by Brenda Ethridge

Created on: May 04, 2009

The Drinking Place

Listen, deer, as you come to drink the biting chill of liquid at the woodland stream. Your hearing, far heightened to that of a human can easily notice the faint sound of the body of water flowing, your hearing so sensitive as to hear the origin of each gush and trickle. You instantly turn your head and point your ears in the direction of the brook's crawls and creeps, dribbles and drips over stones in its path. You focus all your attention on determining if any signs of danger await in the steady current of water drops and flows. You check several times as the flow of water streams and issues forth, before going to your normal routine of drinking from the current of coldish flow.

Feel, raccoon, as you come to take the cool liquid into your mouth to swallow. Your hyper-sensitive front paws touch the leak and ooze as the continuous flow percolates past you. The thin horny layer on your front paws becomes pliable under the beam and movement of the continuous procession of seeping flow. The five digits of your paws with no webbing feel the outpouring burst of cascading flood. Two-thirds of your cerebral cortex dedicated and specialized for tactile impulses, more than any other animal, allows you to interpret each flow, flush, and issue of discharge. You identify objects in the jetting, natural spring water, before you touch them, through the vibrissae located above your sharp, non-retractable claws. Due to your lack of an opposable thumb, you lack agility in the cold, nippy, running, rushing, spouting branch.

Smell, wolf, as you arrive to partake of the frigid, frosty spouting spurts of the river's run. By scent alone, you can know if enemies or your pack members are here at the surge of the streamlet. Your heightened sniff will tell you if other wolves are in the territory of the pouring out burst, if they are male or female, and how recently they visited the trickling, frosty watercourse.

Look, fox, as you come to the refreshing, shivery babble of the fall, between midnight and dawn. Your nighttime vision is especially acute while you take from the fluid coming forth. Behind the light sensitive cells in your eyes lie another layer of cells, the tapetum lucidum, reflecting light back through your eyes, increasing your sharpness of vision, allowing you to spot your prey near the snappy, refreshing emitted flow.

Taste, catfish, as you swim in the rejuvenating outflow of fluid. With your extraordinary, amazing sense of taste, you can detect the chemical outpouring of the moving, running world around you. You are a swimming tongue with your separate set of chemical sensory system for taste, as you move through the energizing, exhilarating splashes.

Partake, wildlife, of the fresh, invigorating wet substance. Through all your senses know the stimulating thirst-quenching place to drench. Savor and absorb with eagerness and pleasure; moisten, soak, savor, and sprinkle; saturate, swallow, indulge; energize, invigorate, renew; restore and flood.

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