Frozen. And you wonder how no one else can see it.
I play with the cat's toes pressing against the pads of her toes and as we press against each other, her claws slide out. Each toe varies as we play, each working together and yet independently as my thumb strokes up and down rhythmically.
I play with my dog's toes and it is much the same and yet different. Here there is not quite the same amount of play and I wonder when we go outside how this flexible pad of skin can handle running around barefoot in the snow when we hit -40 weather.
But stranger than that is to watch the black-capped chickadee, how with his white bib he decides to stay through such harsh conditions, he is so tiny and so small and there are no feathers encasing his limbs and his toes, that reach around and clasp around the slender branch he sits upon.
Each foot, each toe different and yet the same. Each capable of so much play. Soles of feet that touch down upon the ground not much different than our own.
Even the deer whose toe prints I find all around the yard, even he with his two toes has play, as those toes spread apart and come back together depending on where he steps next and what his balance is at the moment.
We look at the horse and we don't see the same thing. We don't see toes. What we see is this thing that we call a hoof. And we don't see flexible, we see solid. And we would be wrong.
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