i liked real animals. but I liked the animals who existed in a more shadowy way even more than i liked the ones who hopped or slithered or wandered into my real life, because they were impossible, because they might or might not exist, because simply thinking about them made the world a more magical place.
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i knew how to visit the creatures who would never be sighted in the zoos or the museum or the woods. they were waiting for me in books and in stories, after all, hiding inside the twenty-six characters and a handful of punctuation marks. these letters and words, when placed in the right order, would conjure all manner of exotic beasts and people from the shadows, would reveal the motives and minds of insects and of cats. they were spells, spelled with words to make worlds, waiting for me, in the pages of books.
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where there is a monster, the wise american poet ogden nash told us, there is a miracle.
