We saw all manner of creatures in New Orleans. Bourbon Street aside, I thought I'd show you some of my favorites. (Blue Dog! Love Blue Dog!)
The animal I REALLY wanted to feature, I couldn't get a picture of: the rooster who sat outside our hotel room and crowed non-stop. Those children's books that depict roosters as harbingers of the dawn? Lies. All lies. Roosters, as it turns out, crow whenever the spirit moves them. And the spirit moved this rooster quite a bit, even during naps, three feet from our door. Nothing a bowl of chicken soup wouldn't fix.
More appealing? The dogs. There were a lot of dogs in New Orleans. I'm not allowed to have one, so I took pictures and pretended they were mine. These little guys were my favorites. They were so tiny, I couldn't get a properly focused picture of them. I had to restrain myself from darting over and stuffing them in my bag.
I was also fond of this guy: so mellow despite the noise and beads and general wedding hoopla surrounding him. I covet that woman's hat, and her ability to wear it so stylishly.
This was the cat -- surly yet needy -- that prowled around our hotel. I asked the women if he was the hotel's cat, and they were emphatic: NO. "We just feed him," they said. (Hint: if you feed the stray, he's no longer a stray.) But they didn't feed him enough, I think. Perhaps he should have been dining on rooster.
This mural makes me smile.
New Orleans also has lizards. This falls squarely into the category of "something you would not see in Chicago" but they crack me up every time. I can't figure out how they can run UP perfectly straight walls. If I lived somewhere warm, this would be A Problem for me.
And then we came home to some decidedly less exotic animals, who welcomed us with the ceremonial Presentation of Disgusting Hairballs.
Clearly, we were missed.
