Nocturnal Animals

As the sun goes down, the frog hops onto a lilypad and croaks loudly in hopes of attracting a mate. The fox leaves his den, his sharp hearing giving him an advantage over the prey that futilely attempts to flee through fallen leaves. Rachel -- the woman who lives directly above Roman -- re-enacts Bruce Lee's role in Enter the Dragon while wearing cement shoes.

Darkness settles in and other nocturnal animals venture out. The owl stretches and swoops off his perch, knowing that mice won't see him approach. The desert iguana crawls out from under his rock and forages for plants and small insects now that he won't bake in the hot sun. Rachel tries to hold a thirty-pound canned ham with just two fingers that are covered with Vaseline.

The hours pass and the sky deepens to velvety black. The coyote ventures out of his burrow now that his main competition for food, the mountain lion, is fast asleep. The sea turtle swims onto the shore to lay her eggs under cover of night. Rachel tries to answer the question, "Do different colors of floor tile make different sounds when you hit them with a sledgehammer?"

Finally, the sun inches its way back to the horizon and the first ray of light illuminates the land. The aardvark returns underground now that he has no chance to sneak up on his prey. The wasp flies back to his nest before the harsh sunlight can burn his porcelain carapace. Roman puts his bell collection into the washing machine before heading off to work, hoping to make the nocturnal world regret that they don't go to sleep until fucking 6 a.m.