Everybody Itches

[cedar waxwing scratching its ear]

This observation is not, I acknowledge, particularly profound, but it does have the virtue of being true, and I have the photographic evidence to prove it. I never really thought about it myself until I started noticing just how many pictures I have of animals scratching. These were not deliberately acquired —I didn’t set out to collect photographs of scratching animals—and yet here they are. I can only conclude, therefore, that everyone itches—and can only speculate that it must be even worse for nonhuman animals than it is for us. Just imagine having none of the protection of clothes or insect repellent! –For someone who, as it is, gets mobbed by mosquitoes the minute she goes out her door, it doesn’t bear thinking about.



(I did try to come up with a better, punnier title for today’s entry, and I thought of a few, but I just couldn’t decide on one. Should it be “Life’s an Itch and then You Die”?


Or “From Scratch”?


Or “The Wicked Itch of the East”?


Or “A Scratch Made in Heaven”?


So hard to choose...