Barking Space

A Rolling Apple Gathers No Dogs

I went for a walk last night, to get a little exercise and clear my head from a review that I was struggling with on Toronto Thumbs. I ended up leaving the house fairly late, but I didn’t plan on going for long, so it wasn’t really a big deal. Suffice to say that the streets were pretty empty.

In my travels, I grabbed a small coffee from a nearby Tim Hortons (caffeine doesn’t really bother me too much before bed) and walked home. On my way back, I stopped at the top of a hill fairly close to home. There is an apple tree near the crest of the hill, and so, near the foot of the tree there were some rotting apples. One of the apples had rolled away from the rest and was resting against the curb near the road sloping at a generous angle of declination. I dribbled the apple to the top of the hill with my feet (as it was past midnight, I had no fear of being caught unawares by a car), and then tapped the apple so that it began rolling down the hill.

I watched as it started gathering speed on its way down, bouncing happily as it rolled. Suddenly, when it was bout twenty or thirty meters away (and travelling at a fair clip), a cat exploded out of the underbrush and chased after the apple. A moment later, a pile of cats -too many to count- emerged from nowhere and followed suit. So there they were: a herd of cats racing after this poor apple.

Eventually the apple came to rest at the bottom of the hill. One of the cats (the one that first started the ruckus, I believe) pawed at the apple, trying to get it to move while the rest of the group sat by and watched. After a few attempts, it let out a disinterested “mrowr” and the rest of the cats dispersed, blending into the shadows like so many ninjas.

Seriously, nature: WTF?

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