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epitome of incomprehensibility
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The oriole's a small vivid bird; the park's somewhat less birdlike. It's the bark of birds and dogs, the plastic of play, vivid and faded.
"We're going to Oriole Park!" I tell Shiloh in a high voice. At first he's resistant. "We're going west," I tell him. "The wild west."
We're alone. I run around and he follows. He has to - he's on a leash, but he's quite willing. With the 3-D structures, he's shyer and I'm more lenient. I wait for him to go up the stairs after me, move the leash so that he can get on the ramp from the side, because why not? I bribe him with a treat to follow me down the slide, but he won't do it twice, and I don't insist.
At the gate, he finds what looks like a chunk of rotten meat next to the garbage can and starts biting at it. I pull him back, wondering with calm disbelief if it's the corpse of someone murdered and dumped in the park, in the snow. But what it really is surprises me: macaroni and cheese, burnt at the edges, still retaining the shape of the pot it was cooked in, or more likely the container it was kept in. Why did someone throw it out here, and why did they miss the garbage?
See, *now* it's a mystery, the mac and cheese. Now I want to know.
Regardless, it doesn't look very appetizing, but Shiloh doesn't want to be pulled away from it. I let him nibble for a while and then it's time to fly away.
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