Tiny deer.

I came home last night after five days in Fort Worth, TX, where I was at an absolutely fantastic conference, the British Women Writers Conference, to give my first keynote lecture.

R had just gotten in bed and was still awake. I gave her all the TCU horned frog paraphernalia I brought home for her, and she showed me the latest tiny animal she’d added to her collection of tiny animal figurines (a duck), a collection initiated by my mom’s giving her a couple of tiny animals she’d found around the house (two deer).

“I lost my favorite one, though,” she told me. She was “moving them to a new house” (i.e. from one tiny box to another) and they spilled onto the floor and she found all of them except her favorite, the “deer lying down.”

“You know why that one is my favorite?” she asked. I did not. “Because it’s the only one with spots on its back that stick up. I like to feel the poke of them.”