Crow’s Feet

This morning I walked up to the library to collect a few books I’d ordered. The books were a lot heavier than I’d expected, so I had to weigh up how much I really wanted today’s tomes. I checked that nobody in the vicinity was doing online bongo lessons like the last time I was in here and sat down on a chair that looked relatively bedbug-free.

The only fiction title I’d ordered, Katrina Onstad’s Everybody Has Everything won points for (a) being the lightest, (b) immediately making me forget how high the rates of bedbug infestation are in Toronto’s libraries and (c) making me cry by page 4. Score! This baby couldn’t be left on the shelf.

The three others were bird books and all superheavy, but they all had excellent bird feet pictures. I don’t know if you know how hard it is to find a good bird foot picture. If you don’t, I can tell you that it’s quite a challenge. Recently, I’ve started drawing various furious species of North America’s birds, but the feet have been a problem. How can I draw a Carolina Chickadee or a Chimney Swift stomping across the scenery if I don’t know what its toes look like?

So all the books had to come with me and have now been trekked several miles to my third and final cafe stop of the day. My feet might look okay, but my shoulder is protesting almost as much as the more beleaguered of the two Algerian men arguing at the next table to me in this cafe.

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