On a camping trip in Wisconsin, Steve and I went for a walk. We were heading through a dry field when I happened to look down and saw that I was inches away from stepping on a shiny black snake. Both the snake and I jumped back, alarmed and relieved. Bonus story: the exact same thing happened a few years later in Virginia, walking around the grounds of a mansion where some friends were getting married.
One evening I walked my friend Erica to her house, with my dog Briscoe accompanying us. She found out she was locked out, so we spent about a half hour with her until her husband got home with the keys. By the time she was in the house, it was fairly late, about 10:30, so Briscoe and I walked home along Broadway, a busy street. We were nearly home, walking past the grocery store, when I saw something walking down the sidewalk towards us. Was it a rat? A cat? No, it was a possum, just walking down the sidewalk on the other side from us like he was a regular person, obeying sidewalk traffic rules. He looked like he was supposed to be there and had someplace to be. He looked like he was thinking about something, because he didn't seem to acknowledge my 85-pound dog (and who, thankfully, didn't seem to acknowledge the possum, because in retrospect, he probably had rabies.)
I took my friend Sara out for an evening of fun in Chicago's Andersonville neighborhood to celebrate the impending arrival of her second baby. We went for manicures and then a big meal on the patio of the Southern food restaurant Big Jones. We decided to cap the evening off with some ice cream at George's. As we walked up to the ice cream shop we noticed a guy walking a ferret on a leash, just when a guy walking a dog on a leash approached. The two animals got closer and closer. "It's happening," whispered Sara. They met and sniffed each other without incident.
