Bats, Foxes, Soiled Dove.

~Beside the bed is a giant wicker basket. It is bigger than the bed and full of baby foxes.
They shuffle themselves in a riot of fluff and tumble. Cuteness is barely tolerable.
The tireless motion looks like a fur version of a game-show booth with flying hundred dollar bills, or a flock of mink drenched opera ticket holders happily throwing themselves into a giant drying machine.
The purpose of this furry menagerie is dark, but not upsetting to me at the time. We've been instructed to make a blanket out of the fur big enough to cover the giant bed; a natural task for me and my conspirator in evil extravagance.

~I'm lost in a city, taking bus after bus to an unknown location. Some ladies exit a hat shop near my bus stop and start chatting me up about my pregnancy (news to me... but one gander at my belly below, and behold! seven months in utero). I should be wrapping my neck more carefully in this weather, they say, and what am I doing drinking coffee? It's tea, I reassure them, and open my cup to show an oily bird. Feathers wet and iridescent call out a softness in me, and I get on the bus with a warm feeling and ambivalence to being lost.

~My love and i have finally moved in together, and since we've had to give all of our previous pets away, we decide on our next friend from the animal kingdom: a bat.
I've ordered some sample pet bats in the mail. They come in oversized square plastic bags, color-sprayed and slightly dehydrated (think mexican chiles, or craft store feathers). Sorting through the bats, I seem to lean toward the green and black spotted one, half-fearing that it's too wild for him, half-knowing that the very premise of colored bats is too wild.