It is typically rare that I have either my camera or my phone with me when I take Toby out for his walks in the park next to our apartment building.  Not enough pockets to juggle a photo-taking device, my building keys, pooperscooper bags, AND the dawg himself!  Last Friday, though, I DID have my phone in my pocket because I was waiting for my parents to arrive and call to let me know they were there…which was great, because I came across something completley random and bizarre in the park, and also passed by one more thing that I had wanted to capture here in Denver but had not yet documented.

Toby was at the end of his long drawnout leash, sniffing thangs and peein’ on em.  I, meanwhile, was taking in the pleasant sunny air and zoning out.  I glanced down at my feet, and saw something lying facedown in the grass that struck me as familiar even from the back.  I flipped it over with the toe of my boot, and sure enough:

…it was an ear!  I am, admittedly, familiar with costume ears from having worn quite many a pair myself for various and sundry characters or events.  However, the little park next to my building in Capitol Hill Denver was the very last place I ever thought I would see one.  And, only ONE, to boot.  Who was wearing it?  What for?  Who is the cool geeky person that I didn’t know lived nearby?  David Lynch’s film, Blue Velvet, breezed through my mind in a flash, and then, since I’d recently read something regarding the upcoming Hobbit film, my head turned to Middle Earth.  The shape and coloration of the ear gave me the immediate impression of it being rather Orcish in nature.  Was there a battle here the night before?  Urban elves fighting the evil of the City-fied Orc?  Is there a one-eared Orc running around Denver now?

Oh, the intrigue!

Meanwhile, our flier-stapling religious guy was at it again.  I have been seeing these things all over the neighborhood for YEARS.  The design never varies, it is always the one below or another one with a blue theme, the captivating statement of which I cannot recall.  At any rate, I used to see them and pull them down.  Not particularly out of spite but because I had some idea in my head for some crazy piece of collage art using these things that never panned out.  I remember a time last year when, once again, I was walkin’ the dawg and finally actually *saw* the person in question.  It felt like witnessing some sort of rare species of critter in its natural habitat, Jane Goodall style.  Here came this casually dressed elderly gentlman up the sidewalk…I continued to tend to the sniffin’ hound and did not pay him much attention.  Until I saw him walk up to that pole (from which I had stripped the flier the day before), pull a piece of paper out of one pocket and a stapler out of the other, and begin his Work.  His perserverance was impressive.  Pull the flier down, he just puts one back up.  Pull it down, put it back up.  Rinse, repeat.  So, last Friday, the familiarity of this Thing which has been stapled oh so many times to this same pole, made me smile.  And I finally shot it.

It’s the little random things, sometimes.