That was when he told me that the first person was all alone.

"Didn't the first person have parents?," I asked.

"No. Not until later."

"Why not?"

"Because the first person was a monkey. Everyone was a monkey."

"Girls don't really bite, do they?"

"No." But he had more to say. "A girl had to be the first person."

"Why?"

"Because a girl has to born a boy or a girl. And that boy or girl could be something. Like a boy could turn into a daddy or a girl could turn into a mommy."

A little later, when starting to write this post, I asked him to confirm whether he'd said that everyone was a monkey or whether he'd said that everyone came from monkeys. Everyone was a monkey, he told me. "Because they started from monkeys. But I'm not sure how monkeys were around. I think maybe plants made animals first." His voice trailed off. "That might have been the answer. But nobody knows."

(An observation by my son after I read him a chapter from The House at Pooh Corner.)

"Yes, it's a yak," he said. He's four.

"A yak!?," I exclaimed. "That's right! How did you know that?"

He pointed to its horns: "the horns go back on its head. It's a yak."

"How do you know that?"

"I just do."

A little later we were saying good night. We have a tradition of each making up a new "don't let the ~ bite" each night, and this time I let him go first. I was wondering whether the yak would appear again.

"Good night, sleep tight, don't let the wildebeests bite," he said, giggling.

Edited to add: No, I don't think you can count on the horns. But it was certainly true of the yak in the picture.

My son didn't understand at first why the house was made of soil. I showed him how few trees there were in the pictures, and told him those few were important and couldn't be used for the house. He didn't understand at first that the roof was grass--he thought I might mean glass--and then pointed out that the roof was brown. It's dry, I told him.

When we finished reading about this child and her home he told me what he would do if he lived in that place:

"I would buy twenty bottle of water. And I would get a car one hundred and sixty feet long. Ok? And I would put the bottles in the car and I would drive there and I would pour the water on the ground, for twenty days. And I would pour some on the trees, because they need it too."

A short way up the road we saw robins picking at the grass. We stopped to watch, and J saw one pull up a worm. Climbing the hill we passed a culvert blocked with sand and debris and another in the ditch with water flowing in from a pipe under a storm drain's cover. Another bird watched us from a wire.

As we passed a house J spotted a neighbor emerging from the door to tend his grill. "Who's that," said J to me, and then, thinking better of it, shouted to the man, "what's your name?" We were introduced, and walked on.

Higher up we discovered that a stream had formed a pond beside a farm. Someone had placed a blue canoe by the water's edge. Rusted metal tanks and farm equipment lay in the grass nearby, and J spotted a huge tractor tire on its side. Pale barkless trunks placed at the bottom of the embankment marked the edge of this farm's meadow. J thought they might be birches, but then spotted some real birches further along. A boulder cut to build the road was pronounced the site of a quarry, and speculation ensued as to the dinosaurs who might have been found there. At the turnaround point we became aware of high ringing sounds from the pond, and I told J about peepers.

Walking back we looked at rocks, mosses, lichen, and new plants starting to grow from beneath last autumn's fallen leaves. Then a group of deer, five or six adults, the first I'd ever seen on our street in more than a year and a half of occupancy. They were feeding on grass in a large lawn and fled to the edge of the woods as we passed, white tails bobbing. We talked about deer being fearful, about deer eating food from gardens and farms, and about people eating deer. J told me that his friend B was the fastest runner, and could certainly catch a deer. Down the hill, the bird still watched from the wire above.

A recognized dog came to bark and greet us, and I cautioned J about calling her out to the road. Further along we stepped off the road to examine some barbed wire, and I explained what this was for and how to be careful of it (the lesson learned, I discovered later, was that barbed wire was to "protect from cows"). Then we were back in our yard. We looked up and J saw the buds in the old tree in our lawn, and in the sky beyond that, the new crescent moon, still a sliver. He told me the moon is usually bigger, but when I told him the moon was like a ball in the sky and asked where it got its light he told me it was lit by the sun, and showed me which side of the moon pointed the way to that source of light.

At home, back inside, for a treat, a bath, stories, and bed, and these experiences to remember. It's taking him a long time to fall asleep.

"That's true, it did sound sort of like talking," I said.

"It had drums, and guitar, and talking," he told me.

I arrived on 42nd Street, up Eighth Ave to 44th, east to Fifth, down to 43rd, and back west to the garage beneath my office building. Then: waiting in line to drop off the car, taking my backpack, my box of books (shouldered), my coffee, and the walk to the elevator as someone's strident car alarm started to go off. From behind I heard the garage attendent shouting to me.

"A rat! A very small rat!," he said.

It was a mouse. Probably a field mouse. It was cowering under my wiper blade in the lee of the car's hood, shivering with what was almost certainly the terror of its hour-long ride into the city in this perch.

I wasn't sure what to do, but I thought if I didn't take action the attendent might, and he might not be the animal-lover I am. So I set out to capture the mouse, which immediately ran up onto the roof of the car. I gingerly approached it, trying to decide whether to catch it up by the base of the tail or to take my chances and cup it in my hands. The mouse took advantage of this hesitation and ran to the other side of the car. I hurried around, telling the attendent "I'll get it; I'll put it in the box or something," then telling the mouse "Ive got you. I won't hurt you. Just don't bite me."

My fingers touched its fur, my hand closing gently around it, but too carefully. The mouse slipped out of my grasp, slid down the passenger side door, and fled across the floor of the garage beneath several parked cars. I made chase, but it disappeared quickly in the wheels and shadows of the urban ground.

I didn't have a plan for the mouse. I knew I'd carry it up to my office in the box, probably re-folding the cardboard to keep it from climbing out the finger-holds. I'd have to clean my friend's books off when I got there. I would have kept it safe all day, offered food and water, possibly even transferred it into some sort of little cage from a pet store. I would have taken it back to New Jersey, but I don't think I'd have tried to keep it. I'd have showed the mouse to my son, perhaps let him carefully touch the mouse, then set it free in the grass of the backyard, from which it had almost certainly come.

But the mouse didn't know this, and humans can't be trusted. It took its chances in the garage, and with luck it will find its way to someplace better. Perhaps it had come from the city all along.

Exhibit A: A teenage girl whose brightly colored shirt happily displayed a tastefully altered Sanrio icon with the text "Hello T*tties."

Exhibit B: A slender woman who proudly bore upon her chest the declaration "THESE are my all-access pass."

Exhibits C and D: Two different men (seen on separate occasions), both rather unassuming looking, unassuming that is apart from their t-shirts which indicated (arrow up) "The Man" and (arrow down) "The Legend."

Exhibit E: An Asian man with thin graying Mr. Rogers hair, wearing board shorts and old running shoes and a T-shirt advertising "The Erogenous Zone: A playground for swingers."

Precisely what kind of doctor feels the need to do this? How can it be worth paying a marketing firm to attract those unfortunate patients who wouldn't see the doctor unless it was free? It's too "Hi, Dr.Nick!" for me, I can tell you that.

This morning we're getting ready to visit a local park where he might ride another carousel. "Do you want to ride on the merry-go-round?," I asked.

But he was in a "yes" mood, so I tested. "Do you want to jump out of an airplane?"

He ignored me and worked on his breakfast. Then his mother said "do you want to take a boat to Alaska?"

"Yes."

"Do you want to paddle around?"

"Yes."

I tried again. "Do you want to ride a motorcycle through a ring of fire?"

"Yes!" He started to climb out of his high chair, while I Johnny Cashed the chorus from "Ring of Fire."

Then our little boy ran into the living room and came back on his tricycle, happily repeating "Bike on fire! Bike on fire! Bike on fire!" I already rue the day.

Update: He did great. Everything went smoothly and by the next day he was acting like himself. Thanks for the good wishes.