Small Sights in a Big World

Not something you see every day: a man crossing the street with a mannequin slung over his shoulder. It would have been even more intriguing if I'd seen him from, say, the window of my home office, or from my car window at, say, a post office parking lot. But there was a context, since he was near the Woodfield Mall, home of who knows how many mannequins. The man crossed into the parking garage to a car, and proceeded to dismantle the mannequin so that it would fit in his car.

Not something you see every day, until it's spring: a whirlpool of ants on the sidewalk. I'm just being metaphorical here, since it was really just a lot of tiny black ants, in motion more or less in the same place on the edge of the sidewalk near my house. Ann was fascinated, mystified and repulsed by the sight. A few yards away, she found single ants and decided to stomp on them. Maybe it was a preemptive strike against the swarm's migration toward our yard, but it's hard to know.

Something I've never seen on any day (but might, someday): the McCune Sand Prairie in Bureau County, Illinois. This is what I get for spending time examining road atlases without having a destination in mind. I see a point-of-interest spot where I've never noticed one before. A follow-up, on-line search turns up only a limited amount of information, making it all the more intriguing.