The hummingbirds have discovered the bouganvillea, and one keeps sipping from it. I still haven’t been able to ID the species, but hopefully I’ll figure it out. The house finches are chirping furiously at one another. A cadre of about six have staked out the patio in what appears to be some kind of teeny avian gang. Loki, responding to ancient predatory instincts heretofore buried under flab, charged them today, hit the glass door at a high-speed waddle, sat down heavily, and then, unharmed but embarassed, slunk away.

There appears to be ANOTHER zoo in Phoenix, or at least a “wild animal park” which I plan on visiting soon–if it turns out to be one of those shady exotic places, I’ll be bummed, but if it’s nifty, then…err…nifty! They claim to have maned wolves.

Athe moment I’m kicking around a crude little doodle of a wizard zapping a chicken. After it was drawn, as I was stumbling around the house singing “Wombats in the night…exchanging fluids…”–which is something I do to aid the creative process, and which I blame entirely on James, since he supplied the second line and I’ve never been able to think of another one–the phrase appeared in my brain “Fengor the Mauve never understood why the other wizards didn’t take him seriously, but he knew that would all change once he managed to extract gold from a chicken.” This sort of thing happens to me a lot–stories generally appear to match paintings for me, I rarely paint to illustrate a story I already have–I think the one about how gryphons are made is the only one I’ve done recently. Which probably says something about the creative process, since I’m told the captions are often better than the paintings, but god knows what.