Diurnal

Afternoon, late spring. A neighbor’s overgrown garden sits in the shade, chimney covered with a tarp for months, chipped bricks piled at its base. From the weeds a coyote escapes, stepping gingerly between the plants and debris. The animal thin—it moves slowly, pauses to turn and look at us with a sense of disorientation behind its eyes. The sun shines off its pale grey coat as it returns to the shadows.

No. 088

Iguana

“I like the way they creep,” the woman beside us said.

Behind her, an iguana, nearly four feet long (tail included), sauntered along the edge of the pool. Its dirty yellow claws scraped along the pavement as its reptilian limbs arced along the surface, barely a centimeter above the ground, step by step. Then, in a rush of movement, the iguana became vertical and stuck its claws into the bark of a palm tree. In a few quick strides, it climbed up to the canopy above. The tail caught on a browning, dead palm frond that swiftly fell to the ground below.