Animal people live among us now. Most humans have come to accept them as equals, but a few in rural areas still hunt them... even eat them. Illegal of course, but not diligently enforced yet. Do some rural cops side with the specists? Or are the just afraid to arrest well-armed nut jobs? It needs to be done, though; the woods aren't safe.

Some species are still rather animal. The bear people are as food-obsessed as ever. But they're unambitious; their greed's restrained by the body's limits. Some reports of bears stealing snack foods from grocery stores... but not eating people. Bears will never terrorize the whole world to corner its food supply. It takes human food obsessions to produce a Hitler (his chief motive for conquest actually wasn't his racist conspiracy theories but his less-publicized delusion that Germany, despite arguably the most advanced agriculture in the world, lacked enough farmland to feed itself.)

I meet a human boy and a giraffe girl in love. (No, I didn't ask how they dealt with their size and, er, elevation problems. None of our business. Maybe they use a stepladder?)

I suggest that because today, he is up a ladder alongside her, with buckets of white and indigo paint, covering her with blue and white spirals like she's some giant mural project!

I ask why. He says "It's camouflage, against those specist hunters!"

Wait, really? I understand the urge to protect one's beloved, but... she stands out more, now. A psychedelic giraffe is not a camo giraffe. Maybe a camo leopard... (sorry, wrong century for camelopard jokes).

But... you know, his ridiculous non-camo camo may still protect her as intended. Just as a collar or ankle-band or a transmitter can warn hunters this is a critter of interest to researchers, these elaborate swirls says "This giraffe is important, this giraffe is loved."

I can't mock their interspecies thing, of course. I love a unicorn. I'm in bed with her right now; we're gawking out the window at this giraffic billboard labor of love.

In bed, but just snuggling. I seem a little shy and passive. She's so cute, and whenever she initiates, I respond with enthusiasm, but I just won't initiate sex.

Yet I love and want her. So... why am I hesitant to show how I feel? That guy up on his ladder may be silly, but he's sure not hiding his feelings...

• Conservative humans hunt furry people and society shrugs "it's only a handful": the point of the Black Lives Matter movement. Shrugging off any murder (or, like Trump, praising that militia kid in Kenosha who shot protestors) has, in the old Supreme Court phrase, "a chilling effect".
• Hungry but unambitious bears: TV news showed a bear near Lake Tahoe who's twice entered a supermarket, but each time steals just one snack, like a bag of chips.
• Hitler, food-obsessed: in both Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers and Peter Frankopan's Silk Roads. Stalin misjudged Hitler. After all, no sane leader would invade the Soviet Union. Oops.
• Beloved marked "do not hunt": my friend Patagia read me her new poem: a duck falls for a drake, but he's cold and aloof. No wonder. He's a decoy, printed DO NOT SHOOT on the side. But ducks in love can't read the signs...
• White unicorn with lavender mane and tail: Sweetie Belle from My Little Pony... all grown up. Sweetie is a singer-songwriter, so what I'm in bed with here is music! And I have been; our band's struggling to record our first album--during Covid restrictions. As the virus snipes at us, like the hunters killing the animal people.
• Passive with lover: My shyness always isolated me some. Then came Covid! But even that wasn't the worst. It's California's wildfire smoke in particular (well, particulate) that's trapped me indoors for weeks. I HAVE gone passive--just work and sleep. No freedom to act on social desires, so I ignore them! This dream reminds me they're still there. Even if, moping around in bed as I am these days, love (and safe streets) seem as inaccessable as... unicorns.

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