Sublime

From time to time, Stella, the dog, would stop and bury her nose in the dirt, her blunt hound tail quivering in the air like an antenna.

It does not stop there, though, for one group of Italian psychologists reported that the size of the object we associate with a specific odour can influence our reaching behaviour too. They found that when we smell something small – think of a clove of garlic or a pistachio nut – then our motor system is automatically primed to pick up a small

So a dog living with humans is not living in a pack. But he is living in a family. Like other families, people and dogs share habits, preferences, home. We sleep together and rise together. We walk the same routes and even stop to greet the same dogs. Our dog-and-human family works because we share basic rules of behavior.

wild octopuses who live in tidal areas often haul themselves out on land in order to visit different tide pools for better hunting. They may also do this to escape predators in the water, such as another octopus. I had read that in areas blessed by constant ocean spray, an octopus might be able to survive out of water for thirty minutes or more.

I stroll picturesque stream-flanked ippon-uras and watch kids walk before me in zigzaggy lines and think about how adults are so point-to-point specific, but these children try their hardest to stretch out their walks home, ducking into little nooks in the entryways of houses and behind stone walls, poking one another, tugging on tree branches,