like cripples. Your feet thump-thump against my back and you whisper to yourself. Child, what are you wishing? What pact are you making? What mouse runs between your eyes? What ark can I fill for you when the world goes wild? The woods are underwater, their weeds are shaking in the tide; birches like zebra fish flash by in a pack. Child, I cannot promise that you will get your wish. I cannot promise very much. I give you the images I know. Lie still with me and watch. A pheasant moves by like a seal, pulled through the mulch by his thick white collar. He's on show like a clown. He drags a beige feather that he removed, one time, from an old lady's hat. We laugh and we touch. I promise you love. Time will not take away that.

As an example, when Zeus is dallying with the nymph Io, Hera spots them, so he turns Io into a lovely white heifer. Hera, not fooled, seizes the cow and places her under the guard of a giant named Argus Panoptes (“All-Seeing”) because his body is covered with one hundred eyes (making him, quite literally, the first private eye called in by a wife to intervene in a case of adultery). Zeus sends in the god Hermes to tell him a boring, endless story, which gradually puts Argus to sleep, one eye at a time; then Hermes kills him and frees Io. Not done, Hera sends a gadfly to chase Io (an apt choice for hassling a cow), which stings her all the way to Egypt. Hera takes all of the eyes from Argus’ corpse and puts them on the tail of her favorite bird, the peacock. Take away the fanciful elements and the metamorphoses, and you have a classic story of an unfaithful husband confronted by an angry wife who tries to get even with the other woman.

You rarely saw the celebs protesting anything of substance. The Glades weren't a sexy enough cause, but give the latest blonde-haired twenty-something who'd just hit it big on TV six or seven horn-tailed, red-spotted, sticky-beaked, pigeon-toed, multi-striped tree-owls who might occasionally fly over the two-mile zone pumping millions of barrels of oil out of the ground, and suddenly she began to feel a stronger connection to the land than the Ancient Ones, the Anasazi. Two months later of course, the only red-spotted, sticky-beaked creature in sight would be the little blonde's flush face when she made it on TMZ for failing a breathalyzer test and cursing the cop arresting her, shouting the typical Hollywood star mantra: "Don't you know who I am?

A certain quality of chance encounter has always affected me this way, exposing the state of things to be desperate and inescapable: spotted egg on pavement amid its own slight spill, shrine at a road sign, blue memory snapping like the tail of a stuck kite.

There were twenty-three females on the Keltar estate--not counting Gwen, Chloe, herself, or the cat--Gabby knew, because shortly after Adam had become visible last night, she'd met each and every one, from tiniest tot to tottering ancient. It had begun with a plump, thirtyish maid popping in to pull the drapes for the evening and inquire if the MacKeltars "were wishing aught else?" The moment her bespectacled gaze had fallen on Adam, she'd begun stammering and tripping over her own feet. It had taken her a few moments to regain a semblance of coordination, but she'd managed to stumble from the library, nearly upsetting a lamp and a small end table in her haste. Apparently it had been haste to alert the forces, for a veritable parade had ensued: a blushing curvaceous maid had come offering a warm-up of tear (they'd not been having any), followed by a giggling maid seeking a forgotten dust cloth (which--was anyone surprised?--was nowhere to be found), then a third one looking for a waylaid broom (yeah, right--they swept castles at midnight in Scotland--who believed that?), then a fourth, fifth, and sixth inquiring if the Crystal Chamber would do for Mr. Black (no one seemed to care what chamber might do for her; she half-expected to end up in an outbuilding somewhere). A seventh, eighth, and ninth had come to announce that his chamber was ready would he like an escort? A bath drawn? Help undressing? (Well, okay, maybe they hadn't actually asked the last, but their eyes certainly had.) Then a half-dozen more had popped in at varying intervals to say the same things over again, and to stress that they were there to provide "aught, aught at all Mr. Black might desire." The sixteenth had come to extract two tiny girls from Adam's lap over their wailing protests (and had stayed out of his lap herself only because Adam had hastily stood), the twenty-third and final one had been old enough to be someone's great-great-grandmother, and even she'd flirted shamelessly with the "braw Mr. Black," batting nonexistent lashes above nests of wrinkles, smoothing thin white hair with a blue-veined, age-spotted hand. And if that hadn't been enough, the castle cat, obviously female and obviously in heat, had sashayed in, tail straight up and perkily curved at the tip, and would her furry little self sinuously around Adam's ankles, purring herself into a state of drooling, slanty-eyed bliss. Mr. Black, my ass, she'd wanted to snap (and she liked cats, really she did; she'd certainly never wanted to kick one before, but please--even cats?), he's a fairy and I found him, so that him my fairy. Back off.

It was clear and frosty. A dark, starlit heaven looked down on the black roofs and the dirty, dusky streets. Only by looking up at the sky could Pierre distance himself from the disgusting squalor of all earthly things as compared with the heights to which his soul had now been taken. As he drove into the Arbat a vast firmament of darkness and stars opened out before Pierre's eyes. And there in the middle, high above Prechistensky Boulevard, amidst a scattering of stars on every side but catching the eye through its closeness to the earth, its pure white light and the long uplift of its tail, shone the comet, the huge, brilliant comet of 1812, that popular harbinger of untold horrors and the end of the world. But this bright comet with its long, shiny tail held no fears for Pierre. Quite the reverse: Pierre's eyes glittered with tears of rapture as he gazed up at this radiant star, which must have traced its parabola through infinite space at speeds unimaginable and now suddenly seemed to have picked its spot in the black sky and impaled itself like an arrow piercing the earth, and stuck there, with its strong upthrusting tail and its brilliant display of whiteness amidst the infinity of scintillating stars. This heavenly body seemed perfectly attuned to Pierre's newly melted heart, as it gathered reassurance and blossomed into new life.

Always, during both the low points and high points in our lives, if we needed to escape, we went bush. We were so lucky to share a passion for wildlife experiences. Tasmania, the beautiful island state off the southern coast of Australia, became one of our favorite wildlife hot spots. We so loved Tassie’s unique wildlife and spectacular wilderness areas that we resolved to establish a conservation property there. Wes and Steve scouted the whole island (in between checking out the top secret Tasmanian surf spots), looking for just the right land for us to purchse. Part of our motivation was that we did not want to see the Tasmanian devil go the way of the thylacine, the extinct Tasmanian tiger. A bizarre-looking animal, it was shaped like a large log, with a tail and a pouch like a kangaroo. It had been pushed off of the Australian mainland (probably by the dingo) thousands of years ago, but it was still surviving in Tasmania into the 1930s. There exists some heartbreaking black-and-white film footage of the only remaining known Tassie tiger in 1936, as the last of the thylacines paces its enclosure. Watching the film is enough to make you rededicate your life to saving wildlife.

Before the eyes of monks intent on meditation, what is the meaning of those ridiculous grotesques, those monstrous shapes and shapely monsters? Those sordid apes? Those lions, those centaurs, those half-human creatures, with mouths in their bellies, with single feet, ears like sails? Those spotted tigers, those fighting warriors, those hunters blowing their horns, and those many bodies with single heads and many heads with single bodies? Quadrupeds with serpents’ tails, and fish with quadrupeds’ faces, and here an animal who seems a horse in front and a ram behind, and there a horse with horns, and so on; by now it is more pleasurable for a monk to read marble than manuscript, and to admire the works of man than to meditate on the law of God. Shame! For the desire of your eyes and for your smiles!

Prum believes that animals may come to adopt certain aesthetic characteristics not because those traits are adaptive but simply because they are beautiful. This may be because of a sensory bias in the brain—a neurological feature that just prefers shiny things over nonshiny things—or a preference for novelty. But these attributes don’t necessarily signal that there is something better about the peacock with the extravagant tail. The peahen doesn’t like his tail more than others because it suggests he’s a strong and fit potential mate, but just because she likes how it’s shiny, and blue, and large. Prum bases this theory on a lifetime of studying birds like those in the drawers at his lab, many of which have plumage, skeletons, or songs that make it difficult for them to fly or easy to be spotted by predators.

I don’t know if you’ve ever watched a cat try to decide where to sit, but it involves a lot of circling around, sitting, getting up again, circling some more, thinking about it, lying down, standing up, bathing a paw or tail and . . . circling! A dog, on the other hand, sits. “This looks like a good spot,” a dog will say to himself. He will then lower his body to the spot in question and is usually so secure in his decision that he will fall asleep immediately.

What It Looks Like If you spot the spectacular luna moth, don't try to catch it. It is an endangered species. The luna moth has very long tails. Its color is a glowing green, but it also has touches of purple, brown, yellow, white and gray. From wingtip to wingtip, it is a little shorter than your hand length. You may see it just beneath a streetlight, waggling its wings, as if dancing. When its long, dangling tails sway in the breeze, it looks like a little lunar-green

Even in the coldest weather, the harbor, the fields, the woods, all are alive. Blue jays fly, and brown winter wrens; finches feed on birch seed. Tiny, unseen things crawl, hunt, live, die. Lacewings hibernate under the loose bark on the trees. Caddis-fly larvae carry houses made from plant debris on their backs, and aphids huddle on the alders. Wood frogs sleep frozen beneath piles of leaf mold, and beetles and back swimmers, newts and spotted salamanders, their tails thick with stored fat, all flicker in the icy waters above. There are carpenter ants, and snow fleas, and spiders, and black mourning cloak butterflies that flit across the snow like burned paper. White-footed mice and woodland voles and pygmy shrews scurry through the slash, ever-wary of the foxes and weasels and the vicious, porcupine-hunting fishers that share the habitat. The snowshoe hare changes its coat to white in response to the diminishing daylight hours, the better to hide itself from its predators. Because the predators never go away.

Why, all our art treasures of to-day are only the dug-up commonplaces of three or four hundred years ago. I wonder if there is real intrinsic beauty in the old soup-plates, beer-mugs, and candle-snuffers that we prize so now, or if it is only the halo of age glowing around them that gives them their charms in our eyes. The “old blue” that we hang about our walls as ornaments were the common every-day household utensils of a few centuries ago; and the pink shepherds and the yellow shepherdesses that we hand round now for all our friends to gush over, and pretend they understand, were the unvalued mantel-ornaments that the mother of the eighteenth century would have given the baby to suck when he cried. Will it be the same in the future? Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before? Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd? Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house? That china dog that ornaments the bedroom of my furnished lodgings. It is a white dog. Its eyes blue. Its nose is a delicate red, with spots. Its head is painfully erect, its expression is amiability carried to verge of imbecility. I do not admire it myself. Considered as a work of art, I may say it irritates me. Thoughtless friends jeer at it, and even my landlady herself has no admiration for it, and excuses its presence by the circumstance that her aunt gave it to her. But in 200 years’ time it is more than probable that that dog will be dug up from somewhere or other, minus its legs, and with its tail broken, and will be sold for old china, and put in a glass cabinet. And people will pass it round, and admire it. They will be struck by the wonderful depth of the colour on the nose, and speculate as to how beautiful the bit of the tail that is lost no doubt was. We, in this age, do not see the beauty of that dog. We are too familiar with it. It is like the sunset and the stars: we are not awed by their loveliness because they are common to our eyes. So it is with that china dog. In 2288 people will gush over it. The making of such dogs will have become a lost art. Our descendants will wonder how we did it, and say how clever we were. We shall be referred to lovingly as “those grand old artists that flourished in the nineteenth century, and produced those china dogs.” The “sampler” that the eldest daughter did at school will be spoken of as “tapestry of the Victorian era,” and be almost priceless. The blue-and-white mugs of the present-day roadside inn will be hunted up, all cracked and chipped, and sold for their weight in gold, and rich people will use them for claret cups; and travellers from Japan will buy up all the “Presents from Ramsgate,” and “Souvenirs of Margate,” that may have escaped destruction, and take them back to Jedo as ancient English curios.

Just the same old couple!’ said Dick. ‘You’ve got a spot on your chin, George, and why on earth have you tied your hair into a ponytail, Anne?’ ‘You’re not very polite, Dick,’ said George, bumping him with her suitcase. ‘I can’t think why Anne and I looked forward so much to seeing you again. Here, take my suitcase – haven’t you any manners?’ ‘Plenty,’ said Dick, and grabbed the case. ‘I just can’t get over Anne’s new hairdo. I don’t like it, Anne – do you, Ju? Ponytail! A donkey tail would suit you better, Anne!

Not many people know this desperate need to be put back together again. I have been split like the atom, and the effect on my psyche was just as powerful. Part of me is missing, even if it can’t be seen with the naked eye. A coin is not complete without both heads and tails. All of the negativity and unsavory characters in this environment only serve to make the exceptions shine all the more brightly. It causes you to appreciate kindness and consideration even more. When those with an inner beauty make their way into this hellish reality it shines forth like a beacon, and we denizens swarm to it like bugs to a zapper. In a very real way we’re starving to death, and these bright spots in the darkness are the only thing that can fill the hole. On an average day there is nothing kind, generous, caring, or sensitive within these walls. The energy directed at you is hatred, rage, disgust, stupidity, ignorance, and brutality. It affects you in mind, body, and soul, much like a physical beating. The pressure is relentless and unending. Soon you walk with your shoulders slumped and your

RECIPE FOR MAKING WONKA-VITE Take a block of finest chocolate weighing one ton (or twenty sackfuls of broken chocolate, whichever is the easier). Place chocolate in very large cauldron and melt over red-hot furnace. When melted, lower the heat slightly so as not to burn the chocolate, but keep it boiling. Now add the following, in precisely the order given, stirring well all the time and allowing each item to dissolve before adding the next: THE HOOF OF A MANTICORE THE TRUNK (AND THE SUITCASE) OF AN ELEPHANT THE YOLKS OF THREE EGGS FROM A WHIFFLE-BIRD A WART FROM A WART-HOG THE HORN OF A COW (IT MUST BE A LOUD HORN) THE FRONT TAIL OF A COCKATRICE SIX OUNCES OF SPRUNGE FROM A YOUNG SLIMESCRAPER TWO HAIRS (AND ONE RABBIT) FROM THE HEAD OF A HIPPOCAMPUS THE BEAK OF A RED-BREASTED WILBATROSS A CORN FROM THE TOE OF A UNICORN THE FOUR TENTACLES OF A QUADROPUS THE HIP (AND THE PO AND THE POT) OF A HIPPOPOTAMUS THE SNOUT OF A PROGHOPPER A MOLE FROM A MOLE THE HIDE (AND THE SEEK) OF A SPOTTED WHANGDOODLE THE WHITES OF TWELVE EGGS FROM A TREE-SQUEAK THE THREE FEET OF A SNOZZ-WANGER (IF YOU CAN’T GET THREE FEET, ONE YARD WILL DO) THE SQUARE-ROOT OF A SOUTH AMERICAN ABACUS THE FANGS OF A VIPER (IT MUST BE A VINDSCREEN VIPER) THE CHEST (AND THE DRAWERS) OF A WILD GROUT When all the above are thoroughly dissolved, boil for a further twenty-seven days but do not stir. At the end of this time, all liquid will have evaporated and there will be left in the bottom of the cauldron only a hard brown lump about the size of a football. Break this open with a hammer and in the very centre of it you will find a small round pill. This pill is WONKA-VITE.

all by its nearness to the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the enormous and brilliant comet of 1812—the comet which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre, however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears, at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly—like an arrow piercing the earth—to remain fixed in a chosen spot, vigorously holding

eyes. She felt the changes shimmer across her scales. The hardest part was the extra horns IceWings had around their heads. She concentrated on making her ruff look like it was made of icicles and hoped that would do. She also couldn’t make her claws ridged like IceWing claws, and her tail wasn’t as whip-thin at the end as an IceWing’s would be. Maybe this is a bad idea. Maybe there’s no way I’ll get away with it. But it was still pretty dark out . . . and she really, really wanted to know what a NightWing was doing out here. Well, she thought ruefully, if he figures me out, I guess I’ll just kill him. Somehow it didn’t sound as funny as she’d hoped. She leaped into the air and flew back to the spot where she’d seen the strange dragon. For a moment she was afraid she’d lost him, before she realized that he was lying down, his black scales half-hidden in the long shadows. Confidence, she told herself. It’s all about attitude. “Hey!” she barked, landing with a thump beside him. “Who are you, and what are you doing in our territory?” The NightWing leaped up in surprise and stared at her. He was a lot younger and smaller than Morrowseer, wiry and graceful in his movements even when he was startled. The silver scales sparkling under his wings caught the morning light like trapped stars. “Great moons. Where did you come from?” he asked. He looked up at the sky with a puzzled expression. “Where do you think?” she said. “And I’m asking the questions here. What are you doing in the Ice Kingdom?” “Technically this isn’t the Ice Kingdom yet,” he said. “Or didn’t you know that?” It isn’t? she thought. The map she’d memorized didn’t exactly have borders drawn on it, not that those would have helped her out here anyway.

In front of her was a large…animal. She supposed it resembled something equine, but its mane and tail were made of black and blue flames, and its body was black like night and spotted with starlight. Perched on its back was a woman she thought beautiful and exquisite. She looked just a few years older than Dylan’s almost eighteen years, but every inch of her was gorgeous enough to banish the darkness laying claim to Dylan’s soul. The beautiful woman wore a dress, ocean blue and glittering in the dim light of the forest. As Dylan watched, it changed into a blue-green color.

It wasn’t until Clay felt the sand under his talons and heard the roaring of the dragons in the stands that he realized he hadn’t quite thought this plan through. He had no idea what his fighting skills would be like against an unknown dragon. His mind went blank as the SkyWing guards dropped a hissing IceWing onto the ground opposite him. Did he know anything about IceWings? The sun was high in the sky, and it was much warmer in the arena than up on their prison spires. Clay could see beads of silvery liquid dripping through the IceWing’s glacier-blue scales. Above them, Queen Scarlet smirked from her balcony, with Glory sleeping serenely beside her. The same SkyWing announcer from the day before strutted to the center of the arena and bellowed at the crowd. “After last month’s battle with Blaze’s army, our queen’s dungeons were stuffed with IceWing prisoners of war. Only nine have survived. After two wins, I give you — Fjord of the IceWings!” Fjord lashed his tail and snarled at Clay. “And in this corner, an unusual case — a MudWing, but not one of our allies. No, this dragonet was found hiding under our mountains, protected by the Talons of Peace. Is he one of the dragonets of destiny? Not if he loses this battle!” A murmur of laughter rippled around the seats, but in the closest faces Clay could see expressions of uneasiness and, he thought, concern. He spotted a large MudWing in one of the balconies, frowning down at him. Try to stop this, Clay thought at him, praying hard. Do something! I’m one of you! But the MudWing shifted his gaze away, as if he didn’t want to watch but couldn’t afford to leave. The SkyWing announcer went on. “If these prophesied dragonets are as wonderful and legendary as they’re supposed to be, this should be a showdown to remember. I hope you’re prepared to impress us, dragon of the mud. I present to you … Clay of the MudWings! Claws up, teeth ready! Fight!” Clay

I love birds, she says dreamily into her son's ear, or maybe she just thinks it, she the one who taught him to name and spot the rare ones-the bar-tailed godwit, the whimbrel and Blackburnian warbler-just as her father had taught her, first from the fields and beach, then from inside, his wheelchair by the window, Petersons and binoculars in his lap, and she'd bike to the salt creek or climb to the top of the Teal Rock and sit there waiting, then ride back and drop her bike on the grass and go inside, to where the names flew from her mouth into her father's ears, a gift for both of them. "I love birds." She says it again, or maybe for the first time. "I know," Charlie says.

I’m Ghost 1 on the comms. Garcia is 2, Horn is 3, Fitz is 4, Rico is 5, and Tank is 6. When we land, we stay in close combat intervals. Fitz has point, Tank you’re on rear guard. Keep low to the ground. You spot anything, you signal it. And keep your distance. The juveniles can shoot their venom up to thirty feet. You are not to engage unless it’s a last resort. If you see them, we use our R49 grenades first. Complete radio discipline as soon as our boots hit dirt unless you’re about to get your arms ripped off. Understood?” Beckham spoke in a calm yet authoritative voice. It was a tone everyone respected. The members of Team Ghost all dipped their helmets. Apollo even wagged his tail.

If I wanted to punish myself, I’d keep looking at your face.” “Isn’t my face in half the pictures taped to your bunk wall?” “Maybe I keep them there to scare away the devil.” “Just show him your feet,” he said, going for her weak spot. She had adorable toes, but she hated that her second one was longer than the first. “He’ll run screaming back to hell with his forked tail between his legs.” “Keep talking and I’ll send you there to meet him.” “I’ll say hello to your demon-spawn mother while I’m there.” “Try not to wet yourself like you did at the palace.” “Hey!” He drew back an inch. That was hitting below the belt. “I was only four when that happened, and your mom was legitimately scary.

Pounce trotted past the newcomers, carrying a black kitten with a white bib and mittens in his mouth. The small creature hung in Pounce’s grip, ears flat, hindquarters and tail curled up. It seemed as dejected as a body could be at my cat’s handling… My cat dropped his captive in Aniki’s lap. He then lectured her in meows, saying, I cannot let you maul me about. Do it to him. …Kora grabbed Pounce. “Why her?” she asked, holding Pounce up. “I’m a mage. By rights I should have a cat. You like Aniki more than you like me!” Ersken said, “I think Pounce is in a giving mood today.” Here came my cat with a second kitten. This one was a light and dark brown ball with thin black stripes and spots. Pounce dropped it in front of Kora.

Coco?” I whispered, standing still, hardly able to believe it. “Oh—Coco?” “It is impossible to imagine,” a voice behind seemed to be saying from a great distance away, “how the dog could have reached this spot. For three days he has been immovable in his kennel.” I dropped on my knees, and took his paw in my hand. He gave the faintest wag of his tail, and tried to raise his head; but it fell back again, and he could only look at me. For an instant, for the briefest instant, we looked at each other, and while we looked his eyes glazed. “Coco—I’ve come back. Darling—I’ll never leave you any more——” I don’t know why I said these things. I knew he was dead, and that no calls, no lamentations, no love could ever reach him again. Sliding down on to the stone flags beside him, I laid my head on his and wept in an agony of bitter grief. Now indeed I was left alone in the world. Even my dog was gone.

I saw a striking example of this among the baboons that I study in Kenya, when both a high-ranking and a low-ranking female gave birth to daughters the same week. The former’s kid hit every developmental landmark earlier than the other, the playing field already unlevel. When the infants were a few weeks old, they nearly had their first interaction. Daughter of subordinate mom spotted daughter of dominant one, toddled over to say hello. And as she got near, her low-ranking mother grabbed her by the tail and pulled her back. This was her first lesson about her place in that world. “You see her? She’s much higher ranking than you, so you don’t just go and hang with her. If she’s around, you sit still and avoid eye contact and hope she doesn’t take whatever you’re eating.” Amazingly, in twenty years those two infants would be old ladies, sitting in the savanna, still displaying the rank asymmetries they learned that morning.

The gray she-cat’s eyes were wide with distress. “I went into the nursery with some fresh-kill for Daisy and Sorreltail,” she explained. “The nest was still warm, but Daisy and the kits were gone.” “We’ve searched the whole camp,” Sorreltail added, lashing her tail. “We’ll have to send out patrols to look for them.” “Well, you won’t be going,” Ferncloud told her, brushing her muzzle against Sorreltail’s shoulder. “You need to stay with your kits.” “Brackenfur’s with them,” the young tortoiseshell queen mewed. “I want to help look for Daisy.” “Yes, but—” Ferncloud broke off as a flash of flame-colored fur announced the appearance of Firestar from his den on the Highledge. The Clan leader ran down the rocks and across the clearing toward them. “What’s going on?” Ferncloud explained; before she had finished speaking, Brambleclaw spotted Dustpelt emerging from the thorn tunnel, at the head of the returning dawn patrol. Squirrelflight, Sandstorm, and Brightheart were with him. Brambleclaw beckoned them over with his tail. “Did any of you see Daisy

Two Kittens by Maisie Aletha Smikle Born to a cat called Mitten Were two tiny little kittens Nested in a basket They purred for the warmth of a blanket Coated in short velvet hair of midnight black From whiskers to tail they were beauty black Soft cuddly and adorable They searched uncontrollably Twisting and twirling Their little tails floundering Tiny purrs pleading They comb their little basket for a blanket To feed her little kittens And warm their tiny bodies Mitten must feed her tummy With something very yummy Mitten searched for food She stayed close to her brood With their small eyes still closed Mitten’s little kittens mainly dozed Mitten peered and listen Her bright ocean blue eyes glisten She spots a mouse Coming from a house The mouse had just feasted Groggy from its feast It moved slowly Mitten pounced boldly She knocked her target out Picked it up in her mouth And feasted with delight Then licked her whiskers clean till they glisten bright Mitten returned to her kittens And found them soundly fast asleep She covered her little kittens And soon fell fast asleep

THE INDIAN UPON GOD I PASSED along the water’s edge below the humid trees, My spirit rocked in evening light, the rushes round my knees, My spirit rocked in sleep and sighs; and saw the moor-fowl pace All dripping on a grassy slope, and saw them cease to chase Each other round in circles, and heard the eldest speak: Who holds the world between His bill and made us strong or weak Is an undying moorfowl, and He lives beyond the sky. The rains are from His dripping wing, the moonbeams from His eye. I passed a little further on and heard a lotus talk: Who made the world and ruleth it, He hangeth on a stalk, For I am in His image made, and all this tinkling tide Is but a sliding drop of rain between His petals wide. A little way within the gloom a roebuck raised his eyes Brimful of starlight, and he said: The Stamper of the Skies, He is a gentle roebuck; for how else, I pray, could He Conceive a thing so sad and soft, a gentle thing like me? I passed a little further on and heard a peacock say: Who made the grass and made the worms and made my feathers gay, He is a monstrous peacock, and He waveth all the night His languid tail above us, lit with myriad spots of light.

I sit by his bed and pull the covers over him. In doing so, I accidently brush against his thigh. And that’s when I feel it. That same electrical sensation I got the first time I touched the spot—in my room, when I begged him to stay the night. The feeling radiates up my spine and gnaws at my nerves. It’s like something’s there, marked on his leg. I run my fingers over the spot—through the blanket—almost tempted to have a look. I close my eyes, trying to sense things the way he does—to get a mental picture from merely touching the area. But I can’t. And I don’t. Still, I have to know if I’m right. I peer over my shoulder toward the door, checking to see that no one’s looking in. And then I roll the covers down. Ben’s wearing a hospital gown. With trembling fingers, I pull the hem and see it right away: the image of a chameleon, tattooed on his upper thigh. It’s about four inches long, with green and yellow stripes. And its tail curls into the letter C. I feel my face furrow, wondering when he got the tattoo, and why he never told me. It wasn’t so long ago that I told him the story of my name—how my mother named me after a chameleon, because chameleons have keen survival instincts.

His ears strained to pick up the least sound of tiny paws; instead, all he could hear was a furious yowling and scuffling that broke out somewhere ahead, near the Twoleg fence. Was something—maybe a Twoleg dog—attacking his warriors? He raced through the trees until he came to the edge of the wood. Ashfur and Brambleclaw were scuffling with an unfamiliar black-and-white cat. Brambleclaw had climbed onto the cat’s back, clawing at its neck fur, while Ashfur bit down hard on the end of its tail. The black-and-white cat was writhing on the ground, his flailing paws barely touching his attackers. “Get off me!” he yowled. “I need to see Rusty—I mean Firestar!” Firestar suddenly recognized the disheveled bundle of black-and-white fur. It was Smudge, the kittypet who had been his friend before Firestar left his Twolegs to live in the forest. “Stop!” He ran over to the wrestling cats, lowering his head to butt Brambleclaw hard in his flank. Brambleclaw slid off Smudge’s back, glaring up with a furious hiss that broke off when he realized who had interrupted the fight. “Leave him alone,” Firestar ordered. “But he’s an intruder,” Brambleclaw protested, scrambling to his paws and shaking dust from his pelt. “A kittypet intruder,” added Ashfur, reluctantly letting go of Smudge’s tail. “No, he’s not,” Firestar corrected them. “He’s a friend. What are you two doing here, anyway?” “We’re the border patrol,” Brambleclaw told him. “With Dustpelt and Mousefur. Look, here they come.” Following the direction of his pointing tail, Firestar spotted the two older warriors bounding rapidly through the trees. “In StarClan’s name, what’s going on?” Dustpelt demanded. “I thought a fox must have gotten you from all that noise.” “No, just a kittypet,” Firestar mewed, faintly amused at Brambleclaw’s and Ashfur’s outraged expressions. “Okay, carry on with your patrol,” he added. “But what about the kittypet?” Ashfur asked. “I think I can handle him,” Firestar mewed. “You’re doing fine, but just remember that not everything you haven’t seen before is a threat.” Brambleclaw and Ashfur fell in behind Dustpelt and Mousefur as they continued their patrol; Brambleclaw cast a threatening glance back at Smudge and hissed, “Stay off our territory in the future!” Smudge heaved himself to his paws, glaring at his attackers. His fur was covered in dust and stuck out in all directions, but he didn’t seem to be hurt. “You’re lucky I was here to save your pelt,” Firestar remarked as the patrol vanished among the trees. His old friend let out a furious snort. “I’ll never understand you, Firestar. You actually want to live with these violent ruffians?” Firestar hid his amusement.

Traveling on, the shaft of his light reached now a great, dully shining oblong, and he stopped, surprised. Then, through the glass sides, he saw bright shapes of fish wheel in schools down the opaque water, startled by the illumination. Coming at last, and so suddenly, on life like his own, Mr. Lecky moved closer. The fixed flood of his light enveloped these small fish dimly, glowed back on him. They came sliding, drifting, mouths in motion, gills rippling, up the light, against the glass. Their senseless round eyes stared at Mr. Lecky. Idling with great grace, the extravagant products of selective breeding - fringetails, Korean, calico - passed, swayed about, came languidly back. Moving faster, stub-finned, crop-tailed danios from the Malabar coast appeared, hovered, taking the light on their fat flanks, now spotted, now iridescent pearl or opal. Seeing so many of them, so eager and attentive, Mr. Lecky felt an unexpected compunction. He was their only proprietor; and soon, trapped unnaturally here in the big tank, they would starve to death. His light went back to a counter he had just passed, showing him again the half-noticed packages - food for birds and pet animals, food, too, for fish. Returning to the tank, his light found many of the fish still waiting, the rest rushing back. He went and took a package, tore the top off, and poured the contents onto the rectangle of open water. It would perhaps postpone the time when, having eaten each other, the sick remainder must die anyway.

Sometimes our need clouds our ability to develop perspective. Being needy is kind of like losing your keys. You become desperate and search everywhere. You search in places you know damn well what you are looking for could never be. The more frantic you become in trying to find them the less rational you are in your search. The less rational you become the more likely you'll be searching in a way that actually makes finding what you want more difficult. You go back again and again to where you want them to be, knowing that there is no way in hell that they are there. There is a lot of wasted effort. You lose perspective of your real goal, let's say it's go to the grocery store, and instead of getting what you need -nourishment, you frantically chase your tail growing more and more confused and angry and desperate. You are mad at your keys, you are mad at your coat pockets for not doing their job. You are irrational. You could just grab the spare set, run to the grocery store and get what you need, have a sandwich, calm down and search at your leisure. But you don't. Where ARE your keys?! Your desperation is skewing your judgement. But you need to face it, YOUR keys are not in HIS pocket. You know your keys are not there. You have checked several times. They are not there. He is not responsible for your keys. You are. He doesn't want to be responsible for your keys. Here's the secret: YOU don't want to be responsible for your keys. If you did you would be searching for them in places they actually have a chance of being. Straight boys don't have your keys. You have tried this before. They may have acted like they did because they wanted you to get them somewhere or you may have hoped they did because you didn't want to go alone but straight boys don't have your keys. Straight boys will never have your keys. Where do you really want to go? It sounds like not far. If going somewhere was of importance you would have hung your keys on the nail by the door. Sometimes it's pretty comfortable at home. Lonely but familiar. Messy enough to lose your keys in but not messy enough to actually bother to clean house and let things go. Not so messy that you can't forget about really going somewhere and sit down awhile and think about taking a trip with that cute guy from work. Just a little while longer, you tell yourself. His girlfriend can sit in the backseat as long as she stays quiet. It will be fun. Just what you need. And really isn't it much safer to sit there and think about taking a trip than accepting all the responsibility of planning one and servicing the car so that it's ready and capable? Having a relationship consists of exposing yourself to someone else over and over, doing the work and sometimes failing. It entails being wrong in front of someone else and being right for someone too. Even if you do find a relationship that other guy doesn't want to be your chauffeur. He wants to take turns riding together. He may occasionally drive but you'll have to do some too. You will have to do some solo driving to keep up your end of the relationship. Boyfriends aren't meant to take you where you want to go. Sometimes they want to take a left when you want to go right. Being in a relationship is embarking on an uncertain adventure. It's not a commitment to a destination it is just a commitment to going together. Maybe it's time to stop telling yourself that you are a starcrossed traveler and admit you're an armchair adventurer. You don't really want to go anywhere or you would venture out. If you really wanted to know where your keys were you'd search in the most likely spot, down underneath the cushion of that chair you've gotten so comfortable in.

speed in which he shifts nearly stops my heart. One moment I’m talking to him, the next a gigantic feline prowls over the long dining room table, batting plates aside and growling as he stalks toward me. Scooting my chair back, properly terrified, I quickly say, “Apparently I was wrong.” The lion still appears as if he’s going to attack. “A lion is impressive, yes, but what about an elephant?” I continue. “Can you change into a beast that large? Surely not.” With a loud crack and flying wood, the table collapses as the lion morphs into a creature so gigantic, there is scarcely room for him. Dishes, settings, and candelabras fly this way and that. The elephant holds a huge foot over me. “Are you impressed yet, Carabas?” “Quite,” I squeak and then clear my throat. “But, now that I think of it, it’s only natural that a large creature such as yourself can change into other large creatures. Not that difficult, really.” Slowly, the ogre-elephant lowers his foot, looking as if he’s about to gore me with his tusks. Standing, hoping to put a little distance between me and the beast, I add, “But to change into something tiny, something insignificant—now that would be a feat.” “Like what, Carabas?” the ogre glares at me with foreign eyes. “A rabbit? A grouse?” I shrug. “Certainly, but what about something as tiny as…a mouse? That would be quite impossible, would it not?” And just like that, the elephant is gone, vanished before my very eyes. I frantically look for him in the broken plates, splintered table, and mess of molten wax on the floor. Before I even spot the rodent the ogre shifted into, Puss leaps into the middle of the mess, pouncing with outstretched paws and a greedy look in his bright green eyes. A tiny gray tail disappears into the cat’s mouth, and that is my very last glimpse of the ogre. I stare at Puss with disbelief. The world slows, and the steady thrum of the grandfather clock in the corner is the only thing that tells me that time hasn’t actually stopped. “It

She'd loved birds long before her physical limitations kept her grounded. She'd found a birding diary of her grandmother's in a trunk in the attic when she was Frankie's age, and when she asked her father about it, he dug through boxes on a shelf high above her head, handing down a small pair of binoculars and some field guides. She'd seen her first prothonotary warbler when she was nine, sitting alone on a tupelo stump in the forest, swatting at mosquitoes targeting the pale skin behind her ears. She glanced up from the book she was reading only to be startled by an unexpected flash of yellow. Holding her breath, she fished for the journal she kept in her pocket, focusing on the spot in the willow where he might be. A breeze stirred the branches, and she saw the brilliant yellow head and underparts standing out like petals of a sunflower against the backdrop of leaves; the under tail, a stark white. His beak was long, pointed and black; his shoulders a mossy green, a blend of the citron yellow of his head and the flat slate of his feathers. He had a black dot of an eye, a bead of jet set in a field of sun. Never had there been anything so perfect. When she blinked he disappeared, the only evidence of his presence a gentle sway of the branch. It was a sort of magic, unveiled to her. He had been hers, even if only for a few seconds. With a stub of pencil- 'always a pencil,' her grandmother had written. 'You can write with a pencil even in the rain'- she noted the date and time, the place and the weather. She made a rough sketch, using shorthand for her notes about the bird's coloring, then raced back to the house, raspberry canes and brambles speckling bloody trails across her legs. In the field guide in the top drawer of her desk, she found him again: prothonotary warbler, 'prothonotary' for the clerks in the Roman Catholic Church who wore robes of a bright yellow. It made absolute sense to her that something so beautiful would be associated with God. After that she spent countless days tromping through the woods, toting the drab knapsack filled with packages of partially crushed saltines, the bottles of juice, the bruised apples and half-melted candy bars, her miniature binoculars slung across one shoulder. She taught herself how to be patient, how to master the boredom that often accompanied careful observation. She taught herself how to look for what didn't want to be seen.

Few grown humans can normally survive a fall of much more than twenty-five or thirty feet, though there have been some notable exceptions—none more memorable perhaps than that of a British airman in World War II named Nicholas Alkemade. In the late winter of 1944, while on a bombing run over Germany, Flight Sergeant Alkemade, the tail gunner on a British Lancaster bomber, found himself in a literally tight spot when his plane was hit by enemy flak and quickly filled with smoke and flames. Tail gunners on Lancasters couldn’t wear parachutes because the space in which they operated was too confined, and by the time Alkemade managed to haul himself out of his turret and reach for his parachute, he found it was on fire and beyond salvation. He decided to leap from the plane anyway rather than perish horribly in flames, so he hauled open a hatch and tumbled out into the night. He was three miles above the ground and falling at 120 miles per hour. “It was very quiet,” Alkemade recalled years later, “the only sound being the drumming of aircraft engines in the distance, and no sensation of falling at all. I felt suspended in space.” Rather to his surprise, he found himself to be strangely composed and at peace. He was sorry to die, of course, but accepted it philosophically, as something that happened to airmen sometimes. The experience was so surreal and dreamy that Alkemade was never certain afterward whether he lost consciousness, but he was certainly jerked back to reality when he crashed through the branches of some lofty pine trees and landed with a resounding thud in a snowbank, in a sitting position. He had somehow lost both his boots, and had a sore knee and some minor abrasions, but otherwise was quite unharmed. Alkemade’s survival adventures did not quite end there. After the war, he took a job in a chemical plant in Loughborough, in the English Midlands. While he was working with chlorine gas, his gas mask came loose, and he was instantly exposed to dangerously high levels of the gas. He lay unconscious for fifteen minutes before co-workers noticed his unconscious form and dragged him to safety. Miraculously, he survived. Some time after that, he was adjusting a pipe when it ruptured and sprayed him from head to foot with sulfuric acid. He suffered extensive burns but again survived. Shortly after he returned to work from that setback, a nine-foot-long metal pole fell on him from a height and very nearly killed him, but once again he recovered. This time, however, he decided to tempt fate no longer. He took a safer job as a furniture salesman and lived out the rest of his life without incident. He died peacefully, in bed, aged sixty-four in 1987. —

Brisbane!” I exclaimed, only his mouth was on mine and the word was lost. After a long and thoroughly pleasurable moment, he lifted his head and I tried to catch my breath. His hand was still in a compromising spot and I returned the favour, smothering his groan with my lips. He was muttering something and I pulled away to hear it. “Forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours.” “Unless,” I began, then broke off, feeling suddenly shy. “Unless?” he prompted, his witch-black eyes glittering brilliantly in the dim light. “Unless you would like to slip upstairs now,” I murmured. “I can dismiss Morag. No one need know.” A slow smile curved his lips and he bent his head to nip my lower lip with his teeth. “Tempting, my lady. But I am engaged to play billiards with your father and your brother Benedick. They have threatened my manhood if I do not appear, and I’d rather keep that intact.” “So would I,” I said seriously. He burst out laughing and kissed me again. “Tomorrow after luncheon. The river meadow.” I nodded and he slipped out from behind Maurice, leaving me deliciously bemused. I adjusted the décolletage of my gown and waited a few seconds, then emerged. Out of the tail of my eye, I caught a glimpse of a white apron whisking around the corner. One of the maids, eavesdropping, no doubt. And I had a very good idea which.

Set your mind for victory You may not realize it, but that’s setting the tone for defeat, for failure, for a lousy day. The first thing you should do is get your mind going in the right direction. This is why many people don’t have enough energy, joy, vision, or passion. Their minds are set on the negative. It’s been that way so long they don’t know any better. It’s normal to them. They go through the day expecting problems, bad breaks, to barely get by, and to be mistreated. They live by Murphy’s Law, which says, “If anything can go wrong, it will, and at the worst possible time. Things will take longer than you thought. It will be more difficult than it seems.” Because these people haven’t set their minds, they expect negative things to happen. They wonder why they have such a tough time, and why they can’t get ahead. It’s because they’re setting their minds for defeat, for bad breaks, for failure. If you have fallen into that negative mind-set, you’ve got to change your outlook. You are a child of the most high God. You’ve been crowned with favor. You were never created to live an average, get-by, short-end-of-the-stick life. You were created to be the head and not the tail, to lend and not borrow, to reign in life as a king. You have royalty in your blood. Winning is in your DNA. Now get rid of that negative mentality, and set your mind for victory. Set your mind for increase. Set your mind for good breaks. Start expecting your plans to work out. Expect people to be good to you. Expect to have a productive day. If it doesn’t happen, don’t fall back into that old negative mentality by thinking things like: “I should have known it would not work out for me. I never get good breaks. I never find a good parking spot. These people never treat me right. It always takes me longer than anyone else.

It was just Steve and his dog, Chilli. The huge saltwater crocodile had repeatedly outwitted hunters with high-powered rifles and “professionals” from crocodile farms sent in to exterminate him. Steve took up a hunt that had already lasted for years. Only he planned to save this modern-day dinosaur rather than kill it. One night the croc almost took him instead. He spotted a smaller female and set a net across the river to snare her. But something was wrong. An incredible force pulled the net upstream, against the current and against all logic. Steve started his outboard, but it didn’t help. The bow of his boat pitched downward, taking on water. He rushed to cut the net free before the croc swamped the boat. He needn’t have bothered. The bow of the boat suddenly surged upward and the net hung limp. Steve pulled it in and found a gaping hole as big as his dinghy. The heavy-duty trawler mesh had been torn straight through. The next morning, Steve took his boat out and saw what had happened. The big male had triggered the trap and was snared in the mesh--sort of. Even though the rectangular-shaped net was the biggest he had, the croc’s tail and back leg stuck out. But the black ghost had finally been caught.

Steve knew just how and when to find them. We headed out early the next morning, before there was wind. The temperature was exactly right at eighty-six degrees Fahrenheit. Steve got a faraway look in his eye, as though he was concentrating or communicating. Then he headed off. Ten minutes later, we were on the trail of a fierce snake. “Would you like to tail one?” Steve asked. “Are you kidding?” I said. “I don’t know how to catch a fierce snake.” Steve had already “tailed” one of the snakes. Gently grabbing the end of its tail, he could hold it at arm’s length and examine it. During this procedure, snakes would often defecate, and we could get some clue about what they’d been eating. Steve would tail a snake, put it in a bag, release it, and keep what remained. “You grab the next one,” Steve said. He spotted a four- or five-foot-long fierce snake. It glistened in the sun like glass, brilliantly shiny and sleek. “It’s warming up now,” Steve said as we approached. “You’re going to have to be quick.” Yes, Terri, I said to myself, please be quick so as not to get struck by the most venomous snake on earth. If you get bitten out here, you’re in a load of trouble. We crept up behind the fierce snake. I got close enough to grab it, but the snake suddenly and violently swung its head around, directly at me, poised and ready to strike. I backed off abruptly. Time and again I approached the snake just as I’d seen Steve do it: Walk up behind the snake as it started to slither away, and grab it by the tail. I knew what to do, but I couldn’t do it. Every time I reached down, the snake would swing around and I would jump a mile. We wandered farther and farther on the trail of the snake. I could see our truck way in the distance. I sweated profusely. I kept thinking the same thought. If I get bitten by this snake, I’m dead. Then I would try to push that thought away. Stop thinking, just grab the snake. Steve wouldn’t ask you to do something that you couldn’t do. But the whole process was becoming ridiculous. “What am I doing wrong?” I wailed. “You are too bloody scared,” Steve said. “Oh,” I said. Then I reached down and picked up the snake. It was magic. Once I had the nice, soft, supple body in my hands, it was as though the snake and I had a connection. Its skin was warm to my touch from sitting in the sun. I suddenly understood exactly how to hold on so it wouldn’t get away, and yet not squeeze it so tightly that it would get angry. The snake naturally kept trying to move off. I let the front part of its body stay on the ground and held the tail up. I felt such triumph--not that I had dominated the snake, but that it had let me pick it up. Steve held out the catch bag, and I carefully dropped the snake in. He tied a knot in the bag. We looked at each other and grinned. Then we both whooped and hollered and jumped in the air. He hugged and kissed me. “I’m proud of you, Terri,” he said. Once again I marveled at Steve’s instincts. He knew that this particular snake would be okay for me to pick up. He never hesitated, he never yelled at me or coached me--until I asked for help. Then he simply told me what to do.

There were several methods by which the Indians obtained eagle feathers. Some tribes dug a pit in the ground in the areas known to have eagles. These pits were large enough to conceal a brave. The trap was baited with a live rabbit or pieces of buffalo meat, and the opening was covered with a buffalo hide or brush. A large enough opening was left so that the Indian crouching in the pit could grab the tail feathers of the bird alighting to take the bait. The bird would lose its feathers, but could escape unharmed to grow new tail feathers by its next moulting period. This method was very dangerous. Often bears, attracted by the bait, would discover and kill the Indian. Sometimes eagles were caught and killed for their feathers. There also were tribes who captured young eagles while they were still in the nest. These birds were tethered by a leather thong around their leg and were kept solely for their feathers; they were plucked regularly. These birds seldom became tame and never lost their desire for freedom. They continually would fly into the air as far as the leather thong would allow, screaming their defiance at their captor. Regardless of where or how an Indian brave accumulated feathers, he was not allowed, according to tribal law, to wear them until he won them by a brave deed. He had to appear before the council and tell or re-enact his exploit. Witnesses were examined and if in the eyes of the council the deed was thought to be worthy, the brave was authorized to wear the feather or feathers in his hair or war bonnet. These honors were called “counting coup” (pronounced “coo”). Deeds of exceptional valor (such as to touch the enemy without killing him and escape) were called “grand coup” and were rated more than one feather. Sometimes a tuft of horsehair or down was added to the tip of a feather to designate additional honor. Some tribes designated special deeds by special marking on “coup” feathers, such as cutting notches or adding paint spots. The coup feathers of the American Indian can be compared to the campaign ribbons and medals awarded to our modern soldier. An Indian would rather part with his horse, his tepee, or even his wife, than to lose his eagle feathers. To do so would be to be dishonored in the eyes of the tribe. Many old Indian chiefs, such as Many Coup of the Crow tribe, had won enough honors to wear a double-tailed bonnet that dragged on the ground and to carry a feathered lance to display the additional feathers.

You don’t have to be a scout to spot the tough guy. A true tough guy has a kind of aura about him. Watch a bunch of dogs in the park. They all know which one not to mess with, even if he’s just trotting along with his tail in the air.

Willow Tail and Spotted Fur so edgy?

They had almost come to the tree's central trunk when Pouncer froze, tail erect with the tip cocked forward. She had learned that signal meant freeze and she did. T'suuz, some ten meters behind him, froze as well. Very slowly Pouncer pointed down. For a long moment Cherenkova saw nothing, and then movement on the jungle floor caught her eye. It was a rapsari sniffer, small and round bodied, proboscis swinging back and forth as it searched for familiar scents. It had sensed something, but it was confused. It advanced slowly, circling first left, then right. Its handler came behind it, riding one of the reptilian raiders and wearing full mag armor. He snarled something quietly into his comlink. Cherenkova held her breath. A second raider-mounted Tzaatz came up beside the handler. The two conferred momentarily in muted snarls. A gravcar whined overhead. The handler sniffed suspiciously and Cherenkova held her breath. The second Tzaatz looked up, searching the branches. He seemed to be looking right at her and she wanted to scream, her pulse pounding in her ears. It seemed impossible that he didn't see her. Slowly he raised his binoptics to his eyes and started methodically scanning overhead. He hadn't seen her, but he would any second. The rapsar sniffer had circled back. Two more Tzaatz moved through her field of view, one of the reptillian raiders grunting. How many were there? Suddenly she found herself eye to eye with kzinti binoptics. The Tzaatz snarled and pointed right at her and cold fear shot through her system. They were caught, and she was acutely aware that the Tzaatz were under no obligation not to eat her. The sniffer handler looked up and snarled as well. She started to climb away. They hadn't spotted Pouncer or T'suuz. If she could lead the hunters away they might be able to ambush the Tzaatz. At least they wouldn't all be taken together. She looked down to see the warrior raising a crossbow. There was a scream, suddenly cut off, and the warrior looked away from her. She saw him startle and fire at something she couldn't see, and then a rapsar raider ran past without its rider, and both Tzaatz spun their mounts to run. The ground shook under heavy impacts and then something appeared out of nowhere and bit the closer Tzaatz in half. It was easily twenty meters long, and amazingly fast for that bulk, long necked and sinuous, like a wingless dragon. The other Tzaatz turned to face it, drawing his variable sword in an act of undeniable courage. Before he could swing at it another of the beasts thundered in and snapped him up, impaling him on half-meter fangs and shaking him like a wolf with a rabbit, decapitating his raider rapsar almost accidentally in the process. The other Tzaatz had fled, but distant, heavy footfalls shook the jungle floor, followed by a deep, rumbling call. The grlor hunted in packs, Pouncer had said.

Steep black-cindered slope, with its soft gray patches of grass, sheered down and down, and out in rolling slope to merge upon a cedar-dotted level. Nothing moved below, but a red-tailed hawk sailed across her vision. How still-how gray the desert floor as it reached away, losing its black dots, and gaining bronze spots of stone! By plain and prairie it fell away, each inch of gray in her sight magnifying into its league-long roll, On and on, and down across dark lines that were steppes, and at last blocked and changed by the meandering green thread which was the verdure of a desert river. Beyond stretched the white sand, where whirlwinds of dust sent aloft their funnel-shaped spouts; and it led up to the horizon-wide ribs and ridges of red and walls of yellow and mountains of black, to the dim mound of purple so ethereal and mystic against the deep-blue cloud-curtained band of sky.

BY 1876, THE YEAR THE Battle of the Little Bighorn was fought, the United States had become a nation of some forty million people, the vast majority of whom had never seen a fighting Indian—not, that is, unless they happened to glimpse one or another of the powerful Indian leaders whom the government periodically paraded through Washington or New York, usually Red Cloud, the powerful Sioux diplomat, who made a long-winded speech at Cooper Union in 1870. Or, it might be Spotted Tail, of the Brulé Sioux; or American Horse, or even, if they were lucky, Sitting Bull, who hated whites, the main exceptions being Annie Oakley, his “Little Sure Shot,” or Buffalo Bill Cody, who once described Sitting Bull as “peevish,” surely the understatement of the century. Sitting Bull often tried to marry Annie Oakley, who was married; he did not succeed.

They had left the buckets of stemmed flowers and now found themselves in the center of the indoor succulent section, an array of miniature plants with whimsical names such as burro's tail and flaming katy. Olive slowed her pace, taking her time perusing metal racks of each variety. She stooped down and plucked a container of a sweet, blossom-shaped plant. "What's that one?" Julia asked. She liked the look of its pink-edged tips, whose color reminded her of a radish. "This guy here is called roseum. It likes the sun, so I'd have to think of a spot near a window. But it's a nice touch of color among all the green. At different times of year, it develops clusters of light-pink star-shaped flowers. I like it because it adds texture next to something like, say, that jade plant, which is more like a stocky little tree. If I place them together, it adds interest." "Wow. That sounds great." Olive brightened. "Thanks. And then, see these here?" She pointed to a miniature plant with chubby, rosette-style leaves. "Yes?" Julia leaned closer and squinted to read the sign. "The one that says 'Sedum Golden Glow'?" "Yes. That one. I'm thinking of getting a few of those guys and placing them on the dining table in these cool little glass-and-gold terrariums I found online. They have delicate little panes of glass set against metal frames that catch your eye, and they're fancy enough for Mom's taste. She's okay if I do rustic, but she always wants a touch of something expensive mixed in. The terrariums do the trick, I think.

One blow to his shoulder unbalanced Tigerstar. He fell on his side, exposing his belly, and Scourge’s vicious claws sank into his throat. Blood welled out as the smaller cat ripped him down to the tail with a single slash. A desperate scream of fury erupted from Tigerstar, then broke off with a ghastly choking sound. His body convulsed, limbs jerking and tail flailing. For a heartbeat a stillness settled over him, and Firestar knew he was falling into the trance of a leader who loses a life, to wake after a little while restored to strength and with the rest of his lives intact. But not even StarClan could heal this terrible wound. Scourge stood back and watched coldly as Tigerstar’s body convulsed again. The dark red blood kept on flowing, spreading across the ground in a ceaseless tide. Tigerstar let out another shriek; Firestar wanted to cover his ears so he didn’t have to listen anymore, but he was frozen to the spot. Again the massive tabby’s body grew still for a heartbeat, but again the wound was too terrible to yield to the healing trance. Another spasm seized Tigerstar’s body. His claws tore up clumps of grass in his agony, while his screeches turned from fury to terror. He’s dying nine times,

I'd been drawn to an orange Siamese fighter fish with fins that moved like a graceful flamenco dancer, and I'd wanted one for the big tank in the restaurant until Charles explained that he (or she) would kill all the other fishes we'd picked out---tropical delights in all the colors of the rainbow, some spotted like leopards, all being delivered to the restaurant tomorrow morning. I tap on the glass. "I'm going to name you Frushi. French sushi. Don't worry, nobody is going to eat you. The sea bass, on the other hand, that's another story." Frushi shows off, wiggling his featherlike tail and fins, which look like they're made of inky silk, as he swims through the tiny castle and live plants I'd purchased for his new home.

This war did not spring up here in our land; this war was brought upon us by the children of the Great Father who came to take our land from us without price, and who, in our land, do a great many evil things. The Great Father and his children are to blame for this trouble. … It has been our wish to live here in our country peaceably, and do such things as may be for the welfare and good of our people, but the Great Father has filled it with soldiers who think only of our death. Some of our people who have gone from here in order that they may have a change, and others who have gone north to hunt, have been attacked by the soldiers from this direction, and when they have got north have been attacked by soldiers from the other side, and now when they are willing to come back the soldiers stand between them to keep them from coming home. It seems to me there is a better way than this. When people come to trouble, it is better for both parties to come together without arms and talk it over and find some peaceful way to settle it. —SINTE-GALESHKA (SPOTTED TAIL) OF THE BRULÉ SIOUX

Bernie, a giant Bernese mountain dog and Lab mix (she guessed), had a long coat, mostly black except for a streak of white starting on her forehead, then trailing down her throat and onto her chest, with another spot under her tail, making her look like a cream-filled chocolate-dipped cannoli. Three of her four paws looked dunked in white paint, like she'd made a mess during a home improvement project. She was named for one of Astra's favorite characters, Bernadette Fox from Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Like the titular character, Bernie had a small circle of people she adored; she found the rest to be annoying gnats (small children excluded--- they often had snacks to share), not to be bothered with, except the squirrel who lived in the front yard, who was her nemesis. She spent hours making sure the little rodent didn't sneak into the house.

Most of what we know of the Shepherd King we take from lore. His histories were destroyed, and none of his children survived to claim the throne. Brutus Rowan, his Captain of the Guard, became the next King of Blunder.” The Nightmare’s tail twitched, stirring the darkness in my mind. I paused. “Suppose we manage to find the Twin Alders.” I looked up at the Yews. “Whose blood do you intend to use to unite the Deck?” Fenir leaned forward. “You may have met him. He’s head of the King’s Physicians.” The tall, narrow man with eerily pale eyes. “Orithe Willow?” I cried. “He’s infected?” Fenir picked up The Old Book of Alders, gingerly placing it back onto his shelf. “Like yourself,” he said, “Orithe caught the infection as a child. But the King kept him alive for one reason. Orithe’s magic allows him to spot the infection in others. Surely you’ve seen the apparatus he wears around his hand?” I had. It was a metal claw, with long, angry spikes reaching out from each of his pale fingers. I felt the blood drain from my face. “Orithe uses that—that device—to see the infection in others?

Jane, may I introduce our house guest Miss Elizabeth Charming of Hertfordshire?” “How do you do, Miss Erstwhile, what-what?” said Miss Charming, her tightened lips trembling with the effort of approximating a British accent. “Spit spot I hope, rather.” “How do you do?” They both curtsied and Miss Charming made a silent “shh” with her lips, as though Jane would out her for the stairway meeting. Jane had a burst of maternal instinct that made her want to cuddle Miss Charming and help her through this crazy Austenland maze. If she only knew the way herself. “Miss Charming is about your age, I believe,” Aunt Saffronia said. “Oh no, Aunt, I’m quite certain that Miss Charming, still in the bloom of her youth, is several years my junior.” Miss Charming giggled. Aunt Saffronia smiled graciously as she took Jane’s arm, and the three walked into the drawing room. At their entrance, two gentlemen stood. Ah, the gentlemen. They wore the high-collared vests, cravats, buttoned coats with long tails, and tight little breeches that had driven Jane’s imagination mad on many an uneventful Tuesday night. Her heart bumped around in her chest like a bee at a window, and everything seemed to move in closer, the world pressing against her, insisting that all was real and there for the touching. She was really here. Jane held her hands behind her back in case they trembled with eagerness.

Are you sure this idea of yours is entirely safe?” I asked, looking nervously down at the living room floor from atop the lofty fireplace mantel. “What if they come back early, Fred? What if we don’t find the right hiding spot? Fiddlesticks warned us—” “Of course we’re safe, my dear mouse,” Fred interrupted. “I’m sure they won’t be back for a while yet. We’ll blend into these incredible works of art, these…what are they called again?” “They’re mouse Hummels: little statues or figurines,” I replied, inching carefully between two of the delicate figures. “Well, this new owner has excellent taste, that’s fer sure. Very lifelike they are. Shame we have to knock some sense into this poor chap.” He extended a curious paw to examine a figurine’s tail when suddenly it turned and knocked his paw aside, exclaiming, “Excusez moi, s’il vous plaît!

There were a few things that really peeved a lion. Stealing his sunny nap spot. Messing up his mane. Eating the last donut. Yanking his fucking tail! Reflex had him spin on the brat who’d sneaked up on him. Well, sneaked up if he ignored the fact he knew she was behind him. Let her think she had him. He was so enchanted by the emergence of a playful side that he didn’t want to ruin her fun. A fun that ended when she yanked his tail. Rawr! He spun and shot her a baleful glare. For a moment she froze. A tremble went through her. She was scared. Ah hell. Surely she knew by now he’d never hurt her? But then again, could he expect years of abuse and habit to disappear after spending just over a day with him? He wondered what she’d do. Would she run or give him the broken puppy eyes? Why did this have to happen at all? Why did he have to look so fearsome? Was it his fault his lion was so impressive and scary? Was it— Wait a second, was she laughing? He eyed her. Yup. She was. Laughing and snorting. Now he glared for real. She chortled louder. “Oh. Oh.” She gasped. “If only you could see your expression.” He’d show her an expression. He shifted into his human self, but even his impressive nakedness couldn’t stem her mirth. He stood and then stalked, each long stride bringing him closer, and her laughter dampening until it stopped altogether. He almost applauded when she peered at him instead of staring at her toes. “Am I in trouble?” “Nothing a kiss wouldn’t fix.” Blackmail? Hell yeah. He’d do anything for a kiss. “If you want a kiss, you’ll have to catch me. Tag, you’re it.” She shoved him, open-palmed against his chest, before bolting, her lithe body a quick blur that soon disappeared from sight. Seriously? She was just awesomeness wrapped in a layer of perfection with a dab of naughty he was really loving.

Virtually everything of any value in North Korea originates in China, and it mostly reaches the DPRK via Dandong. North Korean officials and businessmen, like the men I met on the train from Beijing, coming cap in hand on state-sponsored shopping trips are everywhere. Easily spotted by their badges proclaiming their loyalty to the various Kims, at night they haunt the Korean restaurants and karaoke bars within view of the DPRK itself. During the day, they congregate on the street by the border post beneath the bridge that leads to North Korea. From the early morning to the late afternoon, the line of trucks waiting to cross into the DPRK tails back down the road. There are warehouses and wholesale shops all along it and a constant procession of North Koreans going in and out of them. They buy spark plugs and coils of wire, generators and tyres, household appliances and kitchenware. The goods are destined for North Korea’s armed forces, more than a million strong, for the few industrial concerns still working, or for the Pyongyang elite.

One of my favorite memories of Harriet was when John Edward, the psychic medium, came to the zoo. He found out almost by accident that he could read living animals. Everything Harriet communicated to him was absolutely spot-on. Although John hadn’t been to the zoo before, Harriet told him that she used to be in another enclosure and that she liked this one better. That made sense because her current enclosure was bigger. Harriet also said that she liked the keeper with an accent, but it wasn’t Australian or American. John was having trouble placing the accent, and then he met Jan, who was English. “That’s the accent,” he said. Turns out Jan had been taking care of Harriet since before I had ever visited the zoo. John also said that Harriet had had blood drawn from her tail--which was correct, since we’d done a DNA profile on her. One thing, though, John had wrong. “Harriet misses her blanket,” he said. “You know, John,” I said, “Harriet can’t have a blanket, because she tries to eat everything.” “She misses her blanket,” John politely insisted. After he left the zoo, I asked Steve about it. “Did Harriet ever have a blanket?” Steve laughed. “Nah, mate, she’d have just eaten it.” Weeks went by. I visited Steve’s dad, Bob, and told him about everything John Edward had said, right up to the blanket. “He was spot-on until he got to the blanket,” I said. Bob’s face widened with a big grin. “Actually, back in the eighties,” he said, “a woman knitted a blanket for Harriet. On cold nights, before we had given Harriet a heat lamp, we would put the blanket over her shell, hoping that it would help contain some of her heat during the night.” I laughed. I couldn’t believe it. Bob said, “Harriet had that blanket for weeks and weeks, until one day she tried to eat it. Then we had to take it away.

I saw our familiar stomping ground in Windorah through the eyes of our American visitors, who were as astounded as I had been at Steve’s ability to bring the desert to life. We searched and searched for fierce snakes, but to no avail. Then Steve’s sixth sense kicked in. At five thirty one morning, after days of fruitless searching, he said, “Hurry up, let’s get going.” Our Dateline host was keen. This was what she’d traveled halfway around the world to see. “Where are we heading?” she asked. “We’ve got to get out on the black soil plains,” Steve said. “We are going to see a fierce snake at seven thirty.” The host looked a bit surprised. Even I teased him. “Oh, yeah, seven thirty, Stevo, we are going to see a fierce snake at exactly seven thirty, right.” But off we trundled to the black soil plains, camera crew, host, Winnebago, Ute--the whole convoy. Steve scanned the landscape. I monitored the temperature (and the clock). Seven thirty came and went. “So, we’re going to see a fierce snake at seven thirty?” I said. “Let’s see, oh, yes, it is seven thirty, and where might the fierce snake be?” After a little bit of teasing, Steve gave a good-natured grin, but then a look of determination passed over his face. No lie: Precisely at 7:32, he spotted a fierce snake. We ended up filming not one but two that morning. The rest of the NBC crew looked upon Steve with new respect. This guy says we’re going to see a snake at seven thirty and he’s off by two minutes? They were checking their watches and shaking their heads. Always give Steve the benefit of the doubt in the bush. I had learned that lesson before, the last time we had tailed fierce snakes on the black soil plains. But his ability to sense wildlife continued to strike me as uncanny.

and they followed it as it wended its way downward. ‘Where do you suppose the light is coming from?’ asked Eric. ‘That’s actually a really good question.’ ‘There’s not much of it, granted, but we can see, so …’ ‘You’re right. It must be coming from somewhere.’ ‘Yes, but maybe …’ Eric tailed off, drawing a deep breath. ‘Maybe what?’ ‘Maybe it’s like this because it’s waiting to be filled by the you-know-what,’ said Eric, tapping Max on the shoulder and then pointing to the darkness far above them. ‘You could be right. Just as long as it stays all the way up there.’ They walked on, descending on a slight incline for the best part of an hour. During their walk they discussed the possibility of the path not having an end, and just continuing down and down into the earth. The hungrier and thirstier they grew, the more terrifying this possibility seemed, so both were relieved when Eric spotted a change in the rock on their left. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Up there, there’s a gap in the wall.’ They stopped walking and Max peered up at it. ‘I reckon you’re right,’ said Max, as Eric squeezed past him. ‘Look,’ continued Eric. ‘There’s another gap further down, and this one’s lower.’ They stood below this second gap in the stone, which was approximately three metres above them. As Max attempted to get a foothold in the rock, Eric walked on around a corner. ‘Max!’ he whispered urgently. ‘Come here! You’ll definitely want to see this!’ Max stepped back down to the ground and hurried around the bend. Eric was staring through a brick-sized gap in the wall, his mouth hanging

The building was a sniper’s heaven; it was long with dozens of windows and many points of view. Three floors. Someone had put cardboard in each of the panes, dozens of cardboard boxes, making it almost impossible to see inside. The marines kept firing, thousands and thousands of rounds. The barrels of their machine guns glowed and sagged. “Get me another barrel,” one of the kids said. More firing commenced. “I don’t know who he is, but he is very well trained,” said Lieutenant Steven Berch, another one of the platoon leaders. Omohundro was downstairs. He listened to the commotion and called in an airstrike. “Just blow the building to shit,” he said. First a 2,000 -pound bomb, then a 500 -pounder flew into the building and burst. A cloud unfolded upward and revealed a gigantic fire. It rose through the ruined ceiling. Part of a wall collapsed. Crack! Crack! Crack! The marines ducked, cursed loudly and returned fire. No one spotted the sniper this time. The sniper fired back. The marines responded with another blast of gunfire, many thousands of rounds. I stood with some guys at the back of the roof, behind a shed. A blue and green parakeet fluttered out of the sky and hovered in tight circles. Bullets flew past. The parakeet landed on a slumping power line. The marines stared in amazement. “Someone’s pet?” a marine said. I ran across the top of the roof and the sniper took a shot. Crack! The bullet whizzed by. An artillery barrage began. First came the 155 mm shells, each filled with fifty pounds of high explosives. One after the other the shells sailed into the building. Fire swept through the three floors. What was left of the ceiling collapsed in the smoke. Cardboard sailed out of shattered windows. Twenty shells, then thirty, each one large enough to end the world. The shelling ceased and the shooting stopped. The building burned. Remarkably it still had a frame, and parts of its three floors still stood. Suddenly a sound rustled from a storefront on the first floor. The marines tensed. A cat sauntered out, dirty yellow, tail in the air. It walked like a runway model in front of a construction site. “Can I shoot it, sir?” a marine asked his squad leader. “Absolutely not,” came the reply. Crack!

Bilbo Baggins sniffed at a small pile of what must have been brain matter, and Crate threatened to shoot him on the spot if he did a stupid fuck thing like eating that dead thing's diseased brains. His tail between his legs, Bilbo padded into the shade beneath the awning and threw himself onto the weather-worn boards.

You better not bother the Chickcharnies while you're out here. Best to stay on their good side." The moonlight cast shadows on his face, but it was easy to see his teasing grin. She raised her eyebrows. "The Chickcharnies?" He pointed up into the palms and distant pines. "They're kind of like birds. They live up in the treetops --only on Andros Island and nowhere else in the world." Cyn scanned the darkness among the high branches. "What do you mean 'kind of like birds'?" He shrugged one shoulder. "Like owls. But they have three fingers, three toes, and they hang from the trees by their tails. You can spot their red eyes when they catch the light." Cyn clenched her teeth and squinted up into the trees, scanning for a pair of red eyes aimed her way. "They sound a little creepy." "If you see one, and you show it respect," Trent said, "you'll have good luck for the rest of your life." Cyn could use some good luck, for sure. She concentrated harder on finding those red eyes. None in sight, she furrowed her brow and set her gaze on Trent. "What do they do if you bother them?" His grin widened into that stop-your-heart smile that Cyn was finding harder to resist. "They turn your head around backward." "What?" "It's probably really painful," Trent said. Cyn swatted his arm, coming up against tight muscle. "You made that up." "Not really. It's island lore. People think the Chickcharnies descended from a big flightless owl they've found in fossils." "Have you ever seen one?" she asked skeptically. "Not yet. But you never know if one's around. I'd like to keep my head on straight, so I don't tease about them.".... Suddenly a huge screeching bird swooped down out of the trees, flew several feet over their heads, and veered up into a nearby copse of palms. Cyn yelped and ducked low. Trent pulled her close, tucking her against his chest. "Holy crap!" she said, "That was one pissed-off Chickcharnie. Hold on to your head.

Far out over the water a flock of boats moved by, heading south to the Keys, or east to Bimini, the Gulf Stream, and even beyond. A large sportfisher went roaring right over the deep spot where I had put Patrick, kicking up a high rooster tail in its wake. I wondered whether it would make enough turbulence to rip him free of his anchor; perhaps he would shoot up to the surface like a nightmare cork, and bob along behind the speeding boat, all the way to the Bahamas.

Maryanne paid for her purchases, and once everything was stuffed into the blue plastic bags, she headed toward the exit. That's when she spotted her tail again... not six feet away. "Here," she said, thrusting her purchases at J.Z.'s middle. "Since you're sticking to me like used bubble gum to my shoes, you can make yourself useful. Carry these to my car, please." She left him, arms full of bags, jaw agape, and wend to buy a soft pretzel and an icy drink.

Minky, the littlest cat, look as if she stepped in snow when she was a kitten and the snow never melted. She is all black except for her white paws and the spots on her head and tail where the snow didn't melt either.

The excitement of the first Sunday in Advent had hardly died down when the sixth of December came around, one of the most momentous days for all houses where little children lived. On the vigil of this day Saint Nikolaus comes down to earth to visit all the little ones. Saint Nikolaus was a saintly bishop of the fourth century, and being always very kind and helpful to children and young people, God granted that every year on his feastday he might come down to the children. He comes dressed in his Bishop’s vestments, with a mitre on his head and his Bishop’s staff in his hand. He is followed, however, by the Krampus, an ugly, black little devil with a long, red tongue, a pair of horns, and a long tail. When Saint Nikolaus enters a house, he finds the whole family assembled, waiting for him, and the parents greet him devoutly. Then he asks the children questions from their catechism. He has them repeat a prayer or sing a song. He seems to know everything, all the dark spots of the past year, as you can see from his admonishing words. All the good children are given a sack with apples and nuts, prunes and figs, and the most delicious, heavenly sweets. Bad children, however, must promise very hard to change their life. Otherwise, the Krampus will take them along, and he is grunting already and rattling his heavy chain. But the Holy Bishop won’t ever let him touch a child. He believes the tearful eyes and stammered promises, but it may happen that, instead of a sweet bag, you get a switch. That will be put up in a conspicuous place and will look very symbolic of a child’s behavior.

Do you make a study of pigs, Monsieur?” she asked, with a muffled note of amusement. “Of course. I’ve observed them frequently on my breakfast plate.” They had neared the first of the pens, where a stockman was lovingly bathing the ears of an enormously fat spotted sow. Five piglets squealed and gurgled about her panting bulk. “Note the marvelous coil of the tail.” He gestured with his cane. “Absolute perfection!” “And those ears,” Callie said, nodding sagely. “She appears to have two!” “Four legs,” Trev added, cataloging all her points. “Are you certain she has legs?” Callie asked dubiously. “I don’t see any.” “They are hidden under her porcine vastness,” he informed her. He tilted his head speculatively as they reached the pen. “Unless she has wheels. Perhaps she rolls from place to place?

She left the room, with her black-and-white kitty, Ruff, Elizabeth, Naiad and Persephone- a spotted gray-and-white shorthair- following on her heels in hopes of getting breakfast. As for her other two cats, she knew they must be out hunting rodents and birds rather than waiting to go down to the kitchens with everyone else. Burr and old Henry, who had climbed with a stiff gait out of his basket, joined the furry entourage, tails wagging and tongues lolling as they descended the stairs. The Scotties were probably asleep in the nursery, happy to wait to see what tidbits the children would sneak them during their breakfast in another hour or two.

Pythons were voracious feeders. They chose ambush spots based on the size of their preferred prey but were opportunistic. Hungry or not, they would strike and kill anything they could swallow. Proof of this was in a 2012 report done for the Department of the Interior regarding the Everglades. In areas where pythons were well established, foxes and rabbits had disappeared. Ninety-nine percent of raccoons and possums had been destroyed, and the white-tailed deer population was down by 91.4 percent. According to the report, the problem began in 1992 after Hurricane Andrew destroyed a python breeding facility near Miami. Also to blame were pet owners who, after tiring of their snakes, had released them into the Glades.

...I was completely lost when I heard Heather and Lucy shout out the litany of ducks: common goldeneye, gadwall, long-tailed duck, bufflehead, redhead, ring-necked duck, white-winged scoter, red-breasted merganser, northern shoveler. If someone had told me then that it would take me five years to comfortably ID all those ducks, I would have quit on the spot.

Really, my brain told me ruthlessly, didn’t I understand that Quinn had dumped me? Wouldn’t he have gotten in touch if he still considered us a couple? Hadn’t I always had a soft spot for Eric, who made love like a train thundering into a tunnel? Didn’t I have beaucoup evidence that Eric could defend me better than anyone I knew? I could hardly summon the energy to be shocked at myself. If you find yourself considering who to take for a lover because of his ability to defend you, you’re getting pretty close to selecting a mate because you think he has desirable traits to pass along to future generations. And if there’d been a chance I could have had Eric’s child (a thought that made me shiver), he would have been at the top of the list, a list I hadn’t even known I’d been compiling. I pictured myself as a female peacock looking for the male peacock with the prettiest display of tail, or a wolf waiting for the leader (strongest, smartest, bravest) of the pack to mount her.

You’ve got to be kidding. A criminal is easy to spot.” Reuben spoke to Alex as he tied up his grieves, Alex tried to ignore his comment, but by the king was she tired of his boasting. “Enlighten me.” She rolled her eyes but he didn’t notice, he almost cut her off with how quickly he answered. “My uncle, he’s a Templar, he taught me: The tip of the tail for one, Alex. Those are the blasphemers. The petty thieves get a finger removed for each offence. The hand for smuggling and an ear for petty disrespect of the divine. Then, well, indefinite jail time or execution, so you’ll never have to run into any of those breeds on the street.” He straightened his belt rather confidently before taking a comb to his greasy mane. “And the ones who don’t get caught?” Alex replied. Reuben snapped back, “hah! We always catch them in the end.” Punctuating the conversation with his exit from the barracks.

Dodge Caravan three weeks ago, out in Pittsfield.’ Pittsfield, she thought, right across the state border from Albany. Where a woman vanished just last month. She stood with the receiver pressed to her ear, her pulse starting to hammer. ‘Where’s that van now?’ ‘Our team sat tight and didn’t follow it. By the time they heard back about the plates, it was gone. It hasn’t come back.’ ‘Let’s change out that car and move it to a parallel street. Bring in a second team to watch the house. If the van comes by again, we can do a leapfrog tail. Two cars, taking turns.’ ‘Right, I’m headed over there now.’ She hung up. Turned to look into the interview room where Charles Cassell was still sitting at the table, his head bowed. Is that love or obsession I’m looking at? she wondered. Sometimes, you couldn’t tell the difference. Twenty-eight DAYLIGHT WAS FADING when Rizzoli cruised up Dedham Parkway. She spotted Frost’s car and pulled up behind him. Climbed out of her car and slid into his passenger seat. ‘And?’ she said. ‘What’s going on?’ ‘Not a damn thing.’ ‘Shit. It’s been over an hour. Did we scare him off?’ ‘There’s still a chance it wasn’t Lank.’ ‘White van, stolen plates from Pittsfield?’ ‘Well, it didn’t hang around. And it hasn’t been back.’ ‘When’s the last time Van Gates left the house?’ ‘He and the wife went grocery shopping around noon. They’ve been home ever since.’ ‘Let’s cruise by. I want to take a look.’ Frost drove past the house, moving slowly enough for her to get a good long gander at Tara-on-Sprague-Street. They passed the surveillance team, parked at the other end of the block, then turned the corner and pulled over. Rizzoli said: ‘Are you sure they’re home?’ ‘Team hasn’t seen either one of them leave since noon.’ ‘That house looked awfully dark to me.’ They sat there for a few minutes, as dusk deepened. As Rizzoli’s uneasiness grew. She’d seen no lights on. Were both husband and wife asleep? Had they slipped out without the surveillance team seeing them? What was that van doing in this neighborhood? She looked at Frost. ‘That’s it. I’m not going to wait any longer. Let’s pay a visit.’ Frost circled back to the house and parked. They rang the bell, knocked on the door. No one answered. Rizzoli stepped off the porch, backed up the walkway, and gazed up at the southern plantation facade with its priapic white columns. No lights were on upstairs, either. The van, she thought. It was here for a reason. Frost said, ‘What do you think?’ Rizzoli could feel her heart starting to punch, could feel prickles of unease. She cocked her head, and Frost got the message: We’re going around back. She circled to the side yard and swung open a gate. Saw just a narrow brick walkway, abutted by a fence. No room for a garden, and barely room for the two trash cans sitting there. She stepped through the gate. They had no warrant, but something was wrong here, something that was making her hands tingle, the same hands that had been scarred by Warren Hoyt’s blade. A monster leaves his mark on your flesh, on your instincts. Forever after, you can feel it when another one passes by. With Frost right behind her, she moved past dark windows and a central air-conditioning unit that blew warm air against her chilled flesh. Quiet, quiet. They were trespassing now, but all she wanted was a peek in the windows, a look in the back door. She rounded the corner and found a small backyard, enclosed by a fence. The rear gate was open. She crossed the yard to that gate and looked into the alley beyond it. No one there. She started toward the house and was almost at the back door when she noticed it was ajar. She and Frost exchanged a look. Both their weapons came out. It had happened so quickly, so automatically, that she did not even remember having drawn hers. Frost gave the back door a push, and it swung

Do You Like Animals? is a wild animal menagerie of fun as children view pictures and read stories about elephants, lions, leopards, rhinos, hippos, zebras, giraffes, camels, kangaroos, penguins, and much more. The book helps children meet the animals up close and learn fun facts about how they live in the wild. The author/illustrator viewed the animals in the jungles, bush, and deserts of Africa, Australia, and South America before writing about them and painting them in forms that would be enjoyable and educational for children. For example, children will learn why elephants have trunks, why giraffes and leopards have spots, whether zebras’ stripes are black-on-white or white-on-black, how long hippos can hold their breath, the amazing characteristics of howler monkeys’ tails, why some kangaroos have a pouch, whether ostriches really bury their heads in the sand, the types of camels that have either one or two humps… Through stories that rhyme and pictures painted with punch this book is a must for children who like to have fun while they learn!

There just weren’t enough professional astronomers who could observe enough of the heavens to have much, if any, chance of spotting such an event. But there were thousands of amateur astronomers all too happy to do that job themselves. Armed with relatively inexpensive computer-guided telescopes with Dobsonian optics, which allow quite large apertures (twelve inches is not unusual) in telescopes less than five feet long, and sensitive CCD (charge-coupled device) sensors that can collect more light than the human eye, contemporary amateur astronomers can photograph the skies better than astronomers with house-sized telescopes could a century ago. The first person to see Supernova 1987A was an observer somewhere between the amateurs and the pros. Ian Shelton, a Canadian grad-school dropout, was

Jerry finally yelled, “Jim! We need your help.” “I’m behind you,” I said, trying to keep the impatience out of my voice.  Jerry spun around, spotting us.  From his new vantage point, there was a tree and a bush in the way.  All he could see was part of my head and Badgelor’s tail.  “Oh, you were taking a dump,” he said.  Apparently, my exasperated face and my dropping-a-deuce face were similar.  Good to know.  “Nope, just standing here,” I ground out.  Jerry rushed through the bush, tripped again, and landed in the only mud puddle in the area.  Globs of mud flew toward us. like a claymore mine.  Several splattered over my clean armor.  One large chunk flew right into Badgelor’s nose. An instant later, Badgelor sneezed in a most unheroic fashion.  The sudden bucking motion caused me to fall off my steed and land in a heap, directly in front of Jerry.  I got to my feet an instant before he managed to look up.  Badgelor had turned away to paw at his nose desperately.  Shart was, as usual, laughing hysterically. “Did he just sneeze?” asked Jerry. “No, that is an ancient War Badger Battle Cry,” I replied evenly.  “Badgelor senses trouble.” Jerry paused, turning to face Badgelor in wonder.  “Amazing.  So, he knows that someone is attacking Lorraine’s estate?” “We suspected it,” I nodded sagely, which was true.

He brought the umbrella swishing down through the air to point at Dudley — there was a flash of violet light, a sound like a firecracker, a sharp squeal, and the next second, Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig’s tail poking through a hole in his trousers.

In Boat 6, Margaret Brown had doffed her sables to free her up for rowing. She had encouraged the other women to row as well, defying the quartermaster who railed at her from the stern. But Robert Hichens had chosen the wrong group of women to bully. In addition to the forceful Mrs. Brown, the plucky Mrs. Candee, and the voluble Berthe Mayné, there were two English suffragettes on board, Elsie Bowerman and her mother, Edith Chibnall. Both were active members of Sylvia Pankhurst’s Women’s Social and Political Union, the most militant of Britain’s votes-for-women organizations. Edith was one of ten women who had accompanied Mrs. Pankhurst on a 1910 deputation to Parliament that had resulted in arrests after a scuffle with police. She had also donated a banner for a Hyde Park demonstration that read “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” A full-scale rebellion against one male tyrant was soon under way in Boat 6. The women tried to taunt the quartermaster into joining them at the oars, but Hichens refused, preferring to stand at the tiller shouting out rowing instructions and doom-filled warnings that they could be lost for days with no food or water. Eventually Boat 16 came near and the two lifeboats tied up together. Margaret Brown spotted a chilled, thinly clad stoker in the adjoining boat and after he jumped over into Boat 6 to help with the rowing, she wrapped him in her sables, tying the tails around his ankles. She then handed him an oar and instructed Boat 16 to cut them loose so they could row to keep warm. Howling curses in protest, Hichens moved to block this but an enraged Mrs. Brown rose up and threatened to throw him overboard. The fur-enveloped stoker reproached Hichens for his foul language in the broadest of Cockney accents: “Soy, don’t you know you are talking to a loidy!

Dudley was dancing on the spot with his hands clasped over his fat bottom, howling in pain. When he turned his back on them, Harry saw a curly pig’s tail poking through a hole in his trousers.

The shadow resolves into a big spotted salamander, Ambystoma maculata, black and yellow like the road. The shape is so primitive, with right-angle limbs jutting from the side and moving with a jerky, mechanical motion across the road, dragging a thick tail in a sinuous side-to-side wave behind it.

I headed straight for the half-bathroom I remembered seeing on my other visits over. I peed and started washing my hands, and it was when I reached for a towel that I happened to look down and saw something small and brown run across the floorboard. I froze. Leaning over just a little, I peeked around the toilet and saw it again. Two little eyes. One bare tail. About two inches long. It darted off, disappearing around the trash can. I wasn’t proud of myself… but I screamed. Not loud, but it was still a scream. And then I got the hell out of there. Honestly, I wasn’t sure I’d ever moved so fast going down the hall, thankful I’d seen him after I’d pulled my pants on and zipped them up, going as far away from the bathroom as possible. Which ended up being the kitchen. Rhodes was standing by the island, tearing paper towels off when he noticed me coming. A frown came over his face. “What’s—” “There’s a mouse in the bathroom!” I squeaked and went past him, pretty much leaping onto the stool beside the counter, then jumping from there to the back of the couch with a frantic look toward the floor to make sure I hadn’t been followed. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Amos stood up so fast the chair he was in fell backward, and the next thing I knew, he’d leaped onto the couch and ended up beside me, his butt propped up on the back of it, legs dangling inches off the floor in the air. Johnny and Jackie either didn’t care or were so stunned by Amos and me, that they hadn’t moved a single inch from the table. “A rat?” Rhodes asked from the exact same spot he’d been in. I shook my head at him, exhaling hard to try and bring my heart rate down. “No, a mouse.” His eyebrows crept up about a half-inch, but I noticed it. “You’re screaming because of a mouse?” Did he have to ask so slowly? I swallowed. “Yes!” He blinked. Beside me, Amos suddenly snorted deep in his throat like he hadn’t knocked his chair over. Then I noticed that Rhodes’s chest was shaking. “What?” I asked, eyeing the floor again. His chest was shaking even more, and he barely managed to wheeze out, both eyes squeezing closed, “I… I didn’t know you were into parkour.” Amos snorted again, lowering his legs and planting his feet. “You backflipped onto the table…,” Rhodes choked out. He was wheezing. The son of a bitch was wheezing. “No, I did not!” I argued, starting to feel just a little bit… foolish. I hadn’t. I didn’t know how to backflip. “You jumped from the island to the couch,” Rhodes kept going, raising a fist to hold it right in front of his nose. He could barely talk. “Your face… Ora, it was so white,” Am started, bottom lip starting to tremble. I pressed my lips together and stared at my favorite traitor. “My soul left my body for a second, Am. And you didn’t exactly walk over here either, okay.” Rhodes, who decided that this was what he was going to find hilarious, barely choked out, “You looked like you saw a ghost.” Amos burst out laughing. Then Rhodes burst out laughing. One quick glance confirmed that Johnny was chuckling too, Jackie was the only one giving me a smile. I was glad someone had a heart. They were cracking up, totally and completely cracking up. “You know, I hope it crawls into one of your mouths for being so mean to me,” I muttered, joking. Mostly. Rhodes grinned so wide, he came over and slapped his son on the back while they both kept laughing. At me. But together. And maybe I wasn’t going to be able to sleep tonight now, worried there might be a mouse next door, but it would be worth it.

other side of the pavilion, he hissed, “Your Majesty, I think there’s one of them right behind me.” The dragon next to him looked around in alarm, spotted Winter, and leaped backward, nearly knocking one of her companions off the platform. “Oh my gosh, is that what they look like?” she cried. “Why’s it pointy all over?” “Look at its tail!” yelped another. “It really is all spiky!” “And can you feel how cold it is? Whoa, that’s so weird,” said a fourth, reaching for Winter’s wing. Winter twitched back and growled at her.