To Catch the Eye Of Another

Barley, a dog, walks past some red and yellow tulips, surrounded by ornamental lavender, paying none of it any mind whatsoever.

A fun thing about evolution is that it’s always everything at once. Flowers, for example, need to be as visible as possible for the animals that they rely on to get pollinated, but also need to be as camouflaged as possible with respect to other animals that might do them harm in some way. I pondered this dynamic as I reflected on how nondescript a red tulip must look to Barley, just a darker blob amid the gray of the leaves. “Nothing to see here,” the flowers seem to say. “Should you need to do some recreational digging, please consider other patches in the neighborhood than this one.” (Not that this applies to the yellow tulips, which should be quite visible to her, or to any of the floral smells, which Barley is experiencing with an intensity I will never understand.)