Mary Dansak

New York City shines like a beacon, glitters with lights on streets and in windows, and beams with the dreams of eight million souls on any given day. Recently, however, the city experienced an extra fresh and spangly sparkle. Not because the Knicks won the national championship. Not because the violent crime rate is lower than it's been in the past five years. Not because Lei won the James Beard Award for Best New Restaurant on the very day our daughter Anna started working there. No, the fresh little light that brightened the whole city was the presence of Ruby, our brilliant gem of a granddaughter, who visited New York with me to celebrate turning ten years old.

I am the world's worst gardener. I am content to let the wildflowers and those some call weeds take over wherever they find purchase in my woodsy yard. But this was not always the case.

She's old and heavy with a musty smell about her. Her joints are stiff; she's out of tune. Still, I am charmed.

I have so many questions about stinging. What is happening at the cellular level in our bodies when we get stung? How is a sting different from a shock or a pinprick? And, of course, oh death, where is thy sting?

I stared into the tiny animal's glassy brown eyes. Its body was hunched into a ball, terrified. Its delicate nose twitched ever so slightly. “Don't worry, little mouse, I won't hurt you,” I whispered, slowly sliding the pantry door shut to give the little rodent some peace.

My husband Joe and I were innocently flipping around on YouTube the other night when we found a clip of a woman who awoke to find a bat trying to crawl into her mouth. Of course we stopped. Of course we watched the clip.

Tigers and eagles are busting out all over in Auburn now that football season is here. Believe it or not, some Alabama towns have mascots unrelated to sports. Enterprise has its boll weevil. Union Springs has its bird dog. And Wetumpka, a small town right smack on the Coosa River, has the Tulotoma magnifica, an unassuming freshwater snail.

My friend Jay recently returned from a trip to Iceland. “We only saw a handful of puffins,” she said. “Most of them had left.”

Take a seat. I have news. Recalling the brouhaha over the reclassification of Pluto from a planet to a dwarf planet, it is with some trepidation that I share my

When I arrived at a well-attended poetry reading recently, I scanned the room looking for my friend Janne, eager to thank her for agreeing to be part of this column.