Licking the Minnow

I think that a lot of animals are weird about their ears. My sister’s cat was laying on the sofa, just chillin’ out, and our dog, Sheila, came over and stuck her tongue into the cat’s ear as a form of greeting, but the cat just sort of took it in stride, and let it go. A few days ago, the same dog, Sheila, put our other dog’s entire ear into her mouth, and, while chewing on the entire ear, she barked loudly. Did the other dog, as would be understood and excused, turn around and gut Sheila like a fish? He did not. Instead he sighed and barely raised a lip.

I cannot even imagine being that nonchalant about someone screaming in my ear, especially while my ear was in their mouth. I can also not imagine being greeted by a friend by having them stick their tongue all the way down into my ear canal. Then again, dogs and cats do a lot of things that are unfathomable to me, and I think that it has to do with a lack of personal boundaries, which is understandable, because they’re dogs and cats.

While I don’t mind it so much from friends and family, I am not really big on people touching me, especially strangers. I don’t even like brushing hands with cashiers at stores. This isn’t because I think they’re dirty or anything like that, I’d just rather not interact physically with most strangers. I think this is especially interesting because Desmond Morris talks about something very similar in The Naked Ape. He mentions that people in modern society have a huge social taboo against touching strangers, which is why we apologize when we run into or bump someone in public, regardless of whether it would have hurt someone or not. I personally have said excuse me to many people that I didn’t even actually touch, just because I came a little too close to them for comfort. Usually when this happens, that someone will laugh and say that of course it’s fine, but I’m still compelled to apologize anyway.

When walking on the sidewalk, I feel like there are these invisible bubbles that wrap around everyone, and it makes me uncomfortable to allow my bubble to come into contact with anyone else’s bubble. There is also an invisible bubble around my pet crawfish, Leonard, which is probably of arbitrary and random size, which I feel that Minnow (my little fish, that’s his name) should not enter. I fear for Minnow’s life, feeling that he is taking his life into his own scales whenever he pushes the boundaries of Leonard’s personal space, but he hasn’t been eaten. Yet.

I like things that remind me of food. My favorite candles at the moment are these cheap cherry-scented ones that I got at Big Lots for a dollar. They smell like cherry cough drops, and I love them. Unfortunately, they don’t really make my room smell like anything other than air and smoke, which rather defeats the purpose of having scented candles in the first place.