Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

In Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll's sequel to Alice in Wonderland - Alice again meets a Queen with whom she verbally spars. This time it's The Red Queen, a different sort entirely from The Queen of Hearts whom Alice encountered in Wonderland.

After the Red Queen declares herself to be over 100 years old, Alice objects that she can't believe that. She can't believe impossible things. In an often quoted rebuttal, the Queen says,

"I daresay you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

As I reviewed some of the pictures I've taken over the last years, I saw that in my morning walks around my house, my garden, and my neighborhood,  I had captured any number of things that - well, weren't actually impossible, but that were unusually lively and unlikely sights to see. I share six of them here:


                   

 

I once kept an array of stuffed toys on the hassock next to my couch. One morning, I was scrolling through pictures I had  stored on my camera, when I looked up. It seemed to me there were more stuffed animals there than I recalled having. Let's see, 1, 2, 3... One moved! It was a squirrel who had obviously come in through my cat's pet door to solicit peanuts from me personally. I caught the moment on camera and now I have a record of my own private E.T. - a real live alien who came in and camouflaged itself among my stuffed toys.



                                      

 

I saw this Cooper's Hawk on my gardening table one morning. It's feathers were being ruffled right and left by a strong breeze. Here the wind has turned the hawk into a stern traffic cop, directing the cars to "Keep to the right! I said - KEEP TO THE RIGHT!"

 





 

Oui Oui Enterprises, Ltd.

November 5, 2013

   

                                           

 Usually, it's businesses such as hair salons that have the clever, punning names. How often do you see a "Clip Joint?" But in this case, it was a distributor of port-a-potties who wins the title in my book for the cleverest name. It's "Oui Oui."

 

 

 

                                                           

This advice that the owners of a lost greyhound are giving - "Please Don't Chase" - can serve as good advice for life in general Don't chase your dreams; let them come to you. Otherwise - well, you can just picture the result. It would be a losing proposition.

 

This picture of young love walking down my block is not something you often see anymore in its springtime tenderness. I think the young man is even carrying the girl's books!

 

 

 

                                               

 

This sign sums up the human condition. We are all lost white kittens after a snow storm.