Find one small thing near your home. The object should be no bigger than your hand.
Describe the object fully. Give colour, shape, smell details. Imagine how the object came to be at its location. What is its story?
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Oyster Shell
It’s bleached white, with grey stains inside it. The edges are scalloped and still sharp to the touch. It smells faintly of cigarette ash and sits just beneath my back porch clothesline.
The shell travelled here from the beach on Denman Island, the one just below the Lindsay Dickson forest—the forest that the people of Denman saved from loggers, but not before a dozen trees were cut down at the top of the road.
When the tide is low in the channel between Denman and Hornby islands, the oysters lie nestled in the rocky bay. Sometimes, they cling to the rocks, making a large screwdriver an accessory to mollusc murder!
Whenever I see the shell I think of both my favourite Gulf Island and that I still have friends who smoke. For some, it’s a habit that goes back more than 40 years. I worry about them. And I worry about the oysters, too, as the waters warm around Vancouver Island and habitats change.
Spider at my balcony
Crawling around the web with 8 hairy legs, was Charlotte—the spider I met at my balcony. It was a summer day when I first found her. When a silky thread stretched from the cedar branch to the guard rails of my balcony, there was a big spider web between two rails, and hanging from the top of the web, head down, was a Large grey spider. That was how we met.
The way I named her as a person was because she immediately reminded me of the movie “ Charlotte’s Web” in which a nice and smart spider also named Charlotte. And why she? No particular reasons, since I gave the name Charlotte, then it must be “she”. I like Charlotte. I always think she is an amazing predator, which contains full of contradictions: body as small as a raindrop but legs as many as eight. Her web is delicate to attract the bugs, and deadly to ensnare them too. Besides, Charlotte never made a quick move; she was always trotting back and forth for her prey. I once watched a fly blundered into her web and was tangled in the sticky threads. The fly was beating its wings furiously, trying to escape but finally failed. Since I had no sympathy for the fly, I felt no mercy for his death. However, my curious mind kept me staying on watching. Then I saw Charlotte plunged headfirst toward the fly. It had been about an hour that the fly was wrapped up and rolled over. The spider seemed not in a rush to eat her main course, but I lost my patience. I left her and went into my kitchen.
That night, I thought about the spider a lot. I thought how slow pace the spider has. It seems her whole life is to weave the web to entrap the insects. That's the way she is made—a sedentary trapper. As I thought about this, my mind went even further—a spider must be a thinker, I thought, because staying put and waiting for what comes give her time to think. Never rushes and never wonders, she plucks at her web thoughtfully and survives nearly everywhere—what a wonderful life.
When winter came, the spider was gone. I wish I could see her again this year.
The tragedy of a cigarette butt
A piece white small roll of stained paper lay on my vacant balcony. Its burnt black head was squashed and still maintained a weak of light and smell of tobacco ash. It was just thrown and blew away down to here by the wind.
When it was for sale on the good shelf hided behind a curtain or in a cabinet, it looked like a biggie. How worth was it for many people enjoying inhaling the exciting taste and addict to it while it was actually shamed by the unhealthful quality and the coming new package covers, which is going to contain a terrific cancer victim's picture (full three-quarters of the package), freighting warning and some information in Canada. Although it's legal, guys who are under 19 can't purchase it and more people hate it.
After the addicts enjoying cigarettes, a lot of them just throw and trample them on the ground, on the grass and leave them there to pollute the environment and possibly cause some problems. The butts actually rather to be in the ashtray and dump to a garbage can if someone really need them to release. People make them more and more notorious. Maybe it's the destiny or tragedy of butts.
My balcony is fortunately unoccupied, and nothing inflammable. I swept this little dirty butt into my rubbish can. Hopefully, people could not only think about the health but also our environment. It would probably take a decade to decompose a butt. Please stop littering!
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