Ishtar Gate

A long and serious essay on Nebuchadnezzar's sirrush. For a 'mythical' animal there's really a great deal of information. Something was certainly kept, alive, in Babylon, that was strange enough in inspire awe. In the Apocrypha, Daniel kills it with a pill made of bitumen and hair. Another essay, on glaciation, proposes that there no snakes in Ireland because it was completely covered by the last ice shield and the snakes could never get back. More rain in the forecast. I shudder to think about the driveway. Payday, next Thursday, I need to haul in supplies. Time to get busy. Good weather next weekend would be nice, I'll have three full days to work outside. Some little blue breaks in the clouds, which means this layer isn't very deep; if it stays dry tonight, I could get out tomorrow. I need to bushwhack a path into the back of the woodshed from the driveway. Need to clear in front of the woodshed so I can find the damned thing. That sirrush is a handsome thing. I had one on a wallet once, made by a leather-working person who was the wife of a biology teacher friend of mine. We'd met at the scene of a beaching of some small whales, and he wanted to get one back to the parking lot of the high school so he and the students could dissect it. The animals were dead, and it might seem cold, to violate them further; but I agreed with the enthusiasm. That was the winter I lived on Lucy's Crotch, a nautical term here, meaning a natural channel that elbows in from the sea, to a natural harbor that looks more like a lake. A kettle-hole. In the same area for the same reason. Shaded chunks of ice, really large chunks, might melt more slowly, and shit would accumulate around the outside, and you end up with this form, the kettle-hole, a house, the perfect ass, whatever. A form. Jays have a weird lower jaw, they store acorns there, three or even four, and one in their mouth. They bury these and find them again. I couldn't do that. Fucking birds.