Ever since I was very small, I was fascinated with anything living that crawled, hopped, slithered, flew, or swam. It didn't matter to me how ugly others seemed to think something was. To me they were all beautiful. While my aesthetics have grown a bit more discriminating with age, I am still as amazed by the creatures I run across in my day to day life as I was when I was too young to pronounce the names of some of the creatures I caught. I like to capture them in photographs instead of jars these days, but I hope I never outgrow the ability to be surprised and delighted by seeing something new.
In these galleries, you'll see some of my friends, wise creatures who have made huge impacts on my life in many ways. Some of them are the subjects of the wild stories. Some of them I never really knew at all but was blessed to see at a time I had my camera at the ready. Regardless of what category I have placed them in, I believe that all of them have lessons to teach, if we quiet our minds enough to listen, watch, and learn.
I often wonder what life is like from their perspectives. I am sure they sense things beyond our limited abilities. I hope that one day we stop measuring intelligence from our narrow, Homo sapiens viewpoint and expand our vision to include every sort of adaptation to our weird, wild world. A rattlesnake may indeed be terrible at algebra, but I'm willing to bet no more terrible than we are at sensing infrared. We all have our gifts and talents. The Wise Creatures gallery is a celebration of that.
No Legs
Two Legs
Four Legs
More legs!
All text and images copyright (C) Kristy Kirkland 2007
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